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Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
Etiquette. We love to make fun of it – from the character Rose Maybud in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Ruddigore” who is constantly consulting her tiny etiquette book (“It’s manners out-of-joint, to point!”) to Vincent Price lecturing his creation “Edward Scissorhands” in the movie of the same name: “Etiquette tells us just what is …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Education, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Jason Steinhauer, a program specialist in the Library’s John W. Kluge Center, as part of the blog series, “Inquiring Minds.”) Legal scholar John Witte served as the recent Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History. Author of 220 articles, 15 journal symposia, and 26 books, …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Events, Kluge Center, Law Library, Researcher Stories, Washington DC
Posted by: Erin Allen
According to the 1860 census, the population of the United States that year was 31,429,891. Of that number, 3,952, 838 were reported as enslaved. The 1860 census was the last time the federal government took a count of the Southern slave population. In 1861, the United States Coast Survey issued two maps of slavery based …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Collections, Exhibitions, History, Maps
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is an article from the September-October 2012 issue of the Library’s new magazine, LCM, discussing how the Library acquires its collections.) By Audrey Fischer Beginning with a purchase of 740 books by Congress in 1800, the Library of Congress collection has grown to nearly 152 million items. But purchase is just one acquisition …
Posted in: Collections, Copyright, Libraries
Posted by: Erin Allen
(This is the third in a series of posts featuring presidential campaign items from the Library’s collections. Read the others here and here.) Every election year, as candidates go head to head during their campaigns, a new wave of vocabulary is born. Political idioms that have found their way into our lexicon include POTUS, left-wing, …
Posted in: Collections, History, News, Newspapers
Posted by: Erin Allen
A simple label inside thousands of rare books bears witness to the origins of one of the great collections of Hebrew material in the world: “Deinard Collection Presented by Jacob H. Schiff.” Beginning next week, the Library of Congress will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its Hebraic Collection – started with a gift from Schiff …
Posted in: Collections, Exhibitions, Jewish American History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
LeRoy Gresham (1847-1865) was a teenaged invalid who kept a diary for nearly every day of the Civil War, recording the news, his Confederate sympathies and perceptive details about life on the homefront as he experienced the conflict through newspapers, letters and personal visitors. The son of an attorney, judge, and plantation owner in Macon, …
Posted in: Blogging, Civil War, Congress Blogs, Exhibitions, History, Manuscripts, Uncategorized
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
Old newspapers have acquired an iffy reputation over the years. We bemoan the trees that had to die to bring them into existence for their one day of glory; we dub them “mullet-wrappers” or note, as they do in the British Isles, that “Yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper.” But old newspapers can be addictive! …
Posted in: Civil War, Education, History, LC Web site, Libraries, Newspapers, Preservation
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is an article from the September-October 2012 issue of the Library’s new magazine, LCM, highlighting “first drafts” of important documents in American history.) O! say, can you see by the dawn’s early light …” These words are as American as, well, the American flag that inspired them. Francis Scott Key, a young …
Posted in: History, Manuscripts, Music, Uncategorized