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Posted by: Mark Hartsell
The human voice is music’s only pure instrument, jazz singer Nina Simone once wrote – it has notes no other instrument possesses. “It’s like being between the keys of a piano,” Simone wrote in a draft of an unpublished autobiography recently discovered in a Library of Congress collection. “The notes are there, you can sing …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Collections, Curators, Exhibitions, History, Music, Washington DC
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest blog post written by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.) This month, the Rare Book of the Month is not actually a book but objects from the special collections within the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we take a peek into the …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, History, Photos, Rare Book of the Month
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following post is by Ann Brener, Hebraic area specialist in the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division.) With its rich nature imagery and enigmatic dream-like sequences, the “Song of Songs” (also known as the “Songs of Solomon”) is surely one of the world’s great love poems and one of the most popular books in …
Posted in: Books, Collections, History, Jewish American History, Manuscripts, Poetry
Posted by: Erin Allen
January was a month filled with awards and honors. The Library welcomed Gene Luen Yang as the fifth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Michael Cavna of The Washington Post covered the inauguration ceremony and wrote, “Yang — a charismatic, high-energy speaker — was able to present himself dually as both authentically dimensional scholar and …
Posted in: Concerts, Events, Music, News, Newspapers
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following article by Audrey Fischer is from the January/February 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) One man’s dedication to a field of study inspired the moniker “the father of African American history.” With this year’s theme of “Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African …
Posted in: Collections, Education, Events, History, LCM, Manuscripts
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.) This is the first post in a new monthly series highlighting new collections, items and presentations on the Library’s website. After checking out the items mentioned here, be sure to visit some of our other blogs that highlight our …
Posted in: Blogging, Collections, Congress Blogs, Education, LC Web site, Manuscripts, Maps, Poetry, Technology, Veterans History Project, Video
Posted by: Erin Allen
Thirteen Pulitzer Prize winners visited the Library last week while in Washington for festivities celebrating the esteemed award. Steve Benson, who won the prize for editorial cartooning in 1993; former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove (poetry, 1987); Jennifer Egan (fiction, 2011); Paul Giblin (local reporting, 2009); Joan Hedrick (biography, 1995); David Levering Lewis (biography, 1994 and 2001); Jeffrey Marx (investigative reporting, 1986); Philip Schultz …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Events, Photos, Pic of the Week, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
New Hampshire long has been a place where presidential hopes are born, revived and, sometimes, die. New Hampshire is where Edmund Muskie famously cried, Ronald Reagan let everyone know who paid for that microphone, Bill Clinton declared himself the “Comeback Kid” and John McCain rode his “Straight Talk Express” into electoral contention. As voters there …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Collections
Posted by: John Sayers
(The following story by Jennifer Gavin is featured in the January/February 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) From MARC to metadata, the Library’s catalog records and expert staff provide access to a treasure trove of knowledge. In the beginning—that is, in 1800—the Library …
Posted in: Cataloging, Collections, LC Web site, LCM, Libraries