An earlier version of this interview, conducted by John Fenn of the American Folklife Center, was published on “Folklife Today,” the center’s blog. A little over a decade ago, Brooklyn-based musician and promoter Eli Smith merged his passion for folk music with the inspiration he gets from fellow New York City artists and created the […]
Original art is once again part of this year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival as the design for the 2018 festival poster is being unveiled this week. The illustration was created by Gaby D’Alessandro, 31, a Dominican illustrator based in New York City. The poster includes a whimsical hot air balloon carrying a young […]
This is a guest post by Brett Zongker of the Communications Office. Welcome to the blog series for “Baseball Americana,” a major new Library of Congress exhibition opening June 29. We’ll be publishing nine posts – one each Thursday – leading up to the opening, then we’ll feature posts about different topics related to the […]
This is a post by Cary O’Dell of the Library’s National Recording Preservation Board. It was first published on the blog of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, “Now See Hear!” For the past year or so, we have been inviting readers of our “Now See Hear!” blog to help us identify some super-obscure photos from […]
This is a guest post by Beverly Brannan, curator of photography; Adam Silvia, associate curator of photography; and Helena Zinkham, chief of the Prints and Photographs Division. It was first published on “Picture This,” the division’s blog. The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles has created a lively exhibition called “Not an Ostrich: And […]
President Emmanuel Macron of France and his wife, Brigitte Macron, viewed a display of Library treasures in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building on Wednesday; some of the materials they saw will be incorporated into a new bilingual website about French-American history. The Macrons’ visit coincided with an announcement by Librarian of Congress […]
The following is a guest post by Todd S. Purdum, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, a senior writer at Politico and author of “Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution,” published this month by Henry Holt. For more about Broadway, keep an eye out for “Brilliant Broadway,” the May–June issue of LCM, the Library […]
This is a guest post by Anne Holmes of the Poetry and Literature Center. As April winds down, our celebration of National Poetry Month at the Library of Congress is still going strong: Today we launch “From the Catbird Seat,” a new poetry podcast series from the Poetry and Literature Center. Each Thursday for the […]
This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division. The papers of Joseph Holt (1807–94), now available online, document his career as a lawyer, commissioner of patents, United States postmaster general, secretary of war and judge advocate general of the United States Army. Holt is best known for his service […]
Today, the Library of Congress celebrates its 218th birthday. On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved an appropriation of $5,000 for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of [C]ongress.” The first books purchased were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three […]