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Posted by: John Sayers
The “Queen of Soul,” singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin died today at age 76. Her 1967 recording of the song “Respect” was among the first inductees into the Library’s National Recording Registry when it was established in 2002. This guest post by Cary O’Dell in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound division first appeared as …
Posted in: Music
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Sonya Lee, a Korean reference specialist in the Asian Division, and Cameron Penwell, a Japanese reference librarian. The Library’s Asian Division is home to one of the most prominent North Korean collections in the Western Hemisphere. While a growing number of scholars have been making use of this unique …
Posted in: Collections
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. The division’s holdings of the papers of George Washington (1732–1799) constitute the largest collection of original Washington papers in the world. In 1786, English agricultural reformer Arthur Young wrote to George Washington, addressing him as a “brother farmer” and offering to …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Ted Westervelt, a section head in the Library’s U.S. Arts, Sciences and Humanities Division; Kate Murray, a digital projects coordinator in the Digital Collections Management and Services Division; and Donna Brearcliffe, an electronic resources coordinator in the Collection Development Office. Since the first edition of the Recommended Formats Statement …
Posted in: Preservation, Technology
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This interview with Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division, first appeared on the “Teaching with the Library of Congress” blog. Describe what you do at the Library. One of the great things about my job is that the work changes on a daily basis. At the risk of over-simplifying: I oversee Manuscript Division …
Posted in: Exhibitions, Manuscripts, My Job
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
What we today call “silent” films were anything but in their heyday. Usually, a piano, a theater organ, a musical combo – or sometimes an entire orchestra – accompanied screenings. For more than 30 years, Ben Model has been bringing the music back to early motion pictures. A lifelong silent film enthusiast, he has created …
Posted in: Film, Music, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This post is by Marcos Castillo, a 2018 intern with the Junior Fellows Program. He is a senior at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania. This summer, he worked in the Library’s Hispanic Division. The opening this June of the exhibition “Baseball Americana” at the Library of Congress prompted me to think about the history of our …
Posted in: Baseball, Hispanic American History
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Landscape historian Arleyn Levee first visited the Library’s Manuscript Reading Room in the early 1980s to consult the records of Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm. A 19th-century pioneer who developed the field of American landscape architecture, Olmsted shaped many notable sites throughout his career – New York’s Central Park, the U.S. Capitol grounds, the …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Collections, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Barbara Bair, a historian in the Manuscript Division. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) is most famous as the creator in the late 1850s of New York City’s Central Park with Calvert Vaux. But Olmsted had an enormous and geographically widespread impact on America’s lasting ideas of what cityscapes should be. …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts