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Posted by: Matt Raymond
A forlorn-looking girl in a mourning dress holds a picture of her late father. An impossibly young soldier, probably prepubescent, stands at attention with his bayoneted musket. An African-American in Union uniform sits stoically with his wife and two daughters. A pair of uniformed comrades pose comically, each holding a cigar in the other’s mouth. …
Posted in: Civil War, Collections, Events, Exhibitions, History, LC Web site, Photos
Posted by: Matt Raymond
The Gateway to Knowledge truck pulled up at about 4:45 p.m. and is now preparing to park on the National Mall for the big day. How exciting! The cab, both dark and gleaming at the same time, the picture-perfect blue sky in the background … As I saw the rig parked in front of the …
Posted in: Capitol Hill, Photos, Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington DC
Posted by: Matt Raymond
My colleague Erin Allen wrote the following for the Library’s in-house letter, The Gazette, and I thought it worth sharing with a wider audience: Among comic-book aficionados, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham (1895–1981) is considered as much of a villain as those he assailed in the crime and horror comics he criticized. However, Wertham was more than …
Posted in: Collections, History, Libraries, Manuscripts, Photos
Posted by: Matt Raymond
The history of our nation — from the earliest settlers through the present day — is a story of ambition and resilience, a story of human ingenuity conquering the impossible. In its new epic series “America The Story of Us,” which premieres Sunday night (April 25) at 9 p.m. EDT, HISTORY will retell the extraordinary …
Posted in: Audiovisual, Collections, Events, History, Photos, Video
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Quite often I have to “sit on” very exciting news here until all the details are put into place, and whatever we’re going to announce is ready for prime-time. Such is the case with the new version of our Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC, pronounced “P-pock”), which has launched within the past few days. …
Posted in: Cataloging, Collections, Curators, History, LC Web site, News, Photos, Social Media, Technology
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Most musicians probably would be satisfied during a performance with a single standing ovation. But at a rousing concert Tuesday in the Coolidge Auditorium, the crowd leapt to their feet in applause no less than four times for a half dozen of country music’s most popular and influential stars—and even surprise “guest performer” Librarian of …
Posted by: Matt Raymond
In 1867, the American West was still very much wild. It was into that new frontier that a young photographer named Timothy O’Sullivan ventured to provide a visual record of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, led by Clarence King. As much a PR effort to encourage settlement of the West as it was …
Posted in: Books, Collections, Curators, Exhibitions, History, Photos
Posted by: Matt Raymond
The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division has added 116 photocrom travel views of the Netherlands from 100 years ago to our Flickr page, bringing the total number of photochroms on Flickr to 773. Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the …
Posted in: Collections, Curators, History, LC Web site, Photos, Social Media
Posted by: Matt Raymond
Media consumers today are bombarded with imagery of current events — some of them ephemeral, on our TV screens, and some more indelible. A century ago, the use of halftone images was beginning to revolutionize newspapers and bringing the immediacy of photography to the masses. Today the Library launched a new photostream on our Flickr …
Posted in: Collections, History, LC Web site, News, Photos, Social Media