The Library recently digitized three rare thangkas from the Tibetan collection. They are not only beautiful works of art but illustrate and disseminate key cultural teachings. This blog features the Srid pa ho, which wards off harm from all directions, illustrating basic Tibetan astrology concepts.
This blog post, written by LACE Librarian in Residence, Taylor Healey Brooks, explores the way she applied her expertise in supporting Africana scholarship at the Library of Congress.
More than 400 newly catalogued Manchu books from the Asian Division’s Chinese Rare Book Collection offer researchers new sources for study of the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty in China.
The Library of Congress’ Hebraic Section recently acquired a Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract), handwritten in 1722 in Ancona, Italy. Because the Ketubah is displayed during the ceremony, the tradition evolved to decorate the Ketubah. This Italian Ketubah from 1722 shows how the decoration adds beauty and meaning to a dry legal document.
January 1804 marks Haitian independence from French colonial rule. Self-liberated enslaved people on the island led and carried out the only successful insurrection by enslaved peoples in the Western Hemisphere. The Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division (LACE) has released a research guide, “Freedom in the Black Diaspora: A Resource Guide for Ayiti Re-imagined.”
This blog looks at Bengali publications from the Franklin Book Program, a translation program sponsored by the United States during the Cold War. It also examines the place of religion in books published for Muslim readers in East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).
This blog uses the Library of Congress’s Ethiopian Collections to discuss Timkat, a Christian religious celebration instituted by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church beginning from about the 5th Century.
The Hebraic Section of the Library of Congress African and Middle Eastern Division acquired the Second Rabbinic Bible, the Hebrew Bible printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice, 1525. This is the Bible which preserved for all time the ancient legacy of the Masorah, the great mass of rabbinic tradition that safeguarded the sacred Hebrew text through the millennia.
Combining work at Arizona State University Library and the Library of Congress, this post discusses contemporary Brazilian woodblocks, chapbooks, and artists books to illuminate contemporary Brazilian reflections on the Canudos War (1896-1897), Black Brazilian heroines, and the important connections between graphic design, poetry and small press publications in Brazil.
A calligram of the Hindu god Hanuman, an 18th-century Nepalese astrological manuscript, documents from India’s princely states, and a rare edition of the “Arabian Nights” in Urdu are just some of the South Asian highlights from the Library of Congress International Collections Facebook page.