—This is a guest post by Adam M. Silvia, a curator in the Prints and Photographs Division. As a photojournalist, Taro Yamasaki photographed at-risk children in the United States and around the world — Nicaragua, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East. The Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three collections that document such work by the …
When the Library of Congress began in 1800, it had 152 works in 740 volumes. Also, there were three maps. Today, as its 225th birthday arrives, the Library has amassed more than 181 million items from around the world, forming what is widely considered to be the greatest collection of knowledge ever assembled. How did it happen? This story walks readers through the Library's fascinating history.
The stormy affair of Josephine Baker and New York's splashy Stork Club in the fall of 1951 was a brief-but-infamous incident and a now fascinating part of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund's online collection at the Library. Baker's claim of racial discrimination by the club was correct (they served her drinks but not dinner) but she overplayed her hand when she said influential newspaper and radio columnist Walter Winchell saw the entire event and did not come to her aid. Winchell's ensuing vindictive campaign badly damaged her reputation.
From saplings to centenarians, the fabled cherry blossom trees of Washington, D.C., entice more than 1.5 million visitors to the capital each spring. The initial 1912 gift of 3,020 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to Washington launched such treasured and enduring traditions as the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which officially began in 1927. We look at some of the marvelous festival posters that have advertised and celebrated the festival.
Jessica Fries-Gaither, an elementary school science teacher from Columbus, Ohio, is serving as an Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow at the Library this year. We caught up with her to ask her about her work and some favorite projects.
Recreating Thomas Jefferson's personal library, which became the DNA of the Library of Congress, has been a fascination for antiquarians since an 1851 fire burned about two thirds of his original books. But for 27 years, one of the Library’s most ardent projects has been to examine its own stacks, other libraries, rare book dealers and antiquarians from multiple countries to replace the burned and missing volumes with exact copies — the same edition, publisher and so on — to replicate the world view that led the author of the Declaration of Independence to pen such a world-changing set of ideas. That effort is now getting as close to complete as it is ever likely to get.
At times laughing and tossing back her long sisterlocks, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson engaged in a lively discussion with U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves in the Coolidge Auditorium last week. She talked about her youth and life experiences, all included in her memoir, "Lovely One."
Pennsylvania's Big Pat Bane, a cheerful man standing some 6 feet 9 inches, was almost certainly the tallest soldier in the Civil War. His feet came out of his shoes. Crowds swarmed. Children ran and laughed and gaped. He led parades. Fellow soldiers, particularly at reunions, gawped and guffawed. All this earned him an almost mythical place in pop culture of the late 19th century.
D’Andrea Hamn started working at the library 49 years ago and currently works in the acquisitions program specialist in the U.S. Copyright Office. In this My Job interview, she talks about her work over nearly five decades.
