Library In The News: January Edition

The Library of Congress exhibition “The Civil War in America” and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey continued to make the news last month.

Edward Rothstein toured the exhibition for The New York Times. “This is one reason the Library of Congress exhibition ‘The Civil War in America,’ which opened late last year in honor of the war’s sesquicentennial, is so fascinating. It doesn’t explicitly ask questions about means and ends, but we can’t help thinking about them as the letters, diaries, documents and images accumulate.”

In addition, the Washington Post’s Michael O’Sullivan reviewed the show, calling it a “sober chronology of letters, photographs, books, artwork, maps and other ephemera” and “surprisingly moving.”

In January, the Library put on temporary display the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in the Civil War exhibit. Picking up that announcement were several local broadcast and newspaper outlets.

Also put on temporary display was a Bible, belonging to Abraham Lincoln, that President Barack Obama used for his second inauguration. You can read more about it this previous blog post. Outlets including USA Today, CNN and The Baltimore Sun featured stories.

Also in commemoration of the Civil War and coinciding with the exhibition, Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey did a poetry reading and lecture at the Library on January 30. A few outlets caught up with her prior to the event and as she began her in-office residence at the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center – the first laureate to do so.

“Being in the presence of history and a place so rooted in the national imagination – it’s so interesting to me,” she told The Washingtonian. “I like it very much. I think I could live here.”

Covering her lecture was Washington Post reporter Ron Charles. Trethewey discussed Walt Whitman and his war poems. “Her lecture elegantly blended scholarship, cultural criticism and poetry.”

In a last bit of news, Glenn Fleishman of Boing Boing took a tour of the Library’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation to “find the heart of the nation’s audiovisual memory.” He went on to discuss the Library’s efforts in preserving resources using old nitrate film base, copyright restrictions on films and sound recordings and the creation of digital versions of master recordings.

Last Word: Author Robert Caro on LBJ

(The following is an article from the January-February 2013 issue of the Library’s magazine, LCM, featuring an excerpt from an interview with historian and author Robert Caro about Lyndon Baines Johnson.) LCM: You’ve spent more than 30 years researching and writing about Lyndon Johnson, with a final volume yet to be published. What aspects of …

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Inquiring Minds: An Interview with Kluge Fellow Lindsay Tuggle

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 …

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Library in the News: November and December Edition

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 …

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Forever Free

Three-hundred-and-twenty-five words made up the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. So simple a start for what would become a pivotal document in our nation’s history – one that would also provide groundwork in passing the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. Currently on view in the Library’s “The Civil War in America” exhibition through Feb. 18, …

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Civil War Cartography, Then and Now

During the Civil War, cartographers invented new techniques to map the country and the conflict more accurately than ever before in the nation’s history. Since then, cartographic technology has evolved in ways never imagined, but many basic elements of mapmaking remain the same. The following is an article, written by Jacqueline V. Nolan and Edward …

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Inquiring Minds: An Interview With Author William Martin

What if Abraham Lincoln recorded his innermost thoughts as he moved toward the realization that he must end slavery? What if he lost that diary, but a recently discovered letter suggests that the diary is still out there? Such is the premise of “The Lincoln Letter” (Tor/Forge, 2012) by William Martin, his latest mystery novel …

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Let’s Give Thanks

Thanksgiving is just a day away, and I’ve been noticing on Facebook, friends posting what they are thankful for this holiday season. Those statuses certainly have given me pause to count my own blessings. First and foremost, I am thankful for my family, who, no matter how far away I am from them, help me …

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Library in the News: October Edition

With the November opening of the new exhibition “The Civil War in America” only a month away, media outlets picked up on the announcement of a new blog featuring historical voices from the war. The Associated Press wrote an announcement that many outlets ran with, including The Washington Post, WTOP, military.com and various broadcast affiliates …

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Waste Not, Want Not

While the Civil War imposed hardships on both sides, the South found it particularly difficult to adapt to new realities of daily life. The blockade of Southern seaports and the prohibition of trade with the North quickly depleted food supplies throughout the Confederacy. Farmers became soldiers, and a large percentage of crops were used to …

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