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Posted by: Josh Levy
A marble case in the Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building once held the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. This blog describes that “shrine,” from its opening in 1924 to its closing ceremony in 1952.
Posted in: Early America, Library of Congress History
Posted by: Josh Levy
Join us on June 16 for a conversation with authors Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton about their new biography of celebrated astronomer Vera Rubin.
Posted in: Science and Technology, Women's & Gender History
Posted by: Josh Levy
This is a guest post by Cheryl Fox, Library of Congress Archives and Library History Collections Specialist in the Manuscript Division. Congress began in 1873 to plan a separate building for the Library of Congress, which had outgrown its space in the U.S. Capitol Building. It took more than sixteen years to decide on the …
Posted in: Library of Congress History
Posted by: Josh Levy
Before the modern textbook, Western school-age children learned mathematical concepts through what was called the "cyphering tradition" and created textbooks of their very own. The volumes in the recently processed Ellerton-Clements Cyphering Book Collection will certainly be of interest to those who study math and early modern education, but many also possess a unique kind of artistry.
Posted in: Early America, Science and Technology
Posted by: Josh Levy
Walt Whitman's handwritten draft of An American Primer reveals the poet not only as a prolific writer of words, but as a philosophizer of them as well.
Posted in: Intern Spotlight, Literature Culture & the Arts
Posted by: Josh Levy
The first man hanged in Washington, D.C., was an Irishman. His trial provides a unique lens on the early republic and its nascent national capital. The case drew national attention, particularly among Federalist newspaper editors, who used it to expose the threat of Irish immigrants and their hold over the sitting U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson.
Posted in: Early America, Holidays, Politics
Posted by: Josh Levy
A new crowdsourcing transcription campaign launched in celebration of Women’s History Month by the Library of Congress By the People program is now complete. It features letters written by acclaimed painter Georgia O’Keeffe and her husband, the photographer, fine arts impresario, and gallery manager Alfred Stieglitz to their mutual friend, filmmaker Henwar Rodakiewicz.
Posted in: Digital Collections, Literature Culture & the Arts, Women's & Gender History
Posted by: Josh Levy
In the late 1960s, Barry Commoner and the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems became involved in an ambitious, federally funded effort to understand the ecology of the sewer rat, and then kill it. That project’s failure at a moment of heightened political radicalism reveals how the rat-human relationship can highlight histories of economic injustice. With a major reprocessing of the Barry Commoner Papers now complete, those stories, and more, emerge with far greater clarity.
Posted in: International History, Science and Technology
Posted by: Josh Levy
Join us for a conversation between Kluge Staff Fellow and historian Julie Miller and historian Bruce Ragsdale, whose recent book on George Washington explores the first president's relationship with farming and slavery and draws on the George Washington Papers held by the Manuscript Division.
Posted in: Early America, Events, Politics