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Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Today in History: Still Kicking Edition

Posted by: Matt Raymond

I appreciate all the feedback I have gotten about the blog thus far ? the vast majority of it, thankfully,? positive. One comment that has come across the transom, however: ?Less ?Today in History?!?? Hey, I like history! While I prefer to interpret that as a yearning hunger for even more posts across the breadth …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Open Thread: What Are You Reading?

Posted by: Matt Raymond

Seeing as how we now have a few more readers than, well, zero, I wanted to try my first ?open thread.? This one is topic-specific and might also become another recurring feature, asking a simple question: What are you reading? (Aside from this blog, of course.) It?s a natural question for this blog. After all, …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Today in History: Plus ça Change Edition

Posted by: Matt Raymond

I was thinking about doing something slightly different with today?s ?Today in History.? The results had me laughing so hard here at my desk that I was thinking about spinning it off into its own feature. You see, a few weeks ago we launched a new subsite called ?Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers,? in conjunction …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Today in History: The Poet-Librarian Edition

Posted by: Matt Raymond

National Poetry Month ended exactly one week ago, but today?s ?TIH? celebrates the May 7, 1892, birth of the ?poet-librarian,? Archibald MacLeish, the ninth Librarian of Congress. The Pulitzer Prize winner was Librarian of Congress for five years ? a relatively brief span, given that only 13 individuals have held the post in the Library?s …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Future of Bibliographic Control Meeting

Posted by: Matt Raymond

The Library of Congress-led Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control has its next meeting Wednesday, May 9, in Chicago. While registration closed last week, you can go to the working group’s Web site here to see where the discussion is going. The background paper for the Chicago meeting is here (PDF). A final …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Giving Back

Posted by: Matt Raymond

It’s an oft-cited fact that the Library of Congress takes into its collections a staggering 10,000 items every single day. So it’s nice to be able to talk, about what we try to give back, at least in the broadest sense of the term. Today I received the following report from Library Services (the largest …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Virtual MacDowell

Posted by: Matt Raymond

The names ?Edward and Marian MacDowell? might not be immediately recognizable to a wide swath of the population. But try some of these names on for size: Aaron Copland, Willa Cather, Leonard Bernstein, Dorothy and DuBose Heyward, James Baldwin, and Thornton Wilder. Those are but a handful of the luminaries who spent some of their …