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Posted by: Neely Tucker
One of the largest maps in the Library is the Tokaido bunken-ezu, a 117-foot, 17th-century Japanese map painted on two scrolls. It shows, in pen-and-ink detail, the rivers, mountains, forests and towns on the 319-mile route from Edo (now known as Tokyo) to Kyoto.
Posted in: Asian Division, Geography and Maps Division, LCM, Maps
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library's 2023 Innovator in Residence, Jeffrey Yoo Warren, is building another doorway to the past with his project, "Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational Reconstructions of Erased Historic Neighborhoods of Color." Using 3D modeling techniques and insights from the collections, Yoo Warren is developing a virtual reconstruction of the once-bustling Chinatown district in Providence, Rhode Island. A vibrant enclave 100 years ago, the Chinatown of Providence largely has been erased from historical memory.
Posted in: Asian American, Asian American History, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Maps, Technology
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Theft, fraud, harassment, withholding of payment — courts around the world hear these charges all the time. Yet, they’re far from modern. The Library’s newly acquired San Salvador Huejotzingo Codex, for example, documents a legal proceeding from 1571 in which Indigenous Nahuatl officials in central Mexico accused their village’s Spanish administrator of these very same …
Posted in: Geography and Maps Division, Hispanic and Latino, Manuscripts, Maps, Native Americans
Posted by: Brett Zongker
The Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums has presented one of its most significant awards to the Library and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo for “Living Nations, Living Words,” Harjo’s signature project during her 2019 to 2022 term. Harjo, the first Native American to hold the nation’s poet laureate position, was honored with …
Posted in: Geography and Maps Division, Library Work and Employees, Maps, Native Americans, Poetry, U.S. Poet Laureate, Women's History, Writers
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Ida B. Wells was 30 years old in 1892, living in Memphis and working as a newspaper editor, when a mob lynched one of her friends. Distraught, the pioneering journalist set out to document the stories of lynching victims and disprove a commonly asserted justification — that the murders were a response to rape. Wells’ …
Posted in: African American History, Congress, Education, Geography and Maps Division, Junior Fellows Program, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Maps, Technology
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library of Congress is now home to a huge collection of nearly 100 pocket globes -- miniature globes that were fashionable art objects from the 17th to 19th centuries, during the age of exploration. The globes, perhaps three inches in diameter, were made of everything from ivory to papier mache, some housed in expensive sharkskin boxes. The family and foundation of the late Jay I. Kislak donated 74 pocket globes to the Library recently, adding to the collector's prodigious donations to the Library's Geography and Map Division.
Posted in: Collections, Curators, Geography and Maps Division, Jay I. Kislak Collection, Maps
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Library collections on Ukraine stretches back for centuries, including current news and analysis from the Congressional Research Service and one of the first maps that used Ukraine in its name in 1648.
Posted by: Neely Tucker
The Aeronautical Chart and Information Center of the U.S. Air Force created this photo-mosaic map of the moon in 1962, as part of the nation's drive to put astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.
Posted in: Geography and Maps Division, Maps, Science
Posted by: Neely Tucker
In 1154, Arab Muslim geographer al-Idrisi, working at the behest of King Roger of Sicily, created a huge map of the known world. The map was more than 9 feet long and composed of 70 separate section maps. The Library preserves a 1928 recreation of this map.
Posted in: Geography and Maps Division, LCM, Maps