Calling all mid-century fans! Join Reference Librarian, Gillian Mahoney, for a virtual presentation on January 21st to learn more about Charles M. Goodman, one of the D.C. area’s most influential mid-century architects. Best known for his designs for the Hollin Hills neighborhood in Fairfax County, Goodman frequently worked with local builders and developers to make modern houses available to the mass market. This blog post will share a few sample items from the collection in advance of the talk.
Whether you enjoy being out in cold weather or would rather observe a frozen landscape through a window, you’ll find it hard to deny the beauty -- and drama -- of the icicle-laden views featured in this post. Let’s lean into the cold temperatures and feast our eyes on these eye-catching winter scenes.
The long tradition of children writing letters to Santa Claus to ask for special Christmas gifts is pictured in photos from the early 20th century from the Prints & Photographs Division’s collections.
Holiday cooking season is upon us. Today we’re looking at technologies intending to make our lives in the kitchen a bit easier. Drawing from advertisements, trademark registrations, photographs, and architectural drawings, this post highlights time, energy, and space-saving devices designed (in theory) to streamline our culinary experiences.
Fords and other trucks appear in front of associated businesses throughout the National Photo Company Collection (NPCC). The NPCC focuses mostly on Washington, D.C. between the early 1900s and the 1930s. Explore early D.C. businesses and delivery vehicles through a selection of photos from the collection.
Photos, posters and prints in the Library of Congress collections include photos of bookmobiles, mobile and temporary libraries. This week’s post highlights all the ways libraries have come to the reader.
Today’s post uses Margaret Wise Brown’s classic bedtime story Goodnight Moon as a playful framework for exploring the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. It incorporates a variety of items from across the collection, including stereographs, lithographs, trademark registrations, and photographs.
The Library of Congress collections include many photographs of the built environment that collectively represent many different types of architectural features. This week’s post highlights a distinctive structure that can be both charming and practical: the spiral staircase.
Every other month, staff in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division come together for a “Learning Hour,” a time dedicated to knowledge sharing, training, and discussion. This month’s session took the form of a challenge: each participant opened an unfamiliar box from the collections and reported back on what they discovered. How is the collection arranged and described? What might a researcher encounter when using it? How could access be improved? This week’s post highlights some of the insights that emerged from that exercise.
