Top of page
Posted by: Matt Raymond
While we prepare for the last long weekend of the summer ? or shop for school supplies ? let us pause to remember the historic significance of Labor Day and the men and women who fought for workers? rights. In 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day ? the first Monday in September ? a …
Posted in: Events, History, LC Web site, Thomas Jefferson Building
Posted by: Matt Raymond
The front page at LOC.gov will be getting a bit of a facelift in a couple of weeks.? (In fact, the plan is to time it to the 20th anniversary of the Librarian of Congress’s tenure on Sept. 14.) The changes won?t be radical, but we do hope they will be viewed as improvements.? You …
Posted in: LC Web site, New Visitors Experience
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Ever wonder what you might find if you had the opportunity to browse through some of the Library of Congress’s vast and long-forgotten copyright deposits?? (Since 1870, two copies of virtually every creative work published in America must be submitted to the Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress.) For the past …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
I think this is great: For the third year in a row, the Friends of the James V. Brown Library [in Williamsport, Pa.] are sponsoring a bus to take local book-lovers of all ages to the National Book Festival. You might know Williamsport as the birthplace of the Little League World Series. Pardon the awful …
Posted in: Books, Capitol Hill, Events, Washington DC
Posted by: Matt Raymond
I came across a piece today from ?Inside Higher Ed? and felt a need to correct the record. The article, the subject of which was Open Library, stated in part: Q: Some serious questions have come up about the shrinking depth of subject cataloging from the book records issued by the Library of Congress. That …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Have you ever thought about what it might be like to try to walk through all of the shelves at the Library of Congress? Maybe not, but we LOC people love to mull over the sheer magnitude of this place. You might have seen statistics here or there that have referred to somewhere in the …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
A mini-debate is breaking out among library-philes in the wake of a Wall Street Journal story about an Arizona library that has ditched the Dewey Decimal System for much broader subject headings, catering to a client謥 who are apparently more browsers than researchers. An earlier article claims it to be the first library to break …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
There has been substantial public interest in a recent decision by a federal court not to forestall a ruling by the Copyright Royalty Judges that increases royalties paid by Internet radio stations, effective this coming Sunday, July 15. (By the way, I?m told ?Copyright Royalty Judges? and is their preferred name, not the ?Copyright Royalty …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Bill Powers of National Journal has debuted a neat, recurring feature about how ?leading figures in government, politics, and other spheres? get their information from the media. He chose Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, as its first subject because he ?runs America?s first great information outlet.? From the article: I think daily newspapers are …
Posted in: News