This is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, curator of photography; Adam Silvia, associate curator of photography; and Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the division’s blog. The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles has created a lively exhibition called “Not an Ostrich: And …
President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte Macron, viewed a display of Library treasures in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building on Wednesday; some of the materials they saw will be incorporated into a new bilingual website about French-American history. The Macrons’ visit coincided with an announcement by Librarian of Congress …
The following is a guest post by Todd S. Purdum, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a senior writer at Politico and author of “Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,” published this month by Henry Holt. For more about Broadway, keep an eye out for “Brilliant Broadway,” the May–June issue of LCM, the Library …
This is a guest post by Anne Holmes of the Poetry and Literature Center. As April winds down, our celebration of National Poetry Month at the Library of Congress is still going strong: Today we launch “From the Catbird Seat,” a new poetry podcast series from the Poetry and Literature Center. Each Thursday for the …
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. The papers of Joseph Holt (1807–94), now available online, document his career as a lawyer, commissioner of patents, United States postmaster general, secretary of war and judge advocate general of the United States Army. Holt is best known for his service …
Today, the Library of Congress celebrates its 218th birthday. On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved an appropriation of $5,000 for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of [C]ongress.” The first books purchased were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three …
This is a guest post by Jacob Nadal, Director for Preservation at the Library of Congress. Every spring, libraries all across the U.S. celebrate Preservation Week. This annual event highlights what we can do, individually and together, to care for our personal collections and to support preservation efforts in libraries, archives, museums, historical societies and …
This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. The papers of Benjamin Franklin at the Library of Congress have had almost as adventurous a life as Franklin had himself. They have been abandoned and recovered, cut up by a dressmaker to make patterns and used as collateral for debt. …
This post by Anne Holmes of the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center was first published on “From the Catbird Seat,” the center’s blog. National Poetry Month is here, and we’re over the moon to announce the release of 50 additional recordings from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature, now available to stream online. The …