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Posted by: Neely Tucker
Ryan Semmes, an associate professor at Mississippi State University and archivist at the university's Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, is researching Grant's presidential policies at the Library of Congress.
Posted in: Civil War, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The LIbrary's Rare Persian Manuscript Collection is now online after a four-year digitization project, anchored by three gorgeous manuscript copies of The Shahnamah, or the Persian Book of Kings, a 1,000-year-old epic that is the foundation for the modern language.
Posted in: Events, Manuscripts
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Library's Manuscript Division, reveals how she resolved a literary mystery in the online diaries of Clara Barton.
Posted in: History, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories, Women's History
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Roberto Valturio, an Italian engineer, included an illustration of a dragon war machine in his "De re militari," ("On military matters"), an influential military manual in the 15th Century.
Posted in: History, Manuscripts
Posted by: Neely Tucker
A never-seen-before collection of letters from Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz offers new insight into the couple's art, marriage and ambitions during an eighteen-year span in which they were primary shapers of American Modernism. The letters were sent, independently of one another, to their mutual friend, filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz, with whom O'Keeffe seemed especially close. The Library acquired them from a private collection. This is the first time they have been available to the public.
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, Photos, Women's History
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
For years now, Saundra Rose Maley has encouraged her English composition students at Montgomery College in Montgomery County, Maryland, to think of themselves as detectives. The setting for their investigations: the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Their task: to scout out primary sources for novel or surprising details about historical figures and write …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, Researcher Stories, Women's History
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
For going on a decade now, theater historian Ben West has been making regular trips from his home in New York City to the Library of Congress. His mission? To cull through unpublished manuscripts, personal papers of Broadway authors, copyright drama submissions and more to tell the story of the American musical. Last September, West’s …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, Music, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Carla D. Hayden
Asking intriguing questions can be a great way to encourage research and creative thinking. The answer to this particular question was at first disappointing. Two experts, a historian and a rare book librarian, both said that although Galileo wrote “The Starry Messenger,” he did not himself own the copy of the book now in the …
Posted in: Books, Manuscripts, Rare Book of the Month
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
This is a guest post by Sylvia Albro, a senior paper conservator in the Conservation Division. Earlier this month, the Library released online the Omar Ibn Said Collection, including Ibn Said’s autobiography, the only known extant autobiography written in Arabic by an enslaved person in the United States. A wealthy and educated man, Ibn Said …
Posted in: Collections, Manuscripts, New Online, Preservation