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Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Kelsey Beeghly, a science curriculum and assessment coordinator from Orlando, Florida, was the Library’s 2023–24 Albert Einstein distinguished educator fellow. Here, she talks about some of her discoveries at the Library and suggestions for STEM teachers.
Posted in: Blogging, Education, Gazette, Library Work and Employees, Preservation and Conservation, Researcher Stories, Science
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Cormac Ó hAodha, a resident fellow in the John W. Kluge Center, is taking a deep dive into the Library's Alan Lomax Collection. Lomax, a major figure in 20th-century folklore and ethnomusicology, made field recordings in the Múscraí region of County Cork, Ireland, in the early 1950s. Ó hAodha is using those recordings as part of his Ph. D studies at the University College Cork into the history of the Múscraí song tradition.
Posted in: American Folklife Center, Gazette, Kluge Center, Library Work and Employees, Lomax Collection, Music, Performing Arts, Preservation, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
When reference librarian Clinton Drake was going through an ancestor's grocery store account book from nearly a century ago, he came across a startling purchase: "blood." It led to research into the foodways of a bygone era of immigrants from northern Europe.
Posted in: Library Work and Employees, Researcher Stories, Writers
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Margaret Virginia “Maggie” Thompson spent most of her life in tiny Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, more than a century ago. When a Library genealogist came across Thompson's long-lost scrapbook recently, she set out to solve a mystery: Who were the other people pictured in her scrapbook?
Posted in: Civil War, Genealogy, Library Work and Employees, Music, My Job, Researcher Stories, Women's History
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
As the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 5, 1933, a truck full of beer departed Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis. KMOX CBS Radio excitedly broadcast the event to the nation -- Prohibition had ended. Beer was on en route to the White House. This slice of history is just one example of thousands of broadcasts that the Library's Radio Preservation Task Force have brought to light in archives across the country since its launch in December 2014.
Posted in: Congress, Gazette, Library Work and Employees, Preservation, Preservation and Conservation, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Wendi Maloney
Christopher Oakley, a prominent film animator turned university historian, used his knowledge of computer modeling -- and his research at the LIbrary of Congress -- to help solve a small but important mystery: Where exactly did Lincoln stand while delivering his famed Gettysburg Address?
Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Gazette, Library Work and Employees, Researcher Stories, Today in History, U.S. Presidents
Posted by: Neely Tucker
One of the LIbrary's genealogy specialists was struck by reading the elaborate inscription on a 19th-century cemetery marker in her hometown. It spurred deep research and an extensive Library research guide into the 1870 sinking of the USS Oneida, costing the lives of 115 sailors, including the young man whose memorial caused her to pause: John Phelan. This is his story.
Posted in: Civil War, Genealogy, Library Work and Employees, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
Mari Nakahara, director of the Library's Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering, chooses favorite collection items related to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. These include the original 1981 drawings submitted by the winning designer, Maya Lin, then a 21-year-old student at the Yale School of Architecture.
Posted in: Library Work and Employees, My Job, Researcher Stories
Posted by: Neely Tucker
George Chauncey is the DeWitt Clinton professor of history at Columbia University and the 2022 recipient of the Library’s John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity. He wrote this piece about how he used libraries to research his landmark book, “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940."
Posted in: Kluge Center, LCM, LGBTQ, Libraries, Library Work and Employees, Researcher Stories, Writers