(The following is a guest post by Julie Miller, early American specialist in the Manuscript Division.) People who visit the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress often ask where our collections come from. Sometimes the answers are surprising. This is true for a journal kept in 1783 by a Revolutionary War veteran from Pennsylvania …
The Library of Congress celebrates its 214th birthday today. Founded on April 24, 1800, thanks to an appropriation approved by Pres. John Adams of $5,000 for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.” What started with a whopping 740 books and three maps has evolved to more than …
The idea was as big as the planet itself: Gather and digitize the globe’s cultural treasures, assemble them on one website and make them available to the world for free and in multiple languages. Such a project, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in proposing it, would bring people together by “celebrating the uniqueness …
(The following is a guest post by Barbara Bair, historian in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.) While life posed many setbacks for Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919), he proved himself a man who met challenges and seized his opportunities. When it came to the Spanish American War in 1898, Roosevelt carefully devised public acclaim as a …
This article, written by Susan Reyburn, writer-editor in the Publishing Office at the Library of Congress, is featured in the March-April 2014 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, now available for download here. You can also view the archives of the Library’s former publication from 1993 to 2011. As major league baseball prepared to …
March news headlines included a variety of stories about the Library of Congress. Of particular interest was a 10,000-item milestone – with the addition of a set of priceless manuscripts from the Walters Art Museum of Baltimore to the online Library-cosponsored World Digital Library, which now holds more than 10,000 items following its 2009 launch. …
Solomon Northup’s account of his kidnapping in Washington, D.C., sale to a plantation owner in Louisiana and subsequent escape was first published in 1853, the year he regained his freedom. The Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division holds an 1859 edition of “Twelve Years a Slave."
Persian first gained prominence a thousand years ago, a language of literature, poetry and folklore that connected people across vast stretches of Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The Library of Congress today opens “A Thousand Years of the Persian Book,” the first major U.S. exhibition to make such a wide-ranging study of the Persian language and literature. The landmark exhibition features 75 items drawn …
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits, A Poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on Female wits: If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, They’l say it’s stoln, or else it was by chance. – Anne Bradstreet, 1678 …