Posted on: October 17th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Well, I’ve been a very bad blogger. But we’ve been pretty busy around here.
Let’s see, what have we been up to? Well, we’ve begun taking a little bit of the Library on the road — first in Fort Lauderdale Sept. 19 and next in Denver on Oct. 27 (with Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles to follow).
You might have heard that we recently had a little get-together with about 120,000 of our closest friends. Our terrific team made more than 70 webcasts from the National Book Festival available in record time! You can watch your favorite authors here.
We’re getting close to some exciting Web 2.0 announcements, which we will be sure to bring you as soon as they’re ready. I also expect we’ll see a report relatively soon about our Flickr pilot project.
Our new Poet Laureate opened the literary season last night to an overflow crowd. (I’ve never seen so many people try to get into the Mumford Room!) Kay Ryan read and spoke for about an hour and then mingled afterward and signed books; the crowd was extremely entertained. One thing I was struck by was how very young the audience seemed (I was surrounded by teens), which I think is a good sign for future generations of poetry lovers.
I also had the tremendous pleasure earlier this week of attending a taped interview of Kay Ryan and the Librarian of Congress with Charlie Rose in New York, which we believe should air sometime next week. I won’t spoil it, but I don’t ever remember seeing Charlie laugh so much during an interview — it was a great discussion, and a lot of fun!
I completely neglected to blog about Hispanic Heritage Month (VERY bad blogger!), but I will point out, albeit a couple of days late, that the Library and some of our federal colleagues worked on a great Web site here.
And thanks to Audrey Fischer in my office, I can bring you a little report on Disability Employment Awareness Month, after the jump.
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Posted in Books, Events, LC Web site, Libraries, National Book Festival, News, Photos, Poetry | 2 Comments »
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Posted on: September 17th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
I stopped by our Prints and Photographs Division this afternoon to meet blogging legend Robert Scoble, partly because he was interviewing Helena Zinkham, the acting chief of P&P, about our Flickr project, but also to tell him how his book “Naked Conversations” has had an important impact on impelling the Library’s blog forward. Before I knew it, he had turned his camera on me and beamed an interview live to the world via 3G. (Shameless self-promotion alert.)
Robert is also working on a more in-depth piece on the Flickr project, which I’m eager to see. It’s always great when the HD camera comes out!
While I’m at it, in recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of Web 2.0 momentum building here at the Library. I’m confident that this will soon lead to new ways in which we will reaching out to user communities and making the Library’s yummy goodness even more widely known and accessible.
Posted in Blogging, LC Web site, Photos, Technology | 14 Comments »
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Posted on: September 16th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
Tomorrow is Constitution Day, when we celebrate the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of that foundational document. If you’re a student who is putting the finishing touches on an assignment or essay, or a teacher who wants to inspire his or her class, you have come to the right place.
The Library of Congress has excellent Constitution Day resources, including this page that has been updated to reflect materials in the new exhibition “Creating the United States.”
The Law Library of Congress also has a site entitled “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates.” The THOMAS legislative tracking system also has links to a number of Library sites about the Constitution.
When delegates to the Constitutional Convention adjourned their business, Benjamin Franklin famously replied to a woman who had asked what kind of government had just been formed: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
It was an audacious experiment, launched by a group of men both ordinary and extraordinary, and it has been tested many times. But 221 years later, we are still here.
Posted in Collections, Education, History, LC Web site | 3 Comments »
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Posted on: September 5th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
“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.)
Posted in Books, Events, National Book Festival, Podcasts, Washington DC | No Comments »
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Posted on: August 29th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
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.
Posted in History, News, Today in History | 2 Comments »
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Posted on: August 28th, 2008 by Matt Raymond
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.
Posted in News, Photos | 4 Comments »
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