Top of page

Category: Rare Books and Special Collections

man in nineteenth-century dress looking left in three-quarter profile

A Set of the Writings of the Danish Physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, Presented to His Daughter, Sophie

Posted by: David Morris

The Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress recently acquired a set of the writings of the Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, which the author had presented to his daughter, Sophie. Today, on her birthday, we remember how Sophie and her family used to receive visits from the famous fairytale author, Hans Christian Andersen.

The Intersection between Texts and Textiles across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia: a Display and Talk at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Ryan Wolfson-Ford

On Friday September 29, the Asian Division of the Library of Congress will be hosting a partial day display and talk in the Thomas Jefferson Building (rooms LJ110/119) celebrating the diversity of the Library’s collections through textiles, in collaboration with the African and Middle Eastern, Prints & Photographs, Geography & Maps, and Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Rooms.

Rolando Estévez and the Making of Otra Piel

Posted by: Suzanne Schadl

(This is a guest post by Cuban-American author and anthropologist Ruth Behar. “Lucky Broken Girl,” the winner of the Pura Belpre Award, was her first book for young readers. She stopped by the Hispanic Reading Room to perform Otra Piel before the National Book Festival. In this post, she shares its creation story). As soon …

A short story about Potosi—the largest South American silver mine—in the Library’s Collections (Part 2)

Posted by: Giselle M. Avilés

This is a two-part blog post by Pamela Padilla, 2022 Summer participant in the Library of Congress Internship (LOCI) program with the Hispanic Reading Room, and a Library Science and History graduate student at Queens College, City University of New York.  Click here for the first part of Pamela’s research project. At one point one …

Large metal hollow globe on a metal frame with metal orbit trails surrounding it

“Lions and Tigers and Bears”: Natural History Illustration and Ephemera in the Library of Congress Yudin Collection

Posted by: Anchi Hoh

(The following is a post by Bethany Wages, 2016 Junior Fellow, with Barbara Dash, Rare Book Cataloger.) The Library of Congress acquired the Yudin Collection from the Siberian bibliophile Gennadii Yudin (1840-1912) in 1906. It represents the largest personal Russian library in the United States and is the foundation of the Library’s Russian-language collections. This …