A couple of special program notes: we’re postponing Thursday’s scheduled “Verdi and the Silent Film” program and replacing it with the 1982 film version of La Traviata starring Plácido Domingo. And on Saturday we’ll be joined by filmmakers Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright as they talk about their documentary The 78 Project. Thursday, November […]
This week’s recorded sound update is a guest post by Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. Mark Twain was known to have made recordings on three occasions; unfortunately none of them are known to have survived. The earliest recording was made by Thomas Edison in 1888. In 1891, the author himself […]
What follows is a guest post by Carla Arton and Harrison Behl, processing technicians in the Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress In May 2013, the staff-led Packard Campus Institute (PCI) hosted a presentation on the National Jukebox by Gene DeAnna, Head of the Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress. In his presentation, Gene showcases […]
This is a guest post by Janet McKee, Recorded Sound Reference Librarian in the Library’s Recorded Sound Section. Repeatedly over the years a recording purporting to be the voice of Walt Whitman has surfaced. Sadly, it has long been the opinion of the reference staff at the Library of Congress that the recording, like […]
This guest post was written by Dan Streible, Director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University, and James Irsay, host of “Morning Irsay” on WBAI-FM in New York City. Dan Streible: While chopping down trees in Kentucky recently, I was enjoying the benefits of twenty-first century living, listening to music […]
In the United States, the first Monday of September is the holiday celebrating American workers. Labor Day became a legal holiday in 1894 and while it has morphed into a day of shopping, picnics, speeches and sadly, summer’s farewell, the true meaning of the day, celebrating the American worker, should not be forgotten. In its […]
The following is a guest post by Matt Barton, Recorded Sound Curator, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center This Monday marked the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I. Songs relating to World War I are very well documented in the Library’s National Jukebox, which provides over 10,000 78-rpm discs recorded in the 1920s and before. For […]
As Mike Mashon mentioned in his recent blog post, Tales of the Unexpected, you never know what you’ll find in the Library’s collections. While the Library has great interviews of musicians, as found in the Joe Smith Collection, the Studs Terkel Collection contains interviews of musicians and performers that are particularly fascinating and revealing. Since […]
The following is a guest post from Carla Arton, a Processing Technician in the Recorded Sound Section. Here at the Packard Campus of the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, we not only pride ourselves on providing excellent reference and preservation services for our collections, our staff also actively participates in ongoing professional development. In addition […]
I recently returned from visiting Nashville, Tennessee, and while there visited the Ryman Auditorium. Being a fan of country music, I knew the Ryman was called “the Mother Church of Country Music,” and was the home for many years of the radio program The Grand Ole Opry, but I was very surprised to learn about […]