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Posted by: Nathan Dorn
“There may be room there, though not here for such an holy experiment.” William Penn (1644-1718) wrote these words to a friend in America before he set sail across the Atlantic to found a colony in the New World. The holy experiment he spoke about was a plan to establish a new polity founded on …
Posted in: Collections, In the News, Law Library
Posted by: Robert Brammer
In a historic neighborhood in Lexington, Kentucky, not far from the University of Kentucky, sits a house with a special connection to the U.S. Capitol Building. The house was designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the Second Architect of the Capitol. Latrobe was hired by Thomas Jefferson to work on the Capitol, and after it was damaged …
Posted in: Pic of the Week
Posted by: Andrew Weber
This week’s interview is with Rick Fitzgerald, a Librarian in the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate of the Library of Congress. I grew up in Sparta, New Jersey, and moved to Arizona in 1994, where I lived on and off for nine years. I have also lived overseas for brief periods – in the Netherlands and …
Posted in: Interview
Posted by: Francisco Macías
“…one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season…”–Edgar Allan Poe “The Cask of Amontillado” Although Americans do not have a monopoly on Carnival, when we think of Mardi Gras, New Orleans inevitably comes to mind. Given the volume of visitors and events that take place in the city during this season, it is no surprise …
Posted in: In the News
Posted by: Donna Sokol
The recent passing of Senator Inouye [D-HI] led to a discussion among some friends about who can lie in state in the Capitol. I asked the Law Library’s instructional librarian, Pam Craig, whether it took an act of Congress to permit this. And indeed it does. To allow the Capitol’s rotunda to be used for …
Posted in: Congress
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The following is a guest post by Laney Zhang, our Chinese law specialist at the Law Library of Congress. Laney has previously written posts for In Custodia Legis about pandas, trains and corruption, and Chinese supreme court clothing. Earlier this week she wrote Crouching Tiger, Hidden Author. My favorite traditional Chinese holiday is coming next week! Yes, …
Posted in: Education, Global Law, Guest Post
Posted by: Margaret Wood
Like many people, I have always enjoyed being scared—just a little—not with chainsaws and blood but a contest of wits between the archetypal vampire Dracula and his human opponents. Dracula of course is not the first fictional vampire. John Polidori, physician to Lord Byron, and Sheridan LeFanu both wrote short stories about vampires in the …
Posted in: Collections, Law Library
Posted by: Laney Zhang
“Each of us has a crouching tiger deep in the heart.” This is what internationally-acclaimed Taiwanese director Ang Lee told a Chinese journalist, Chai Jing, in a recent interview about his latest film, Life of Pi. The crouching tiger is Lee’s metaphor for the inner power driving him in his continuous efforts to try “thrilling” …
Posted in: Global Law, In the News
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The following is a guest post is by Melanie Polutta, Librarian Cataloger in the Iberia/Rio Section of the African, Latin American, and Western European Division of the Library of Congress. A while ago, I wrote an article in the LCCN that described how Carolyn Keene, the author of the Nancy Drew series, was not actually a person, but rather …
Posted in: Guest Post