"A Christmas Memory," Truman Capote's bittersweet short story about his small-town Alabama childhood with his eccentric elderly cousin, has been one of the nation's most beloved tales in the holiday canon since it was first published in 1956. The Library has Capote's handwritten draft of the story, which reveals much about the young Capote.
Unfolding History: Manuscripts at the Library of Congress is a new blog that aims to offer a wider window into the Manuscript Division. Our historians, archivists, and reference librarians will share stories about exciting new discoveries and items that catch their eye.
The Library's collection of medieval manuscripts, many of them illustrated, show how the books were meant to be read and interacted with by readers of past centuries.
The Great American Road Trip -- traveling the highways and backroads of the nation -- has been a national tradition since the invention of the automobile.
All 23 sets of presidential papers held by the Library, a total of more than 3.3 million images, now are available and searchable online, an accomplishment more than two decades in the making.
This intriguing look into the medical practices of Europe some 600 years ago was written by Andrew Gaudio, a reference librarian in the Researcher and Reference Services Division. As the world grapples with containing the COVID-19 pandemic with a range of vaccines, each with varying rates of effectiveness, it’s worth remembering that cure-alls for deadly …
The Library is collaborating with the international initiative Fragmentarium.ms to help pioneer digital fragmentology, piecing together long-ago manuscripts that were torn apart or had fallen into pieces over the centuries.
Fragmentarium is building an international community around the ability to identify, search, compare, and collect data on medieval manuscript fragments. What does that mean? For one, it means that libraries across the world can work together to create complete virtual reconstructions of Ege’s manuscripts. O
Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered as the Civil War was in its final weeks, was one of most important in American history, featuring the immortal line, "With malice toward none, with charity for all." Michelle Krowl, the Library's Civil War and Reconstruction historian, explains how the day unfolded in this short video.
Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, uses George Washington’s 1789 copy of “Acts Passed at the First Congress of the United States of America,” which includes the U.S. Constitution, to tell a short story on how the presidential oath of office has been unchanged since the founding of the nation. It’s the same oath that …