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Fun with Library of Congress Subject Headings

Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008 in Library of Congress and cataloging. 0 Comments

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Library of Congress, National Archives Form World Digital Library Partnership

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in libraries, digital, collections and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein announced today that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has become a founding partner in the World Digital Library (WDL).
NARA will contribute digital versions of important documents from its collections to the WDL, which will be launched for the international public in early 2009. These documents include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War photographs, naturalization and immigration records of famous Americans, and photographs by Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Hine.

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Librarian of Congress Appoints Kay Ryan Poet Laureate

Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008 in Library of Congress and poetry. 0 Comments

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced the appointment of Kay Ryan as the Library’s 16th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry for 2008-2009. Ryan will take up her duties in the fall, opening the Library’s annual literary series Oct. 16 with a reading of her work. She also will be a featured guest at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in the Poetry pavilion Sept. 27 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Ryan succeeds Charles Simic as Poet Laureate and joins a long line of distinguished poets who have served in the position, including most recently Simic, Donald Hall, Ted Kooser, Louise Glück, Billy Collins, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove.

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Middle Tennessee State University Gets $300,000 Historic Study Grant

Published by rwatstein July 12th, 2008 in research, collections and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress has awarded $300,000 to Middle Tennessee State University to provide access to some of America’s most important historical documents. The grant to MTSU’s Center for Historic Preservation provides an opportunity to work with “one of the world’s greatest resources,” said Dr. Carroll Van West, the center’s director. The grant will allow the center to focus on several aspects of American history that also are key in Tennessee’s past, said Stacey Graham, research professor at the center and project coordinator. Among them are the eras of Andrew Jackson, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Depression, World War II and the civil rights movement.Graham said folk life, art, music and architecture are other possible topics of study.

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US Audiobooks for the Blind Threatened

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in Library of Congress and audiobooks. 0 Comments

Blind people across the US fear they may lose access to free audiobooks because of a budget shortfall at the Library of Congress which operates the service. The National Library needs an extra $19.1m (£9.5m) a year to transfer its collection of audiobooks from antiquated tape cassettes to the latest digital format using flash technology. But Congress is expected to grant only $12.5m (£6.25m) a year, which will delay completion of the project until 2013 and could cut the production of new audiobooks.

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Library of Congress Not Just for D.C. Politicians

Published by rwatstein May 26th, 2008 in libraries, demographics and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, members of Congress use the library for research, but next to them, in the Main Reading Room, are the Americans who elected them. Anyone 18 or older with a Library of Congress library card can use any of the 22 reading rooms and access its 650 miles of bookshelves.

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Library of Congress Receives Original Drawings for the First Spider-Man Story, “Amazing Fantasy #15″

Published by rwatstein May 4th, 2008 in collections, Library of Congress and comics. 0 Comments

In a deed of superheroic proportions, an anonymous donor has given the Library of Congress the original artwork by Steve Ditko for Marvel Comics’ “Amazing Fantasy #15″ — the comic book that introduced Spider-Man in August 1962. This unique set of drawings for 24 pages features the story of the origin of Spider-Man along with three other short stories — also written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko — for the same issue: “The Bell-Ringer,” “Man in the Mummy Case” and “There Are Martians Among Us”

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Library of Congress Groans under Data Strain

Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008 in libraries, collections and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

If you think that your business is having a tough time coping with the data explosion, then spare a thought for the Library of Congress, which has to find some way of tackling a mind-blowing amount of information. ”The digital revolution is comparable to the one started by Gutenberg more 500 years ago,” said Laura Campbell, the archive’s associate librarian, referring to the first book printed with movable type. In its 208-year history, the library has collected more than 138 million items in 450 languages, ranging from manuscripts to maps and sound recordings, but the Internet era poses a whole new set of challenges. ”We estimate that in the current digital age, the amount of information produced every 15 minutes is equivalent to all the data and information now in the Library of Congress,” explained Campbell, during a keynote. “The library can no longer collect everything.”

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Eighteenth Century Russian Publications in the Library of Congress: A Catalog

Published by rwatstein April 27th, 2008 in collections and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

Tatiana Fessenko (1915-1995) was a cataloger at the Library of Congress for several decades, retiring in the early 1980s. A native of Kiev with an educational background in Russian language and literature, Ms. Fessenko was particularly interested in the Library’s Yudin Collection, acquired in 1906. It was she who cataloged most of the 18th and early 19th century materials from the 80,000 volume Yudin Collection, in many cases doing extensive bibliographical and biographical detective work to discover the authors of pseudonymous and anonymous works, and the original titles of works originally published in French, German, or English.

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Study Group Issues Report Recommending Changes in Copyright Law to Reflect Digital Technologies

Published by rwatstein April 6th, 2008 in digital, Library of Congress and copyright. 0 Comments

After nearly three years of intensive work, the independent Section 108 Study Group has issued its report and recommendations on exceptions to copyright law to address how libraries, archives and museums deal with copyrighted materials in fulfilling their missions in the digital environment

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Read the full report here

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Research Guide from The Library of Congress: John Adams

Published by rwatstein April 6th, 2008 in digital, collections and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with John Adams. This resource guide compiles links to digital materials related to Adams such as manuscripts, letters, broadsides, government documents, and images that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web.

John Adams Resource Guide

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Projecting the Future Needs of Preservation

Published by rwatstein April 6th, 2008 in libraries, library services, Library of Congress and preservation. 0 Comments

Our cultural treasury, preserved by the Library of Congress, is vast and unpredictable. It includes “Casablanca” with Bogie and the only live concert recording of jazzmen Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. But there’s also Bea Arthur as an alien cantina chanteuse in a legendarily awful “Star Wars” TV special from 1978. And in recent years, Islamic recordings via the al-Jazeera channel. regory Lukow, chief of the library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, has overseen the centralization of 5.7 million such audio and visual artifacts at a repurposed Cold War-era government bunker in Culpeper. This new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, in addition to its temperature-controlled vaults, features a specially developed robotic preservation system that will make items available faster to scholars and the public.

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Veterans Tell Their Tales

Published by rwatstein April 6th, 2008 in Library of Congress and preservation. 0 Comments

More than 100 local war veterans are sharing their tales of hardship and survival with Paradise High School students this month. The videotaped interviews will go into the database at the Library of Congress as part of the nationwide Veteran’s History Project, preserving history for years to come. Tom Sealy, 88, of Magalia, is one of the veterans sharing his story for the sake of preserving history. The World War II veteran said he fought fires on destroyers at Pearl Harbor, and was the sole survivor when his shipped capsized in the Pacific Ocean. He watched as his fellow crew members were eaten by sharks or passed away mid-conversation. Sealy was a 22-year-old civilian on his way to Wake Island on Dec. 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He said he volunteered to help in the mist of chaos.

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Library of Congress Launches Historic Baseball Resources Website

Published by rwatstein March 29th, 2008 in web sites and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The rich holdings of the Library of Congress include many items that document the history of baseball and Americans’ fascination with the game. LC has just launched a new Historic Baseball Resources page that features player profiles, historical news and events, collection guides, and presentations. The LC Digital Reference Team will also host a web conference, “Batter Up! Baseball at the Library of Congress,” on April 4 at 2 p.m. Eastern time, through the Online Programming for All Libraries site

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Historic Baseball Resources web site

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US Library of Congress Puts Knowledge on the Web

Published by rwatstein March 23rd, 2008 in digital and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress has been preparing for the digital age since the 1960’s, when it used early technology to create and share its bibliographic information in electronic form. In the 1990’s, the library started distributing digitized versions of its treasures to schools and libraries across the United States. Now, there are millions of digitized contents available on the library’s web site for users across the world. Voice of America’s Mohamed Elshinnawi has more.

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Library Takes ‘Talking Books’ Digital

Published by rwatstein March 16th, 2008 in libraries, Library of Congress, disabilities and audiobooks. 0 Comments

Judith M. Dixon, a clinical psychologist by training and a sophisticated techie by avocation, is helping to lead the Library of Congress into the digital age. Dixon, 55, who gave up university teaching 27 years ago to join the library’s National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, is a key player on a team that has been working for the better part of a decade to create a new generation of audiobooks for the library’s more than 700,000 registered blind and disabled users.

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Library of Congress Rocks Flickr

Published by rwatstein February 25th, 2008 in Library of Congress and Flickr. 0 Comments

Museum 2.0 writes. “About a month ago, the Library of Congress put two sets of photographs (about 3000 images total) up on Flickr. Flickr is a photo-sharing site (learn more here). They didn’t put them up the way you or I put up photos of the family hoe-down; they worked with Flickr for about six months as part of Flickr Commons, a hopefully growing initiative to connect public image collections with this hugely popular photo-sharing and tagging site. Plenty have blogged about the initiative, but what I’m most interested in are the results, and what it means for the way we share collections with visitors both online and onsite.”

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Library of Congress Pilot Program Offered at Illinois State University

Published by rwatstein February 18th, 2008 in digital and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

Illinois State University will be among four sites nationwide to test a pilot program training teachers to use the Library of Congress’ digitized primary sources. The ISU program will be conducted through the Library of Congress’ Midwest Regional Center for Teaching with Primary Sources at the Milner Library.

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Library of Congress Working Group Issues Final Report on Bibliographic Futures

Published by rwatstein January 26th, 2008 in libraries, Library of Congress and cataloging. 0 Comments

A Library of Congress task force has completed its mission to look at the future of cataloging and other forms of bibliographic control and recommend steps on how the library community can continue to provide effective access in a changing technological world. The LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control released On the Record (PDF file), its 44-page final report, January 9 after responding to suggestions from a wide range of organizations and individuals who read a draft version issued November 30.

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Read On the Record here

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U. Of Nebraska Lincoln Libraries Make Catalogues More Inclusive

Published by rwatstein January 26th, 2008 in libraries, Library of Congress and cataloging. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress may step down from its role as the primary institution for classifying and cataloging library materials, according to a report it released last month. “The Library of Congress does not necessarily want to have the same role in the future that it’s had in the past - implementing cataloging standards,” said Mary Bolin, chairwoman of technical services for University of Nebraska-Lincoln libraries. “They want to move further into a world where they aren’t the only players, where everyone shares and collaborates.” In order to get away from the Library of Congress being the sole arbiter of cataloguing standards, the report urged libraries around the country to share more records with one another, to create more awareness of their special collections and to make greater use of online databases.

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Flickr Taps User Tags to Organize Library of Congress Images

Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008 in Library of Congress and Flickr. 0 Comments

Flickr has unveiled a new project, dubbed The Commons, which will give Flickr members an opportunity to browse and tag photos from Library of Congress archives. The goal is to create what Flickr likes to call an “organic information system,” in other words, a searchable database of tags that makes it easier for researchers to find images. The pilot project features a small sampling of the Library of Congress’ some 14 million images. For now you’ll find two collections. The first is called “American Memory: Color photographs from the Great Depression” and features color photographs of the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection including “scenes of rural and small-town life, migrant labor, and the effects of the Great Depression.”

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Images Found of Abraham Lincoln’s Inaugural

Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008 in Library of Congress and history. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress on unveiled three photographic negatives - long mislabeled - of the crowd that gathered at the U.S. Capitol for President Lincoln’s second inauguration on March 4, 1865. “It’s exciting to find additional images related to the Lincoln presidency,” said Carol Johnson, curator of photographs who specializes in 19th-century photography and who played sleuth to match the negatives to the correct event. “It was a wet, rainy day, most people have on long overcoats and hats … You can see some people’s expressions - some who seem to be cheering, one guy raising his hand.” A reader browsing through the Library of Congress’ online Civil War photographic negative collection noticed three glass negatives identified as taken during the administration of President Grant, either at his inauguration or at the Grand Review of the Armies. The reader, from Berthoud, Colo., alerted the Library that the labels appeared incorrect.

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US U-Turn Over Scottish Authors

Published by rwatstein January 20th, 2008 in Library of Congress and authors. 0 Comments

One of the world’s largest libraries has reversed a controversial decision to reclassify Scots authors as English. Writers, politicians and academics in Scotland reacted angrily when the Library of Congress in the US first made the proposal. The move would have seen classic novels like “The Thirty Nine Steps” by the Scottish author John Buchan, listed as an English adventure story. Culture Minister Linda Fabiani welcomed the U-turn. “I am delighted that the Library of Congress has listened to our concerns and recognised the distinctive nature of Scottish literature,” she said.

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