Quite often I have to “sit on” very exciting news here until all the details are put into place, and whatever we’re going to announce is ready for prime-time. Such is the case with the new version of our Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC, pronounced “P-pock”), which has launched within the past few days. …
A bunch of ninth-grade girls got in touch with their favorite radio station, making a song request for a tune by one of their favorite artists. But they couldn’t resist the chance to raise that universal complaint: “Why, why, why, why do you always repeat the same songs?” It could have been from the suburbs …
Ever wonder what goes on before an exhibition is mounted and displayed? My colleague Donna Urschel takes an in-depth look at the preservation steps that were required for the Library’s “Herblock!” exhibition, on display through May 1: Preserving ‘Herblock’ a Rewarding Job for Conservators by Donna Urschel Shortly after the famous Washington Post political cartoonist …
Even for many of those who might yawn their way through the gridiron action on Sunday between New Orleans and Indianapolis, they will perk right up and stare intently at the screen during the station breaks. Super Bowl commercials have become something of an event of their own, alongside the actual game. The Inside Adams …
In 1867, the American West was still very much wild. It was into that new frontier that a young photographer named Timothy O’Sullivan ventured to provide a visual record of the Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel, led by Clarence King. As much a PR effort to encourage settlement of the West as it was …
There’s something very satisfying in music about the number three: three notes in a basic chord, a romantic waltz in 3/4 time, the three-movement form of early symphonies. So it’s appropriate that the Library’s third blog (behind this one and “Inside Adams” from the Science, Technology and Business Division) would come from the Music Division. …
The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division has added 116 photocrom travel views of the Netherlands from 100 years ago to our Flickr page, bringing the total number of photochroms on Flickr to 773. Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the …
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the new Science, Technology and Business blog has a timely post: “Candied Yams or Candied Sweet Potatoes?”
This feels a little like a birth announcement: The Library of Congress has launched its second official blog since the one you’re now reading took the blogosphere by storm in April 2007. (Hyperbole much?) The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division is an excellent addition to our growing social-media family. The very name of the …
You know how some of the best jobs are the ones where you learn something new every day? I definitely have one of those.
I was watching a new episode of History Detectives last night on PBS (one of the few shows to which I am hopelessly addicted). Tukufu Zuberi did a segment about a letter purportedly written by the father of John Wilkes Booth to President Andrew Jackson threatening to assassinate Old Hickory.
The piece turned up some interesting tidbits supporting the notion that at least thoughts of assassination ran in the Booth family, such as what appears to be a contemporaneous apology for the letter from Booth the elder to Jackson in a Philadelphia newspaper.
The Library of Congress in the past had done some pretty exhaustive work of which I was unaware that signals our letter’s authenticity. Quoting Barbara Bair of the Library’s Manuscript Division:
[A]ccording to research by an LC conservator who specializes in manuscripts [Mary Elizabeth (Betsy) Haude], and who has examined the letter, the paper used in the Junius Booth to Andrew Jackson letter of July 4, 1835, as evidenced by the watermarks (dove, and A KELTY), was that of the paper maker Anthony Kelty. He operated a paper mill from 1830-1840 on Buck Run, near Coatesville in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. [The letter was dated July 4, 1835, and addressed from Philadelphia.]