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Archive: 2016 (165 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: A Party of Pulitzers

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 …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Voices of White House Hopefuls

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 …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Access to Knowledge

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 …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: #MyTradition

Posted by: Erin Allen

In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (AFC) has launched year-long campaign asking Americans to share photos of their folk traditions. The campaign kicks off a year of events that will commemorate AFC’s four decades as the institution of record for American folk traditions and ensure that it …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

He Came From the Near East

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post written by Anchi Hoh, a program specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division.) If you read last month’s Christmas-related blog post “An Armenian ‘Three Magi’ at the Library of Congress” by Levon Avdoyan, you may be wondering how the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division acquired some of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Willie Nelson on PBS Tonight!

Posted by: Erin Allen

Make sure to tune in to PBS tonight for the star-studded concert tribute to Willie Nelson, the 2015 recipient of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The concert airs on PBS stations nationwide at 9 p.m. ET on (check local listings). The program also will be broadcast at a later date via the American …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

10 Stories: Mustaches in History! Chronicling America

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. …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Flickr Commons – Going Strong!

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post written by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.) Join us for a “photo countdown” to January 16, which marks the 8th anniversary of the Flickr Commons. The theme is bridges, because the Commons has grown to connect historical and contemporary photographs from more …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Newly Acquired Arabic Manuscript on Early Astronomy and Mathematics

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Anchi Hoh, program specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division.) The Library of Congress’s African and Middle Eastern Division recently added to its treasure trove a very important 15th century Arabic manuscript on astronomy and mathematics. “Tahrir al-Majisti” (“Commentary on the Almagest”), by Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, is …