Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and News4 Today journalist Eun Yang discuss the 2021 Library of Congress National Book Festival: Open a Book, Open the World, which takes place in various formats from Sept. 17-26.
The Library’s collection of medieval manuscripts, many of them illustrated, show how the books were meant to be read and interacted with by readers of past centuries.
The Aeronautical Chart and Information Center of the U.S. Air Force created this photo-mosaic map of the moon in 1962, as part of the nation’s drive to put astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.
Venture Smith dictated his life story in 1798, making it the first slave narrative in the United States. The Library’s original copy is extremely rare. Smith’s story is also one of the very few narratives by enslaved people who could recount their early life in Africa.
A volunteer at the first Library of Congress National Book Festival on Sept. 8, 2001, remembers the event, held just three days prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
On International Literacy Day, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced the recipients of the 2021 Library of Congress Literacy Awards to organizations that promote literacy, including Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, Parents as Teachers, and the Luminos Fund. Fourteen additional organizations were also recognized.
John Y. Cole is the historian of the Library of Congress and the former director of the Library’s Center for the Book. He began working at the Library in 1966 and is retiring this month.
The 2021 National Book Festival will run online from Sept. 17-26, featuring more than 100 novelists, poets, non-fiction authors, chefs and lifestyle gurus.
In 1154, Arab Muslim geographer al-Idrisi, working at the behest of King Roger of Sicily, created a huge map of the known world. The map was more than 9 feet long and composed of 70 separate section maps. The Library preserves a 1928 recreation of this map.
Abraham Lincoln, with little formal education, studied a popular textbook, “English Grammar in Familiar Lectures” on his own while in his 20s. Through it, he gained a mastery of the language that would give the nation some of its most enduring speeches.