This year’s selections for the National Recording Registry were announced today — the ninth annual addition to a list now totaling 325 recordings deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant and worthy of preservation for all time. According to the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian of Congress – with input from the Library’s …
Butch Lazorchak of the Library’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program brings us this guest post on the Library’s involvement in one of the most important conferences for the creative and technology communities: The South By Southwest Conference, being held in Austin, Texas, March 11-20, 2011, has rapidly become one of the most influential …
The following is a guest post by Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image Section of the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound Division. You might already have seen news about this fascinating discovery of scores of old British TV broadcasts, but we wanted you to know the full story about just how the programs …
There are many avenues of research at the Library of Congress. Some are a laugh riot! Take, for example, the vast collections of cartoons and caricature in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. For more than a century, the Library has collected pictorial humor – collections that range from a lifetime’s worth of cartoons by …
Tim Daly gingerly wound his way up a narrow spiral staircase to a low-ceilinged, vaulted alcove overlooking the ornate Ceremonial Office of the Librarian of Congress. Surveying the VIPs on the crowded floor below–members of Congress, Hollywood A-listers, Library leadership–he pulled out a digital camera to capture the celebratory moment. Then he paused. “I wonder …
(UPDATE: Here’s a December 2017 status report on our work with the Twitter archives.) (UPDATE: Here’s a January 2013 status report on our work with the Twitter archives.) Twitter’s gift (link is PDF) to the Library of Congress of its entire archive of public tweets, announced two weeks ago today, sure has stoked the public’s interest. …
Audrey Fischer of the Library’s Public Affairs Office offers this guest blog item for Saturday: April 24 marks the Library’s 210th anniversary. Let it be said that the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution keeps getting better with age. In 2000, the Library of Congress celebrated its bicentennial. That same year it embarked on a mission …
Ever wonder what goes on before an exhibition is mounted and displayed? My colleague Donna Urschel takes an in-depth look at the preservation steps that were required for the Library’s “Herblock!” exhibition, on display through May 1: Preserving ‘Herblock’ a Rewarding Job for Conservators by Donna Urschel Shortly after the famous Washington Post political cartoonist …
(The following is a guest article about new preservation capabilities at the LOC by my colleague Donna Urschel, which was recently published in the the Library’s staff newsletter, the Gazette.) For many decades, details of the 1791 Pierre L’Enfant Plan of Washington, D.C.—one of the many treasures at the Library of Congress—had been obscured. A …