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Category: Researcher Stories

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Talking Textiles: Marvels of Pre-Columbian America

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Rosemary Ryan, an archaeological research fellow at the Library. She is a student at Towson University specializing in forensic anthropology and archaeology. Her research at the Library supports the “Exploring the Early Americas” exhibit and the Jay I. Kislak Collection, made up of more than 3,000 items related to …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Leonard Bernstein Centennial: My Father, Leonard Bernstein

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

To mark the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth—he was born on August 25, 1918—we’re republishing a column by his daughter Jamie Bernstein from the May–June issue of LCM, the Library of Congress Magazine, in which she reflects on her famous dad’s legacy and on the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress. Issues of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Olmsted Holdings Offer Blueprint for Preserving Historical Landscapes

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Landscape historian Arleyn Levee first visited the Library’s Manuscript Reading Room in the early 1980s to consult the records of Frederick Law Olmsted and his firm. A 19th-century pioneer who developed the field of American landscape architecture, Olmsted shaped many notable sites throughout his career – New York’s Central Park, the U.S. Capitol grounds, the …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

My Job at the Library: Researching African-American Genealogy

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Ahmed Johnson is a local history and genealogy reference librarian in the Library’s Main Reading Room and a specialist in African-American history. A bibliography he created, “African-American Family Histories and Related Works in the Library of Congress,” guides Library researchers seeking to understand their families’ stories to printed and digital sources at the Library. Here …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Exploring the Culture of Jazz Through Music and More

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Robert O’Meally spent two weeks in residence at the Library of Congress earlier this year researching all things jazz. He is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and an authority on Ralph Ellison and African-American literature. He is also an internationally recognized scholar of jazz and founder of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Decoding the Design of America’s Libraries

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

For more than two centuries, American library architecture aspired to accommodate the physical dimensions of books and the furniture and spaces designed to store and display them. “American Libraries 1730–1950”—a new book by Kenneth Breisch—celebrates the history of that architecture, from classical temples to ivy-covered campus citadels to modern glass boxes—whose roofs now house more …