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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we’d be playing a game called “What’s My Title?” at the National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). I can testify that it was wildly successful–and great fun. Hundreds of people stopped by to look at the five popular photographs we mounted on a wall, and many accepted the …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The Prints & Photographs Division will be on hand at this weekend’s National Book Festival (Sept. 22-23). If you’re planning on attending, please look for us in the LC Pavilion. Our focus will be “reading photographs,” and we’re inviting visitors to participate in a photo captioning game called “What’s My Title?” We’ll be displaying a …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
On Saturday July 28, the Library hosted its first Photography Meetup in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building. We invited photography enthusiasts to come and take part in a scavenger hunt guided by a selection of photographs Carol M. Highsmith made for the Library of Congress. The Meetup was a real success, and …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Our online collections support many a research project, but contact with physical photographs and graphic items can be eye-opening and reveal new avenues for investigation. Kya Mangrum, a doctoral candidate in English Language and Literature at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, recently spent several days in the Prints and Photographs Reading Room exploring images of …
Posted in: African American History, News & Events, Photographs, Researcher Stories, Visual literacy
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that, in addition to marking the 150th anniversary of key developments in the U.S. Civil War, we are now looking back at an even earlier conflict as the War of 1812 bicentennial launches. Two hundred years to the day have passed since the United States declared war on …
Posted in: Cartoons, Drawings, News & Events, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
This year we’re marking anniversaries of key events in two wars: the U.S. Civil War and the War of 1812 (about which, stay tuned!). At the risk of seeming to be focused on conflict, we’re also looking ahead to the anniversary of what H.G. Wells dubbed “The War That Will End War.” As it turned …
Posted in: News & Events, Photographs, Posters, Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
We are still savoring the comments visitors to the National Book Festival offered last fall while viewing sample photographs from our collections. This visitor’s comments seem particularly apt as we continue to celebrate Women’s History Month. The commenter recognized the well-known subject of the photograph, educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune served …
Posted in: African American History, News & Events, Photographs
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Researchers come to their topics in many ways. Some set out to test a theory, to revise the assertions of others, or to explore people, places, events or issues from new angles. For others, topics surface from the primary sources themselves. One of my favorite stories in this regard is historian David McCullough’s account of …
Posted in: News & Events
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Four years ago today we embarked on an experiment to post photographs from Library of Congress collections on the photosharing site, Flickr. We had done considerable planning, and we were quite clear on our aims: to share images with a community of picture lovers who may not have known that libraries collect pictures, and to …
Posted in: Flickr, News & Events, Photographs, Posters