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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Jeffrey Lofton is senior adviser to the Library’s chief human capital officer. Tell us about your background. I hail from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Little White House and ubiquitous red claylike soil. I attended LaGrange College and studied the more-useful-than-I-imagined triad: speech, communications and theater. Later, I …
Posted in: Library Work and Employees, My Job
Posted by: Neely Tucker
This is a guest post by Hannah Freece, a writer-editor in the Library’s Publishing Office. “I broke par in Bingston.” With this enigmatic statement, private eye Toussaint Moore opens “Room to Swing,” Ed Lacy’s Edgar Award–winning 1957 novel, the newest addition to the Library of Congress Crime Classics series. It’s the hard-hitting story of a …
Posted in: African American History, Jewish American History, Library of Congress Crime Classics, Library Work and Employees, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Julie Centofanti, a biology student at Youngstown State University, started a club at her university in 2020 to transcribe historical documents included in the Library’s By the People project. A longer version of this interview appears on the Signal blog. How did you find out about By the People? I’m a member of the Youngstown …
Posted in: By the People, Library Work and Employees, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
George Chauncey took to the stage in the Library’s Great Hall last Wednesday night to formally accept the 2022 Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. It was a black tie event that had an emotional undercurrent that belied both the formal wear of the crowd and the formal nature of academic dinners. …
Posted in: Kluge Center, LGBTQ, Library Work and Employees, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
This is a guest post by Giselle Aviles, a reference librarian in the Hispanic Reading Room of the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division. The Hispanic Reading Room has a new research guide, Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections. This guide, with resources in English, Spanish and Quechua, facilitates research …
Posted in: Education, Hispanic and Latino, Hispanic Division, Library Work and Employees, Native Americans
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden today announced that Ada Limon will serve as the nation's 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2022-2023. She is the author of six poetry collections and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Posted in: Hispanic and Latino, Library Work and Employees, Poetry, U.S. Poet Laureate, Women's History, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The latest Library of Congress Crime Classic, “Average Jones,” is by Samuel Hopkins Adams, a popular and prolific journalist and novelist in the early 20th century whose works were often turned into popular films. These included "It Happened One Night."
Posted in: Library of Congress Crime Classics, Library Work and Employees, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library preserves some of the papers of Sultan Ibrahim Njoya, the visionary leader of the Bamum kingdom in modern-day Cameroon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Njoya's royal family had ruled their region of the grasslands for hundreds of years. Under pressure from the colonial powers of Germany and then France, he created the first map of the kingdom, a language, an alphabet and a religion. He was a renowed patron of the arts, encouraging teachers, sculptors and artisans.
Posted in: African and Middle Eastern Division, Geography and Maps Division, Library Work and Employees
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library’s acclaimed Crime Classic series is launching a new edition of “The Conjure-Man Dies” this month, a staple of the Harlem Renaissance and the most important work of long-overlooked novelist Rudolph Fisher. First published in 1932, the book was the first full-length mystery novel to feature an all-Black cast of characters, including detectives, suspects and victims.
Posted in: African American History, Books, Library Work and Employees, Theater, Writers