After Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) this September, a survey revealed that only 54% of Americans know that the 3.4 million Puerto Ricans are American citizens. Many Americans are also unaware that the USVI are part of the United States. Paradoxically, 2017 was not only the year […]
I never know where the inspiration of an On the Shelf post will come from. Today’s stems from a patron request for an item which Ann Hemmens subsequently brought back to me for preservation work. As the 1941 D.C. Building Code sat on my desk, I thought about how many times I’ve told friends and […]
October is ADHD Awareness Month. ADHD, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, “is a brain disorder marked by an ongoing pattern of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity that interferes with functioning or development.” ADHD is a complex mental health issue, as all mental health issues are, but this disorder is complicated because there are no physical […]
Through the generosity of the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress, the Law Library recently acquired two manuscript volumes of an extraordinarily rare collection of parliamentary protests lodged by Members of the House of Lords during the period from 1641-1799. The Law Library maintains a collection of historic English and early American manuscripts. […]
The following is a guest blog post by Andrew Winston, Senior Legal Reference Librarian at the Law Library of Congress, and Brian Kaviar, an intern at the Law Library of Congress. The Federal Courts Web Archive, recently launched by the Library of Congress Web Archiving Team and the Law Library of Congress, provides retrospective archival coverage […]
Today’s interview is with Michael (“Mookie”) Goodson, an intern in the Collection Services Division. Mookie has the enviable task of conducting preliminary research, identifying U.S. and foreign legal collection items, related to baseball and the law for next year’s Library-wide exhibit: Baseball Americana. Describe your background. I am one of five children (the son of […]
Yesterday was International Day of Peace and since, historically speaking, peace often meant treaties between various countries, it seemed a good occasion to talk about doing treaty research. When I began working at the Law Library of Congress over 11 1/2 years ago, I was excited by the variety of questions from patrons. But there […]
Last weekend I was pulling English ivy off the corner of my house where it had grown over from the neighbor’s yard, and I reflected on the large number of invasive plants I see growing all over the national capital area: kudzu, porcelain berry, water hyacinth, callery pear, and tree of heaven. I wondered what […]
This is a guest post by Dasha Kolyaskina. Dasha is working in the Collection Services Division of the Law Library of Congress as part of the Library of Congress’s Junior Fellows Program. The program’s focus is to increase access to our collections for our various patron groups. As a Junior Fellow at the Law Library […]
As we’ve noted in the blog before, the Class K schedule was not completed until the 1960s. Prior to that, law material was either classified under the old “LAW” scheme or in the JX class. Our serials cataloger, Brian Kuhagen, is working hard to put everything in order under the K schedule. His latest projects […]