Our very own John Hessler was featured in today’s Washington Post talking about some of the mysteries behind one of the grand-daddies of all maps, the 1507 Martin Waldseemüller World Map, the document that named “America” and one of the Library’s toppest of the top treasures. (OK, we don’t categorize the treasures quite that way, …
Exhibits, especially major ones, take a lot of planning, often years’ worth. There is fund-raising, exhibit design, curatorial work, object selection, conservation, writing the label texts, brochure design, fabrication, mounting, installation … and several other steps that I’m undoubtedly forgetting. On Feb. 12, we’re opening the major exhibition “With Malice Toward None,” celebrating the 200th …
I know it is late notice, but if you have some time on your hands this afternoon (and you’re in DC), you might want to stop by an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections Division (the Lessing J. Rosenwald Room, across from room 239 in the …
The DVD for “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” isn’t released until Tuesday, May 20, but we here at one of the chief locations in the film managed to get our hands on a copy. The two-disc collectors’ edition and the Blu-Ray edition include a bonus feature titled “Inside the Library of Congress,” and I have …
Have you ever thought about what it might be like to try to walk through all of the shelves at the Library of Congress? Maybe not, but we LOC people love to mull over the sheer magnitude of this place. You might have seen statistics here or there that have referred to somewhere in the …
John Haynes of the Library of Congress?s Manuscript Division addresses guests in the Library?s Madison Hall as NED President Carl Gershman, right, listens. The blonde woman in the audience with her back to the camera is actress/activist Mia Farrow. (Photo by me.) Even in the midst of partisan squabbling for which Washington, D.C., has always …
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 …
This morning I attended the spring business meeting of the James Madison Council, the Library’s private-sector advisory body, created in 1990 by Librarian of Congress James Billington. Council members received updates on the 2007 National Book Festival (Sept. 29, 2007), the 2007 Junior Fellows program, the World Digital Library and other issues, and also heard …