Thomas Edison, inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During Christmas 1880, strands of lights were strung outside his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory, giving railroad passengers traveling by their first look at an electrical light display. But it would take almost 40 years for electric […]
On a dark and windy morning on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, 114 years ago this Sunday, Orville Wright took flight in a tiny airplane he and his brother Wilbur had painstakingly constructed. The 605-pound craft flew all of 120 feet and remained airborne only 12 seconds. After Orville’s first success, Wilbur set the […]
This is a guest post by Margaret M. Wood, legal reference librarian in the Law Library. Two years ago, in honor of Constitution Day—celebrated annually on September 17—I wrote a post about the publication “Constitution of the United States: Analysis and Interpretation,” also referred to as the “Constitution Annotated.” Along with the U.S. Code, it […]
This is a guest post by Karen Keninger, director of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS). The NLS has a couple years of adventures ahead of it—adventures that sound chiefly technological but are really about meeting our patrons’ needs as reliably, easily and responsibly as possible. Technology is exciting in […]
(The following is from the November/December 2016 Library of Congress Magazine, LCM, and was written by Phil Michel, digital project coordinator in the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division.) A new, oversize scanner is putting the Library’s collection of panoramic photographs in focus. One of the great joys in looking at a panoramic photograph is finding small […]
(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.) Website Updates The Library’s new home page was released released last week, and you can read all about it in this excellent Library of Congress blog post. The Library’s Web Services team took advantage of the home page project […]
The Library of Congress launched its first website in 1994. Since that time we have digitized and made available millions of items from our collections and added new features to help you take advantage of all that the Library offers. During the past three years, the Library’s web team has been transitioning these vast online […]
(The following is an article in the September/October 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. The article was written by Fenella France, chief of the Library’s Preservation, Research and Testing Division.) Technological advancements have made it possible for the Library to put several rare maps on long-term display. Preserving and making the Library’s […]
(The following is a feature story in the September/October 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. The story is written by Ralph Ehrenburg, chief of the Library’s Geography and Map Division. You can read the issue in its entirety here.) Advances in technology continue to transform the ancient art and science of mapmaking. […]
As they say in the Twitterverse, ICYMI (In Case You Missed It), the Library of Congress has a new Librarian of Congress. And a new Twitter feed! Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will be taking to social media to post about her work at the Library and the discoveries she makes along the way. Make […]