Every research journey starts with a question! Just such a question sparked this entry of Double Take, the occasional series where we dig a little deeper into an image in our collections. This photo of a young African American boy in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) Collection sent me on a journey 79 years in […]
The following is a guest post by Mari Nakahara, Curator of Architecture, Design & Engineering, with Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division, talking with researcher David R. Hanlon. I am always grateful when researchers discover treasures in unprocessed collections, the contents of which have often not been fully explored. Professor David R. […]
Below is an interview with Jon Eaker, Reference Librarian in the Prints & Photographs Division at the Library of Congress. Melissa: Thanks for agreeing to an interview, Jon. Can you fill us in on your background, and what led you to become a reference librarian here in the Prints & Photographs Division? Jon: Well, I’ve […]
Okay, I admit it. California-born and raised, I begin to shiver when the temperature dips much below 40 degrees, as it has this past week in Washington, D.C. That’s probably why my eye was drawn to this photo, which reference librarian Jon Eaker added to our “Caught Our Eyes” staff sharing wall. Although it eloquently […]
The following is a guest post by Eric Peich, Archivist, and Hanna Soltys, Reference Librarian, Prints & Photographs Division. We’re pleased to feature it as part of our new “Ready for Research” blog series, which highlights collections moving out of the backlog. The recent hiring of new staff is helping us organize and describe more […]
The Prints & Photographs Division regularly receives questions about how to find pictures related to the Great Migration – when millions of African Americans, many of whom lived in the rural American South, permanently relocated to cities to the north and west. These individuals had many reasons for leaving their homes, but they were spurred […]
This photo has caught many pairs of eyes around here. Look closely and you’ll no doubt deduce why. Reference librarian Melissa, who added it to our sharing wall, noted that, at first glance, she thought the megaphone-wielding woman was standing on an edifice of very narrow bricks. But no, it’s…books! My first thought, likely influenced […]
While recently viewing the Library of Congress exhibition, “Comic Art: 120 Years of Panels and Pages,” I was struck by the effective storytelling Frank King employed in a cartoon drawing for his Gasoline Alley comic strip. In the cartoon, the main character Walt Wallet is depicted as a father whose well-meaning plans to introduce his […]
The following is a guest post by Micah Messenheimer, Curator of Photography, Prints & Photographs Division. Conversations with visiting researchers that lead to new appreciation for the many interconnections among Library of Congress collections are one of the pleasures of my job as a photography curator. The following interview was done with Jane Pierce, Carl […]
The following is a guest post by Sara W. Duke, Curator of Popular and Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. As a curator of historical prints, one of the first questions I ask myself is, “Why does this print exist?” It is an essential question to ask when trying to use pictures to explain […]