Here’s a roundup of what’s been going on in the Library of Congress blogosphere in June. In the Muse: Performing Arts Blog “How to Find Your Snooky Ookums: A Guide to the Irving Berlin Collection” Pat Padua presents a guide to the Irving Berlin Collection. The Signal: Digital Preservation “Every Format on the Face of …
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Ask a Librarian reference service. Through the service, users from around the world can submit online reference questions to the Library and receive responses from Library staff. On average, the reference staff receives more than 58,000 inquiries per year. In 2011, more than 62,000 inquiries were received …
In conjunction with the Monday launch of an exhibition at the Library of Congress titled “Books That Shaped America” as part of its overarching Celebration of the Book, the Library of Congress is making public a list of 88 books by Americans that, it can be argued, shaped the nation over its lifetime. It’s not …
When it comes to priceless art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has quite a bit, including a trove of Raphaels. But the Library of Congress (on its National Book Festival site, now live at www.loc.gov/bookfest) has a new Rafael López National Book Festival poster for 2012 that’s priceless, too – because you …
In addition to the Library of Congress blog that you’re reading right now, the institution has brought several other blogs into the fold. And, let me tell you, they are writing about some great things. From time to time, I hope to give a shout out to these blogs and direct your attention to what …
Two hundred years ago today, President James Madison set pen to paper to write a message to Congress. His intent was to talk them into making the nation’s first formal declaration of war – on Great Britain, which was squashing U.S. exports as a side effect of a British naval blockade against Napoleon’s France. But …
The following is a guest post from Audrey Fischer of the Library’s Public Affairs Office. While others critique the nation’s schools’ effectiveness in teaching the three Rs—reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic—actor and activist Richard Dreyfuss is on a crusade to teach the fourth R—republican democracy. His cause célèbre is the restoration of civics education, to ensure …
Here’s what you book fiends have been waiting for – the author lineup for the 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sept. 22 and 23 on the National Mall. Authors will include towering American novelist Philip Roth and Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa; the irrepressible T.C. Boyle (some of you know him as T. …
Last Thursday, the Library of Congress opened its newest exhibition, “To Know Wisdom and Instruction: The Armenian Literary Tradition at the Library of Congress,” and I had a chance to take a tour with its curator, Levon Avdoyan, the Library’s Armenian and Georgian area specialist in the Near East Section of the African and Middle …