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 …
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 …
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 …
This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. There is a mystique surrounding libraries with old, rare books, and the Library of Congress is no exception. Just think of all the dark and vast vaults of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division that are closed to the public and imagine what …
A love of travel inspires so many photos. A stunning group of images we’re featuring now in our “free to use and reuse” feature on the Library’s home page will take you on a century-old “grand tour” of the world. Our Photochrom Print Collection shows, in color, Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Asia and the …
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, …
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 …
This is a guest post by Andrew Winston, senior legal reference librarian, and Brian Kaviar, a Law Library intern. It was first published on “In Custodia Legis,” the blog of the Law Library. The Federal Courts Web Archive, recently launched by the Library’s web archiving team and the Law Library, provides retrospective archival coverage of …
Best-selling children’s author Rick Riordan launched the third and final book in his Norse mythology series at the Library of Congress on October 3. Hundreds of elementary and middle-school students from Washington, D.C., and Maryland joined him in the Coolidge Auditorium, while groups from Colorado, Mississippi, New Jersey, Ohio and elsewhere watched on Livestream as …