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Posted by: Erin Allen
“‘Le jour de l’an,’ as the French call the first day of January, is indeed the principal day of the year to those who still keep up the custom of calling and receiving calls. But in New York it is a custom which is in danger of falling into desuetude, owing to the size of …
Posted in: Books, Collections, LC Web site, Music
Posted by: John Sayers
The following is a guest post by Monica Mohindra, head of program coordination and communication for the Library’s Veterans History Project. Bob Patrick, director of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project (VHP), along with VHP staff, will answer your questions in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session beginning at 9 a.m. (ET) on …
Posted in: Collections, Social Media, Veterans History Project
Posted by: Erin Allen
Once again, the Library of Congress has decorated the Great Hall with a tall tree for the holidays, full of lights and ornaments for the enjoyment of visitors. It makes a lovely temporary addition to the magnificence of the space and never fails to put me in a festive spirit. If you’ve had the chance to …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Photos, Pic of the Week, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Levon Avdoyan, Armenian and Georgian area specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division.) When I began working at the Library of Congress in 1992 as the Armenian and Georgian Area Specialist to the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, it was as if …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, Exhibitions, History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
A camel walked into Mount Vernon … sounds like the beginning of a rather offbeat joke. However, such is not the case. On Dec. 29, 1787, our nation’s soon-to-be first president, at home on his estate in Alexandria, Virginia, played host to a rather exotic animal for the holidays. I first heard this story from …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, Events, History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest blog post written by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.) You’ve heard of Jack Frost and most certainly St. Nicholas. But how about King Winter? “King Winter,” a rare German children’s book written by Gustav W. Seitz and published around 1859 in Hamburg, borrows from Germanic and Norse …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Curators, Rare Book of the Month
Posted by: Erin Allen
On this day in 1843, the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” was published. Or was it? While researching the book’s history, there appeared to be some confusion over the date, with many sources confirming December 19 as the day Ebenezer Scrooge was introduced to readers. As it turns out, the book has a somewhat …
Posted in: Books, Collections, History, Today in History
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
This year’s list of 25 noteworthy films named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry is out, and it includes some well-known favorites: “Ghostbusters,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Top Gun,” even the original Douglas Fairbanks vehicle “Zorro.” Films are annually named to the registry that are culturally, historically or aesthetically important; the object is preservation …
Posted in: American Folklife Center, Audiovisual, Film, History, Preservation
Posted by: John Sayers
In celebration of the release of the 10 millionth page of Chronicling America, our free, online searchable database of historical U.S. newspapers, the reference librarians in our Serials & Government Publications Division have selected some interesting subjects and articles from the archives. We’ve been sharing them in a series of Throwback Thursday #TBT blog posts. …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, Newspapers