Library of Congress Blog
“Light and liberty go together.”

Carol Highsmith brings us more (copyright-free) photos from the closing-night convention festivities in the Twin Cities:

John McCain accepts the presidential nomination

Sarah Palin waves to the delegates

As in Denver, St. Paul had its share of protesters

Cindy McCain joins her husband on stage

The running mates and their spouses

Balloons!

Photos from Wednesday in St. Paul are here.

You can find photos from Denver here and here.

“Talk, talk, talk,” you say.  “That’s all Matt does is talk to the 2008 National Book Festival Authors.  But when will we, the readers and fans of those authors, get a chance to ask the questions?!”

Well, you can come in person, of course, to the National Book Festival on Sept. 27, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the National Mall in DC.  But if you just can’t wait that long, our longtime charter sponsor, The Washington Post, has begun to schedule online chats with National Book Festival authors.

The first three have been scheduled, and are as follows:

Bob Schieffer (CBS newsman and author), Monday, 9/15 at 2 p.m. EDT

Arthur and Pauline Frommer (noted travel writers), Tuesday, 9/16 at 10 a.m. EDT

And Alexander McCall Smith, (prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction), Friday, 9/19 at 11 a.m. EDT

You can follow the links above and start submitting your questions now, or anytime up to and even during the chats.  We expect to be able to announce at least a couple more in the days leading up to Sept. 27.

(By the way, two years ago we did about six author podcasts. In 2007 we doubled that. This year, I expect we’ll get pretty close to, if not more than, 20! To subscribe in iTunes, go here.)

Carol Highsmith reports in with images from last night at the convention in St. Paul:

Former Sen. Bob Dole chats with the North Carolina delegation

Gov. Sarah Palin takes the stage

The delegates react

Sen. John McCain joins the Palin family on stage

(Pictures from Denver can be found here and here.)

Carol Highsmith sent some images from yesterday’s final day of convention festivities in Denver:

In case you missed it, Wednesday is here.

As the Gulf Coast holds its collective breath in preparation for Tropical Storm Gustav, it does so with an eerie sense of deja vu: It was exactly three years ago today that Hurricane Katrina made its devastating landfall.

The Digital Reference Team at the Library of Congress has updated the Today in History page for Aug. 29 in acknowledgment of that anniversary. The page includes many compelling historical resources about New Orleans, the Gulf states, hurricanes and related topics.

And it begins with haunting personal recollections from Storycorps (an oral-history project that is archived in the Library’s American Folklife Center):

I don’t b’lieve that was no dream. And you know what? It’s gon’ linger with us, it’s gon’ be with us, until the rest of my life i’ gone, y’know, it gonna linger, it gonna be there with me.

(Thanks, Colleen!)

UPDATE: The Preservation Directorate has launched a new Web page, “Learning From Katrina,” which deals with preservation issues in the wake of disasters. The page is here.

UPDATE 2: The Geography and Map Division has updated its “Places in the News” page with an Atlantic hurricane tracking chart.

Our “convention correspondent,” Carol M. Highsmith, burned the midnight oil to file her first dispatches from Denver (after 1 a.m. local time!) As promised, we bring you a sampling of the copyright-free images. And as previously mentioned, we will also post some highlights next week from the Twin Cities.

President Bill Clinton Fires up the delegates.

Senator Joe Biden accepts his party’s vice-presidential nomination.

Senator Barack Obama joins his running mate on stage.

Some of the more colorful hat-wear among delegates.

Protesters Shannon Collins and Olivia Christian.

The Brookings Institution this week rated 61 federal Web sites based on 18 criteria such as publications, databases, audiovisual material, disability access, personalization, and privacy and security policies.  This blog’s mother ship, LOC.gov, ranked No. 8.  The full PDF report is here.  (Congrats to our friends at USA.gov!)

We’re constantly working to enhance our Web presence, to present more content in more useful ways, and to improve the user experience.  And we’re doing it all with one thing in mind: you.

If you’re new to LOC.gov or myLOC.gov–or even if you’re not–take a moment to look around, then come back and let us know what you think.  What are we doing right?  Where do you think we have room for improvement?

Time was, the most common question we would get at the Library of Congress was, “Where are all the books?” (The answer is here.)

But a new question has begun to rival that query in frequency: “Where is the ‘Book of Secrets’?”

Well, for the next month, at least, you can find it at the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

The December 2007 movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” has been written about here before. The heroes of the smash Walt Disney Pictures sequel came to the real Library of Congress in search of the movie’s title tome, en route to big treasure. The book (as far as even some of us in the government know, at least) is fictitious, but the prop “Book of Secrets” has proven an object of fascination. It is richly detailed and contains calligraphic reproductions of the handwriting of every president from Washington to Clinton, as well as conspiracy-related ephemera of all kinds.

The “Book of Secrets,” along with the prop “John Wilkes Booth’s diary” (a movie version of an actual historical object) are part of a special display at the Library through Sept. 27. The display features not only the props, but also images from scenes shot at the Library, along with a looping video of two bonus features from the movie’s DVD: a behind-the-scenes look at the Library itself, along with the making of the “Book of Secrets” prop.

Just don’t ask us what’s on page 47!

Further to the “Surface” technology I mentioned yesterday, you can see it in action for yourself in this ABC News story (about halfway in).  NOTE: Sometimes it will say that the previous link doesn’t exist, which is generally rectified by refreshing your browser.

Also on the convention front, I’m pleased to announce that the Library has its own “embed” who will be covering both party conventions for us.

Photographer Carol M. Highsmith, who has already donated to the Library and the American people a substantial copyright-free image archive, will be doing the same for us in Denver and in the Twin Cities. Before we get the whole batch from her, she has agreed to send me at least a few of her best shots during each convention, which I expect to feature here this week and next.

You can learn more about this amazing woman in the December 2007 issue of the Library of Congress Information Bulletin.

As Americans settle in to watch the two major party nominating conventions this week and next, have you ever wondered what political conventions were like before the days of the Web, television, or even the telegraph?

The Humanities and Social Sciences division at the Library of Congress has provided timely summaries of the Democratic and Republican national conventions dating back to 1832 and 1856, respectively. (As I write this, it is labeled “New” on the page of the Library’s Main Reading Room.)

As of today, staff have completed summaries for all the Democratic conventions and expect to complete the remaining Republican summaries in the next couple of days.

In a related vein, Microsoft is using historical content from the Library of Congress in new technology being showcased at both conventions:

Microsoft is also introducing Surface, a combination of hardware and software in a 30-inch tabletop device with a touch interface. [...] It will [...] provide information and images from past conventions that has been made available by the Library of Congress [...] .

I saw a video demonstration of the tables, and they look pretty nifty.  You can pull up a map of the United States and touch on the cities where past conventions have been held.  Then you can manipulate digital assets from each convention such as photos, text and videos, splaying them before you a la Tom Cruise in “Minority Report.”