Library of Congress Blog
“Light and liberty go together.”

Our “convention correspondent,” Carol M. Highsmith, burned the midnight oil to file her first dispatches from Denver (after 1 a.m. local time!) As promised, we bring you a sampling of the copyright-free images. And as previously mentioned, we will also post some highlights next week from the Twin Cities.

President Bill Clinton Fires up the delegates.

Senator Joe Biden accepts his party’s vice-presidential nomination.

Senator Barack Obama joins his running mate on stage.

Some of the more colorful hat-wear among delegates.

Protesters Shannon Collins and Olivia Christian.

The Brookings Institution this week rated 61 federal Web sites based on 18 criteria such as publications, databases, audiovisual material, disability access, personalization, and privacy and security policies.  This blog’s mother ship, LOC.gov, ranked No. 8.  The full PDF report is here.  (Congrats to our friends at USA.gov!)

We’re constantly working to enhance our Web presence, to present more content in more useful ways, and to improve the user experience.  And we’re doing it all with one thing in mind: you.

If you’re new to LOC.gov or myLOC.gov–or even if you’re not–take a moment to look around, then come back and let us know what you think.  What are we doing right?  Where do you think we have room for improvement?

Time was, the most common question we would get at the Library of Congress was, “Where are all the books?” (The answer is here.)

But a new question has begun to rival that query in frequency: “Where is the ‘Book of Secrets’?”

Well, for the next month, at least, you can find it at the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

The December 2007 movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” has been written about here before. The heroes of the smash Walt Disney Pictures sequel came to the real Library of Congress in search of the movie’s title tome, en route to big treasure. The book (as far as even some of us in the government know, at least) is fictitious, but the prop “Book of Secrets” has proven an object of fascination. It is richly detailed and contains calligraphic reproductions of the handwriting of every president from Washington to Clinton, as well as conspiracy-related ephemera of all kinds.

The “Book of Secrets,” along with the prop “John Wilkes Booth’s diary” (a movie version of an actual historical object) are part of a special display at the Library through Sept. 27. The display features not only the props, but also images from scenes shot at the Library, along with a looping video of two bonus features from the movie’s DVD: a behind-the-scenes look at the Library itself, along with the making of the “Book of Secrets” prop.

Just don’t ask us what’s on page 47!

Further to the “Surface” technology I mentioned yesterday, you can see it in action for yourself in this ABC News story (about halfway in).  NOTE: Sometimes it will say that the previous link doesn’t exist, which is generally rectified by refreshing your browser.

Also on the convention front, I’m pleased to announce that the Library has its own “embed” who will be covering both party conventions for us.

Photographer Carol M. Highsmith, who has already donated to the Library and the American people a substantial copyright-free image archive, will be doing the same for us in Denver and in the Twin Cities. Before we get the whole batch from her, she has agreed to send me at least a few of her best shots during each convention, which I expect to feature here this week and next.

You can learn more about this amazing woman in the December 2007 issue of the Library of Congress Information Bulletin.

As Americans settle in to watch the two major party nominating conventions this week and next, have you ever wondered what political conventions were like before the days of the Web, television, or even the telegraph?

The Humanities and Social Sciences division at the Library of Congress has provided timely summaries of the Democratic and Republican national conventions dating back to 1832 and 1856, respectively. (As I write this, it is labeled “New” on the page of the Library’s Main Reading Room.)

As of today, staff have completed summaries for all the Democratic conventions and expect to complete the remaining Republican summaries in the next couple of days.

In a related vein, Microsoft is using historical content from the Library of Congress in new technology being showcased at both conventions:

Microsoft is also introducing Surface, a combination of hardware and software in a 30-inch tabletop device with a touch interface. [...] It will [...] provide information and images from past conventions that has been made available by the Library of Congress [...] .

I saw a video demonstration of the tables, and they look pretty nifty.  You can pull up a map of the United States and touch on the cities where past conventions have been held.  Then you can manipulate digital assets from each convention such as photos, text and videos, splaying them before you a la Tom Cruise in “Minority Report.”

There are almost as many different ways to watch movies today as there are movies themselves: on television (broadcast, cable, satellite, video on-demand, DVR), on disc (DVD or BluRay, at home or on the road), or in digital version on countless varieties of portable devices.

But can anything truly top the experience of watching a film in the most “retro” of ways — in a theater, on the big screen, with great projection, sound and the communal setting of other film buffs surrounding you?

The Library of Congress’s Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va., will be recreating the movie magic of days gone by in its gorgeous, state-of-the-art, Art Deco-style theater. The new theater next week kicks off its free film series with selections from the National Film Registry.

The theater (not to mention the conservation center itself) is chock-full of wonderful things, such as the ability to screen just about any movie format imaginable — including nitrate stock, making the theater one of only a handful of such facilities in the nation. As you can see from the photo, an organ can rise from a pit to accompany silent films, just as it was done at the dawn of Hollywood.

Even if you don’t live in or especially near Culpeper, the experience might be worth the trip!

A little more depth and background from the Culpeper Star Exponent can be found here.

UPDATE: The theater now has its own page on LOC.gov, here.

The full line-up, and what to know if you’d like to partake, follow the jump …

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You can find out that answer to that question and many more in the August edition of the Library of Congress Wise Guide, which is now online.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year, because it is one of the most compelling versions of “show and tell” anyone will ever get to see!

Every year for the past few years, thanks to the generosity of the late Mrs. Jefferson Patterson and the James Madison Council, the Library of Congress’s private-sector advisory group, as many as 50 interns have come to the Library through the Junior Fellows program.

They spend several weeks during the summer combing through both uncataloged copyright deposits and collections acquired through gifts, looking for “hidden” gems. And every year they do not fail to impress.

Past finds have included a 1900 blueprint for a proposed expansion of the White House; a 1906 photograph of baseball great Cy Young; a typescript of Cole Porter’s 1916 debut Broadway musical, “See America First”; a 1954 home movie of Marilyn Monroe; and an orchestral score by Jerry Goldsmith for the 1968 film “Planet of the Apes.”

This year, 200 items were showcased, including Copies of the Virginia and New Jersey Plans (1787) upon which the current bicameral U.S. political system is based; a map of the proposed U.S. Capitol grounds by F.C. De Krafft (1822); selected items from the Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Collection (1841–1935); the April 21, 1865, issue of the Weekly National Republican, which details Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath; a rare first-edition piece of instrumental sheet music for the “Maple Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin (1899); a rare print of “The Rajah’s Casket” (1906) by Pathé Frères, one of the first companies to experiment with the use of hand-coloring in motion pictures; and items pertaining to the 1929 film “Applause,” directed by Rouben Mamoulian, along with personal snapshots of the director on holiday with Greta Garbo.

Check out some highlights after the jump.

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Yep, now it’s even easier to hear your favorite authors (interspersed, of course, with my best attempts at probing questions).

The 2008 National Book Festival author podcasts are now available via iTunes. (HUZZAH!) The direct subscription link is here (link opens in iTunes).

The 2007 National Book Festival podcasts have also been posted, but for some reason, I wasn’t able to get a direct link for those. If you have a burning desire to hear those, however, you can search iTunes for “2007 National Book Festival,” and it will pull up the subscription link. UPDATE: Here is the link for 2007 (link opens in iTunes).

I know, many of you are saying, “It’s about time.” Unfortunately, in the government, these things aren’t always as easy as flipping a switch. But we’re firmly committed to our march deep into Web 2.0 territory!

As always, you can also access all the NBF podcasts on our own site and download them or listen to the streams here.

And don’t forget, the 2008 National Book Festival is Saturday, Sept. 27, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. — free and open to the public! (If you listen to any of the podcasts, my apologies in advance for beating that particular message into the ground.)

There are still days in this job, even after two years, when I have to pinch myself. One such moment has come during the past few weeks with the opportunity to get to know Kay Ryan, appointed by the Librarian of Congress as the new Poet Laureate (official title: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry).

I haven’t yet met her, but after several phone calls, emails, and a recorded podcast–to say nothing of all of her poetry I’ve now read–I’ve developed a fondness for her in several ways.

Ryan is fascinating to me, and often a study in contradictions. At the same time, while she lives a somewhat solitary, or what some have described as a hermit-like, existence, by dint of her voluminous published works and readings, she is to that extent a very public person. Her poetry is rarely personal, yet when it connects with the reader, can often elicit a very personal response. Despite her status as an author, she genuinely seems interested in avoiding great adulation or attention. She has been amenable to media interviews, to the extent that they fit her now-upended life, and she comes across as exceptionally genuine–telling the listener what she feels, not what she feels they want her to say. And, as has been widely commented upon, she has carved her unique place in the world while at the same time teaching remedial English for more than 30 years.

Suffice it to say that I am now probably one of her biggest fans.

Her poems are dense, thoughtful, witty and usually playful gems–so dense that a full appreciation almost always requires additional readings. Each is itself something of a modern proverb, using a philosophical economy that impels the reader to rethink the significance of things once taken for granted or thought of as commonly understood.

As a person, she is a complete delight: utterly modest, self-effacing, funny. She claims that she really only “turns on her brain” when she is writing, but anyone who gets to interact her would tell you that it’s completely untrue. In conversations and interviews, including the podcast above, it seems that the perfect metaphor is always in her grasp. (She described her reaction to being named Poet Laureate as like a frog that was boiled too quickly, noting that a frog in water doesn’t notice it is being boiled to death if the heat is turned up slowly.)

In all the conversations I’ve had with her and interviews I’ve read, I don’t really recall seeing the same metaphor or profundity repeated twice, a testament to her creative agility. Speaking as someone who lives in the realm of “talking points” and “staying on message,” I find that a refreshing and admirable trait.

But my real subject of this post is to encourage people to get to know our new Poet Laureate. Read her books, or at least whet your appetite with what can be found online. A few examples (aside from the podcast above, in which she read a couple of poems) can be found in this excellent online-resource page on our Web site. The page includes links to three Ryan poems from the Poetry 180 project and a streaming audio file of a 2001 reading she gave at the Library.

There is also an expansive list of articles, reviews and other tastes of her work a little farther down that page, here, and links on her book agent’s page here.

Her fans will also get a chance to hear and see her in person at the National Book Festival on Sept. 27 and at the Library’s event opening the literary season on Oct. 16. You can bet I will be there!