Starting about two decades ago, the Library of Congress–under the direction of Librarian of Congress James Billington–began moving more ambitiously into the K-12 education space than it had previously. In 1990 the Library began a pilot program to distribute digital primary-source materials on CD-ROM to classrooms. The program, known as American Memory, has today blossomed …
If you’ve visited this blog before, you might be doing a double-take. The Web Services team here at the Library (who are doing some simply amazing things) has given the blog a fresher look and new functionality. First, there’s a cleaner, more aesthetic look to it, and I like how the collections are now highlighted …
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 …
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 …
The Library’s tech elves have been laboring away in their workshop to upgrade the user experience on our Chronicling America website. Over recent weeks, the Library of Congress has implemented changes to Chronicling America that improve and expand use of historic American newspapers digitized for the National Digital Newspaper Program, a joint project with the …
Longtime visitors to our home page (and we love LOC.gov groupies!) will notice a couple of new features today: First, we’re now highlighting the new World Digital Library partnership in our featured “marquee” at the top of the page. The WDL partnership among the Library, UNESCO and organizations and institutions around the world brings together …
A number of news outlets have been focusing on a statement by President Obama in support of the automobile industry in his State of the Union Address: “I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.” (One example is here.) A number of them are citing the Library of Congress as …
Before you watch the Stevie Wonder concert last night at the White House in celebration of the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song tonight on PBS (you will watch, won’t you?), you really need to see the celebrated artist kick it “classical style” in the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium. (The White House event was …
Are you or any of your DC friends looking to make last-minute plans tonight? How about attending the public opening of “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition” from 5 to 9 p.m. this evening? Details here, online exhibition here. Normal visitor hours resume tomorrow (Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) …