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Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
The following is a guest post by Lara Szypszak, Reference Technician in the Prints & Photographs Division. One of my favorite feelings is the wave of excitement and anxiety that washes over me as I join the crowds at the starting line of a race. There is something so special about joining a group of willing …
Posted in: Cartoons, Photographs, Prints
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Call me old-fashioned, but I still mail out Christmas cards every year. The tradition certainly seems to have waned – and evolved – over time, with online services making it a faster, less hands-on operation for those wanting to share holiday wishes. And of course, there’s no need to send a card to keep in …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
Today, I celebrate the seasonal transition as we approach, in the Northern Hemisphere, the celestial demarcation from fall to winter, occurring in an imperceptible moment on the winter solstice. Fall’s colorful glory has passed and most hardwood trees stand bare and leafless now. Crops have been harvested and fields lie fallow or marked only with …
Posted in: Prints
Posted by: Barbara Orbach Natanson
Photographers working on staff for the New York World-Telegram & Sun newspaper captured many aspects of life in the decades between the 1920s and the 1960s, focusing on faces, flavors, and phenomena in New York City. The Library of Congress’ New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection includes photographs of worldwide events that the …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Imagine needing all of the equipment shown below to simply take a photograph within a dark place. Take note of the camera on the tripod – a stereoscopic camera, which has two lenses. See the chalky residue of hundreds of magnesium tapers burned within the metal reflector at left. This intrepid crew and all their …
Posted in: Photographs, Series: Anything to Get the Shot, Women's History
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
At the most fundamental level, signs are a form of visual communication conveying a message through words, graphics, or a combination of the two. Signs’ forms range from traffic signs to billboards, from handbills to the hand-lettered homemade varieties; from simple notices to subtle and sophisticated attempts to sell, promote, or persuade. Today’s blog post …
Posted in: Photographs
Posted by: Jeff Bridgers
The following is a guest post by Gay Colyer, Digital Library Specialist in the Prints and Photographs Division. Not every Northerner who traveled to the Confederacy during the Civil War went to fight. Some journeyed South on a variety of educational and humanitarian missions. After Federal forces seized Beaufort, South Carolina, and the sea islands …
Posted in: Photographs, Prints, Women's History
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
We asked “What’s this Gadget?” about a set of twenty-five uncaptioned photographs from the Harris & Ewing Collection, and you definitely put on your thinking caps – or maybe your psychographs – which we learned the smiling woman below is “wearing”! This previously uncaptioned photograph shows a psychograph, a phrenology machine meant to measure the …
Posted in: Flickr, Photographs
Posted by: Kristi Finefield
Even if I weren’t a reference librarian, I would have a fondness for the card catalog. When I was introduced to the cabinets of small drawers filled with cards in my high school library, I enjoyed the ability to browse through the cards and discover new books to read or topics to explore. Until automated …
Posted in: Photographs