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Posted by: Erin Allen
Purchased through an act of Congress in 1867, the Peter Force Library became the foundation of the Library’s Americana collections. As the nation sought to reconstruct the Union after the Civil War, so, too, did the Library of Congress seek to build a collection that documented fully America’s history. At the time, the nearly 100,000 volumes …
Posted in: Civil War, Collections, History, Manuscripts, Maps, Newspapers
Posted by: Erin Allen
Today, you best get out your peg leg, eye patch and practice your “arrrr’s” … it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day! What started as a joke among a handful of friends in 1995 has become a widely recognized fun-for-the-sake-of-fun celebration, thanks in large part to a column written by Dave Barry in 2002. A …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Books, Collections, History, Manuscripts, Music, Today in History, Uncategorized
Posted by: Erin Allen
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Today we celebrate …
Posted in: Collections, Education, History, Law Library, Manuscripts, Today in History, Uncategorized
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a story written by Lindsey Hobbs of the Library’s Preservation Directorate for the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.) Pulp-fiction authors created some of the most enduring characters of any literary genre including Tarzan, detective Sam Spade, and the sword-wielding Zorro. The magazines that illustrated their exploits, unfortunately, haven’t fared as …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Manuscripts, Uncategorized
Posted by: Erin Allen
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” – Thomas Edison In August 1795, John Fitch not only demonstrated the first successful steamboat but was also granted a United States patent for his invention. A century later, on Aug. 12, 1877, Thomas Alva Edison is believed to have completed the model for …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Collections, Events, Film, History, Manuscripts, Technology, Uncategorized
Posted by: Erin Allen
(The following is a guest post by Guha Shankar, folklife specialist in the American Folklife Center and the Library’s Project Director of the Civil Rights History Project, a Congressionally mandated documentation initiative that is being carried out in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.) Dr. Martin Luther King’s …
Posted in: African American History, Audiovisual, Capitol Hill, Civil Rights, Collections, Events, Exhibitions, History, Manuscripts, Washington DC
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
Celebrants observing the 50thanniversary of the March on Washington should not miss special displays of artifacts, treasures and a talk by Congressman John Lewis on Wednesday, Aug. 28, all at the Library of Congress and all free and open to the public. Opening that day is the Library’s photo exhibition, “A Day Like No Other, …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Capitol Hill, Collections, Congress, Copyright, Curators, Education, Events, Exhibitions, History, Law Library, LC Web site, Manuscripts, Music, News, Photos, Thomas Jefferson Building, Uncategorized, Washington DC
Posted by: Jennifer Gavin
It’s a fair thing to say that classical music, and more specifically opera, is what brought me and my husband together. We met while working at The Denver Post, but our first date – seeing Verdi’s “Un Ballo in Maschera” at Opera Colorado – may have been a sort of test. He didn’t want to …
Posted in: Collections, Concerts, Education, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Music, Washington DC
Posted by: Erin Allen
News of Library of Congress acquisitions and initiatives led the headlines in July, with stories on the recent donation of the Lilli Vincenz papers and work of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation to preserve television. “History is written by the victors, but also by the scrapbookers, the collectors, the keepers, the pack rats. By those …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Collections, Education, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, News, Newspapers