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Archive: October 2017 (13 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: Caring for the Library’s Oldest Poster

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Library of Congress conservators use enzymes and small hand tools to gently remove the cloth backing from the verso of a giant poster created to advertise a 19th-century circus. The treatment is part of an effort to preserve the poster, the earliest surviving one in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. Titled “Five Celebrated Clowns …

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

New Online: Scary Stories and More

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center. An earlier version was published on “Folklife Today,” the center’s blog. With Halloween just around the corner, the Library of Congress has released a new web guide to Halloween resources at the Library. It features select materials on the folk customs, fine …

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

Trending: Celebrating the World Series with Song

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Baseball and music have a basic affinity, as any fan knows. . . . [E]very pitch ends either with the satisfying pop of the catcher’s mitt or the tension-creating crack of the bat. . . . It should surprise no one that a game with such inherently strong elements of musicality should have attracted scores …

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

A Ghostly Image: Spirit Photographs

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Kristi Finefield, a reference librarian in the Prints and Photographs Division. An earlier version was published on “Picture This,” the division’s blog. Can you take a photograph of a ghost? Will a spirit pose for your camera? Looking at “spirit photographs” from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, you …

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

New Online: Ulysses S. Grant Papers

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. On May 17, 1877, former president Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia departed from Philadelphia on an extended trip. Other former presidents traveled after retiring from public office, but none journeyed as far as Grant did. He and Julia spent …

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

Inquiring Minds: Papers of Famous Sculptor Confirm Identity of Mount Rushmore’s Chief Carver

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Last month, relatives of Luigi Del Bianco gathered in Keystone, South Dakota, for a very special ceremony: the National Park Service unveiled a plaque on September 16 at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial recognizing the late Del Bianco as the chief carver of Mount Rushmore—76 years after its completion. For more than 30 years previously, …

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

Hispanic Heritage Month: Indigenous Law Portal

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Carla Davis-Castro, a research librarian for the Congressional Research Service. She worked on the Indigenous Law Portal from 2015 to 2017. The Library of Congress launched the Indigenous Law Portal in June 2014 to provide an open-access platform for legal materials on how indigenous peoples govern themselves. Mexico and …