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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Library conservators have been carefully cleaning and restoring a small trove of papyrus writings from ancient Egypt. The writings are mostly decrees, contracts and other pragmatic records, but still offer a window into a world long gone by.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Manuscripts, Preservation and Conservation, Rare Book and Special Collections, Science
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library's Crime Classic series now has more than 20 titles to choose from, including “The Cannibal Who Overate,” which came out earlier this month. There's something for every mystery lover in the series, with classic stories that span more than 100 years of American literary history. You can get them from the Library's shop or from any major bookseller.
Posted in: African American History, African and Middle Eastern Division, Crime Classics Series, LCM, Library of Congress Crime Classics, Library Work and Employees, Publishing Office, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Linnea Vegh was working at a large, well-lit workspace in the Conservation Division on a recent day, considering an unusual problem in an 1869 Persian-Arabic dictionary published in India: Snakeskin. Five thin, scaly pieces, all likely used as bookmarks that got left behind for more than a century. Welcome to the weird world of “inclusions,” an ecosystem known to archivists the world over in which they come across all sort of things readers have purposefully or inadvertently left between a book’s pages.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Arab/Arab American, Library Work and Employees, Manuscripts, Preservation, Preservation and Conservation
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Kwame Anthony Appiah, the internationally recognized philosopher, author and professor, will be awarded the 2024 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today. The $500,000 prize, awarded every two years, recognizes individuals whose outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences has shaped public affairs and civil society. Since the 1990s, Appiah’s work has been widely regarded as having deepened the understanding of ideas around identity and belonging, concepts that remain deeply consequential. The Library is developing programming on the theme of “Thinking Together” that will showcase Appiah’s work for a public audience.
Posted in: African American History, African and Middle Eastern Division, Kluge Center, Library Work and Employees, Writers
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Angela Kinney was named deputy director of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate in November. This is a brief question and answer article about her long career at the Library.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Gazette, Libraries, Library Work and Employees, My Job
Posted by: Maria Peña
The Library recently put online some 230 histortic manuscripts, some of them more than a thousand years old, in Hebrew and similar languages, such as Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian and Yiddish. The collection, available online for researchers and the public for the first time, includes a 14th-century collection of responsa, or rabbinic decisions and commentary, by Solomon ibn Adret of Barcelona, considered one of the most prominent authorities on Jewish law.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Library Work and Employees, News, Technology, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library preserves some of the papers of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, the visionary leader of the Bamum kingdom in modern-day Cameroon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Njoya's royal family had ruled their region of the grasslands for hundreds of years. Under pressure from the colonial powers of Germany and then France, he created the first map of the kingdom, a language, an alphabet and a religion. He was a renowed patron of the arts, encouraging teachers, sculptors and artisans.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Library Work and Employees
Posted by: Neely Tucker
During the Russian Revolution, a wealthy young Jewish woman fled Moscow to publish the world's first illustrated children's books in Hebrew. Today, the only know copy of three of those books are preserved at the Library.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Jewish American History, Kids
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Clay tablets with an ancient writing system known as cuneiform are more than 4,000 years old, among the oldest items in the Library's collections.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, LCM