Guy Lamolinara is the head of the Library's Center for the Book, a job that calls on his decades of work at the Library and lifelong love of literature.
As the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 5, 1933, a truck full of beer departed Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. KMOX CBS Radio excitedly broadcast the event to the nation -- Prohibition had ended. Beer was on en route to the White House. This slice of history is just one example of thousands of broadcasts that the Library's Radio Preservation Task Force have brought to light in archives across the country since its launch in December 2014.
Christopher Oakley, a prominent film animator turned university historian, used his knowledge of computer modeling -- and his research at the LIbrary of Congress -- to help solve a small but important mystery: Where exactly did Lincoln stand while delivering his famed Gettysburg Address?
Jessica Tang, a library technician in the Asian Division, answers questions about her work and her hobbies -- the latter including writing historical fiction, letterboxing and playing as a clarinetist and fifer in the U.S. Army's 29th Infantry Division Band.
Novelist, short-story writer and essayist George Saunders was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction Saturday evening in one of the final sessions of the 2023 National Book Festival, conferring a lifetime honor on a versatile writer whose most famous book cast one of Washington's most famous residents in a surreal light. Saunders' 2017 novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" took a fantastical look at the visit President Abraham Lincoln paid to his young son's tomb in a Georgetown cemetery one night in 1862.
Hannah Whitaker, interning this summer as a junior fellow in the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, discusses her work in helping preserve live recordings from early in the 20th century, including performances by stars such as Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
This winter, President Lincoln's Cottage in Washington, D.C., exhibited "Create to Free Yourselves: Abraham Lincoln and the History of Freeing Slaves in America," an installation by Georges Adéagbo. In creating it, Adéagbo visited the Library's Manuscript Division to research Lincoln's words and handwriting. Born in Benin, educated in Cote I and France, Adéagbo works internationally. Here, he talks about how he created the Lincoln project.
Michael Stratmoen is a program specialist for the John W. Kluge Center. In this question-and-answer, he talks about growing up in D.C. and working with the Kluge Center's scholars and their projects.
The Library wrapped up its tribute to Joni Mitchell on a high note last week with a conversation between the 2023 Gershwin Prize winner and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. In an exchange punctuated by laughter and ending in song, Mitchell detailed her unexpected evolution as a musical pathbreaker. The article contains a link to a video of the conversation.