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Posted by: Matt Raymond
This week’s Newsweek has a lengthy profile of our Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan. It’s a fascinating read, and I’d commend it to your attention. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Kay a few times and talking with her several more times, and I think the article does a wonderful job of capturing her personality, her …
Posted in: National Book Festival, News, Poetry
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Blog. Twitter. YouTube. iTunes. Yeah, we speak Web 2.0. You nation’s Library has millions of stories to tell, so we’re trying to tell them as many places and to as many people as possible–whether on our own website or elsewhere. And now you can add another biggie to the list: iTunes U. For those who …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Cataloging, Collections, Education, LC Web site, News, Podcasts, Social Media, Video
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Starting about two decades ago, the Library of Congress–under the direction of Librarian of Congress James Billington–began moving more ambitiously into the K-12 education space than it had previously. In 1990 the Library began a pilot program to distribute digital primary-source materials on CD-ROM to classrooms. The program, known as American Memory, has today blossomed …
Posted in: Collections, Education, LC Web site, News
Posted by: Matt Raymond
If you’ve visited this blog before, you might be doing a double-take. The Web Services team here at the Library (who are doing some simply amazing things) has given the blog a fresher look and new functionality. First, there’s a cleaner, more aesthetic look to it, and I like how the collections are now highlighted …
Posted in: Blogging, LC Web site
Posted by: Matt Raymond
My capacity for metaphors is somewhat limited, so forgive me if I repeat a word I tweeted recently (“tweet-peat”?): Yesterday the Library and the NEH held a news conference celebrating the “odometer” of the Chronicling America program’s surpassing 1 million digitized pages from historic newspapers. Seven new partner states have been added, bringing the total …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, News
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Media consumers today are bombarded with imagery of current events — some of them ephemeral, on our TV screens, and some more indelible. A century ago, the use of halftone images was beginning to revolutionize newspapers and bringing the immediacy of photography to the masses. Today the Library launched a new photostream on our Flickr …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, News, Photos, Social Media
Posted by: Matt Raymond
The Library’s tech elves have been laboring away in their workshop to upgrade the user experience on our Chronicling America website. Over recent weeks, the Library of Congress has implemented changes to Chronicling America that improve and expand use of historic American newspapers digitized for the National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint project with the …
Posted in: LC Web site, News
Posted by: Matt Raymond
I have corrected a recent post about increased visitorship at the Library. Visitation at the Library from January–May 2009 was up 47 percent, not 69 percent between January and April, as previously stated. April itself, however, was up 64 percent—possibly an all-time record.
Posted in: New Visitors Experience