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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 …
(Guest post by Michelle Springer, Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives) Jan. 16 is the two-year anniversary of the launch of the Library’s account on Flickr, the photosharing website. We started with approximately 3,100 photos in our account; today 30 additional archives, libraries, and museums from the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, the …
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 …
(Ed. note: This post comes to us from Phil Michel, Digital Conversion Coordinator for the Prints & Photographs Division, and one of the authors of the new book Baseball Americana.) While the baseball season winds down and the excitement of another World Series chase begins, we’re celebrating the national pastime with a new book, Baseball …
There’s nothing quite like the sound of a fighter aircraft, overhead. It can be thrilling — at an airshow, for example. It can also be reassuring — the way it was, for many, in the early morning hours over the Washington, D.C. area for months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The Library …