For more than two centuries, American library architecture aspired to accommodate the physical dimensions of books and the furniture and spaces designed to store and display them. “American Libraries 1730–1950”—a new book by Kenneth Breisch—celebrates the history of that architecture, from classical temples to ivy-covered campus citadels to modern glass boxes—whose roofs now house more …
Middle- and high-school students visited the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division on May 9 as part of hands-on pilot program focusing on preservation science. Here, alongside Library scientists, the students use the Library’s hyperspectral camera system to discover concealed writing in documents. For the past decade, the Library has relied on increasingly sophisticated hyperspectral …
Welcome to week two of our blog series for “Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29. This is the second of nine posts – we’re publishing one each Thursday leading up to the opening, then we’ll feature posts about different topics related to the yearlong exhibition. As a bonus, we’re …
Karl Schadow began his lifelong love affair with radio drama in the 1970s when, as a youth in Schenectady, New York, he became a fan of “CBS Radio Mystery Theater.” The program was a surprise hit between 1974 and 1982, appealing to an audience that included many who remembered radio drama fondly as a form …
An earlier version of this interview, conducted by John Fenn of the American Folklife Center, was published on “Folklife Today,” the center’s blog. A little over a decade ago, Brooklyn-based musician and promoter Eli Smith merged his passion for folk music with the inspiration he gets from fellow New York City artists and created the …
Original art is once again part of this year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival as the design for the 2018 festival poster is being unveiled this week. The illustration was created by Gaby D’Alessandro, 31, a Dominican illustrator based in New York City. The poster includes a whimsical hot air balloon carrying a young …
This is a guest post by Brett Zongker of the Communications Office. Welcome to the blog series for “Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29. We’ll be publishing nine posts – one each Thursday – leading up to the opening, then we’ll feature posts about different topics related to the …
This is a post by Cary O’Dell of the Library’s National Recording Preservation Board. It was first published on the blog of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, “Now See Hear!” For the past year or so, we have been inviting readers of our “Now See Hear!” blog to help us identify some super-obscure photos from …
