The wonders of modern science were used to positively identify a set of human bones found under an asphalt parking lot in England (site of a former church) as those of Richard III – a former king of England and one of Shakespeare’s most memorable villains. The world was fascinated – it isn’t every day …
The following is a guest post from the Library’s Director of Communications, Gayle Osterberg. It has been a busy first two weeks for the Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, who is working this spring from the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center – a first for a laureate. She visited with fellow poet Richard Blanco …
Today, the Library of Congress joined 12 other government agencies and non-governmental organizations in signing a “Declaration of Learning” that formally announces their partnership as members of the Inter-Agency Collaboration on Education. The initiative is spearheaded by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who joined representatives at the signing ceremony in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms …
(The following is an article from the January-February 2013 issue of the Library’s magazine, LCM, highlighting “first drafts” of important documents in American history.) Robert Frost (1874 –1963) was the first poet commissioned to write a poem for a presidential inauguration. His poem, titled “Dedication,” was intended to be read at the inauguration of John …
The following is a guest post by Jason Steinhauer, program specialist in the Library’s John W. Kluge Center. Lindsay Tuggle, Ph.D., teaches English Literary Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her dissertation dealt with mourning and ecology in the work of Walt Whitman. As a Kluge Fellow, she has been researching and writing her …
The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. These collections, housed in the Manuscript Division—and the Library’s holdings in other formats such as rare books, photographs, films, sound recordings, sheet music and maps—inform us about the time and tenor of each of their administrations. Unique to …
(The following is a guest article written by my colleague Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library’s staff newsletter, The Gazette.) President Barack Obama next week will again take the oath of office on the Bible, drawn from the Library of Congress collections, that President Abraham Lincoln used at his first inauguration more than 150 years …
With the whirlwind of the holiday season come to a close, let’s take a look back at some of the headlines the Library made in November and December. One of our big announcements was the opening of the Library exhibition “The Civil War in America” on Nov. 12. The Washington Post chose to highlight a …
Today marks five years since the launch of the Flickr Commons with two photo collections from the Library of Congress. Since then, more than 250,000 photographs with no known copyright restrictions have been contributed by 56 libraries, archives and museums worldwide, with new images added each week. The Library’s blog, Picture This: Library of Congress …
On Thursday evening, a very nice gift was given, and received, in an ornate room at the U.S. Department of State. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the recipient – on behalf of several libraries and research institutions in his nation – of a trove of digitized treasures from the Library of Congress and its associated …