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Posted by: Matt Raymond
The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division has added 116 photocrom travel views of the Netherlands from 100 years ago to our Flickr page, bringing the total number of photochroms on Flickr to 773. Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, History, LC Web site, Photos, Social Media
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
(Ed. note: This post comes to us from Phil Michel, Digital Conversion Coordinator for the Prints & Photographs Division, and one of the authors of the new book Baseball Americana.) While the baseball season winds down and the excitement of another World Series chase begins, we’re celebrating the national pastime with a new book, Baseball …
Posted in: Collections, History, Photos, Preservation, Social Media
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
In a world where we can keep tabs on our own backyards from our desks at work, via satellite, it’s difficult to imagine the impact one man armed with notebooks and pencils could have in 1861 as the Civil War began to rend our young nation. Generals on both sides of that conflict desperately needed good topographical information …
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Collections, Exhibitions, History, Maps
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
With all the various reading rooms available at the Library, did you know there is one with a reference alcove dedicated to business? The 5th floor of the John Adams Building on Capitol Hill, home to the Science & Business Reading Room, has a staff of business reference specialists to assist with your business-related questions …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Collections, History, LC Web site, Science, Technology, Washington DC
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
From time to time, we ask ourselves: Where is the outrage? Well, for an amazing 72 years, it was on editorial pages, especially that of the Washington Post–in political commentary by the influential cartoonist Herblock (Herb Block), who made presidents and other public figures, from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush, ink-stained and wretched. The Library …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Collections, Exhibitions, History, New Visitors Experience, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
Posted by: Matt Raymond
You know how some of the best jobs are the ones where you learn something new every day? I definitely have one of those. I was watching a new episode of History Detectives last night on PBS (one of the few shows to which I am hopelessly addicted). Tukufu Zuberi did a segment about a …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, History, Manuscripts, Preservation
Posted by: Matt Raymond
It’s sometimes said that if you want a really steady income, become an undertaker. There’s no doubt right now that times are tough all over. The news media is among the industries that have been hit especially hard–in this case, by factors including changing technology and news-consumption habits, but also by lower ad revenues from …
Posted in: Books, History, LC Web site, News
Posted by: Matt Raymond
My capacity for metaphors is somewhat limited, so forgive me if I repeat a word I tweeted recently (“tweet-peat”?): Yesterday the Library and the NEH held a news conference celebrating the “odometer” of the Chronicling America program’s surpassing 1 million digitized pages from historic newspapers. Seven new partner states have been added, bringing the total …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, News
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Media consumers today are bombarded with imagery of current events — some of them ephemeral, on our TV screens, and some more indelible. A century ago, the use of halftone images was beginning to revolutionize newspapers and bringing the immediacy of photography to the masses. Today the Library launched a new photostream on our Flickr …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, News, Photos, Social Media