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Posted by: Wendi Maloney
A new book from Library of Congress historian John Y. Cole, “America’s Greatest Library: An Illustrated History of the Library of Congress,” tells the story of the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and how it came to be the world’s largest library. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden calls the Library “a place where you can …
Posted by: Mark Hartsell
Young readers, author Jacqueline Woodson says, need books that serve as both a window and a mirror—a window that allows them to see into other worlds, a mirror that might let, say, an African-American girl or Asian boy see some part of their own identity on the page. The books of such African-American children’s authors …
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division, about “American Libraries 1730–1950,” published this fall by W.W. Norton and Company in association with the Library of Congress. You can find libraries at the heart of many different communities, from the center of a town or a college …
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins. September is traditionally known as the month that all children return to school after summer vacation. To mark this tradition, the Rare Book and Special Collection Division’s book(s) of the month are two hornbooks: a wood hornbook and an ivory hornbook. Today’s children would likely …
Posted in: Books, Literacy, Rare Book of the Month
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Abby Yochelson, a reference specialist in the Main Reading Room. Career guidance takes many paths. In the 1970s, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang this advice from an Ed and Patsy Bruce song: Mamas’ don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys Don’t let ’em pick …
Posted in: Books, Rare Book of the Month
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Rebecca Naimon, an intern with the Library’s National and International Outreach Unit. She is a senior at the University of Chicago, majoring in English and minoring in statistics. Naimon supported the Library’s Junior Fellows Program this summer and is working on the 2017 National Book Festival. Riley Thomas spent …
Posted in: Books, Collections
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Sasha Dowdy, program specialist in the Library’s Young Readers Center. Ever since I was in elementary school, books have been bridge-builders for me. I am not a native English-speaker—my first language is Russian, and my second is Japanese—so as a child, it was a challenge sometimes to connect with the …
Posted in: Books, Free to Use and Reuse, Literacy
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This post is by Zein Al-Maha Oweis, a summer intern in the Library’s Communications Office. You know that feeling when Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” walks into the beast’s library of books from around the world—the gleam in her eyes that shows you she is amazed to see so many books creatively filled with …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Exhibitions, Thomas Jefferson Building
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
In her new book, “Chinatown Opera Theater in North America,” music scholar Nancy Yunhwa Rao tells the story of how Chinatown opera, performed initially to entertain Chinese immigrants, developed into an important part of America’s musical culture. Drawing on new Chinese- and English-language research—including sources at the Library of Congress—she unmasks the backstage world of …
Posted in: American Folklife Center, Asian American History, Books, Events, Researcher Stories