Have you left your holiday shopping to the last minute? Hoping you can find that perfect gift just minutes before the stores close? Well, it turns out shopping on Christmas Eve – and fighting the crowds to do it – is nothing new, if this photograph from December 24, 1920 is any indication: Several things …
Every December, the Geminid Meteor Shower fills the evening sky with shooting stars (meteors). The first step to enjoying the shower, which will peak the evening of December 13 and into the morning of the 14th, is to locate the constellation of Gemini in the night sky, as the meteors will appear to radiate from …
In a career spanning forty-six years, Jack E. Boucher traveled through forty-nine states and two U.S. territories to photograph for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and its sister projects, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). Boucher passed away recently, so I asked colleagues here to share stories …
Still trying to decide about your costume for Halloween? Torn between a witch or a princess? An astronaut or a librarian? (Surely someone out there was going to dress as a librarian?) Throw out all those ideas because I have the solution! Amaze your friends and family by arriving at your Halloween festivities (or even …
Fishbowls, Whittling, Email, and Ice cream parlors. What could those four terms possibly have in common? It turns out they are all recent additions to the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM). Which naturally leads to the question: What is the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials? Briefly, TGM is a tool for indexing visual materials, both by …
Earlier this month, New York City’s catwalks were filled with the latest creations from the world of fashion during the biannual ritual of Fashion Week. At the same time, I was searching in the George Grantham Bain Collection while answering a reference question and came across this stylish photograph. How could I resist stopping to …
Reading the caption for a photograph can sometimes change every assumption made at first glance. One word in the title of this photograph shifted my entire view, and definitely caught my eye. Look at the image yourself, and then read the full title as it was written on the back of this stereograph card. The …
Even those of you who don’t feel as strongly about your morning cup of joe as I do can understand why this photograph would catch my eye! Just imagine the thousands of cups of coffee it could hold! The Bedford Coffee Pot no longer dishes out coffee along the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania, but it …
I love the Olympics. I love the competition, the ceremonies, the sportsmanship. My earliest personal experience with a festival of games was on a pretty small scale: the annual Field Day in grade school. My favorite event wasn’t the water balloon toss or the three-legged race. It was the ultimate battle between classes, Tug of …