In examining an early 20th-century edition of a book of stories by Russian author Nikolai Gogol, a Library of Congress cataloger recognized another familiar name. The full-page, sepia-colored art illustrations in the book were printed by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, better known as an early innovator in color photography. The book’s past ownership invites further investigation.
The blog post delves into a Georgetown University Master's capstone project “Reimagining Structural Racism and Inequities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for Latino Communities in the U.S. as analyzed through Oral Histories and Children’s Poetry.”
Three early Baltic German printers and their descendants made publishing a family trade in lands of today’s Latvia, i.e., the Steffenhagens, Hartknochs and the Kymmels.
This blogpost introduces Persian calligraphic styles: Ta'liq, Shikastah, and Nasta'liq. This is the second installment of a three-part series that examines the various styles of Arabic calligraphy used in the Arab and Islamic world. The Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Calligraphy collection is housed in the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress.
Allegedly created by astronomer-astrologers in the Tang dynasty (618-907), the book of prophecies known as “Tui bei tu” 推背圖 (“Back-pushing Pictures”) is the most renowned work of Chinese mysticism.
The Hispanic Reading Room of the Library of Congress launches The PALABRA Indigenous Voices Project, a new initiative to increase the presence of Indigenous poetry and literature in the historic PALABRA Archive. Through partnerships with scholars and organizations with direct access to Indigenous communities around Latin America, curators hope to shine a light on a formerly under-represented group in this collection.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, ships carried health certificates to reassure local officials that the places they came from were free of contagion. These filled a function something like the “vaccine passports” or “immunity passports” that are under discussion today because of Covid-19.
If These Walls Could Talk is a Story Map that recreates the experience of walking into the Hispanic Reading Room where four gigantic, richly colored murals by the Brazilian artist Cândido Portinari welcome visitors to the Library of Congress.
This blog announces the release of the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation’s (IPLC) Global Social Responses to Covid-19 Web Archive, which features contributions from the Asian Division’s South Asian and Southeast Asian librarians. This web archive boasts of over 4,000 websites from over 80 countries, with captures and new sites added continuously.
