Due to a planned power outage, on Saturday, Aug. 10, all reading rooms and research areas, the Library Shop, and the Madison and Adams buildings will be closed to the public. The Thomas Jefferson Building’s Great Hall and exhibitions will be open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on August 9 and 10. Most of the Library’s public websites (loc.gov and others) will be unavailable from 5 p.m. ET, Friday, Aug. 9 through Sunday, Aug. 11.  

Click here for more information.

The Library Shop will be closed on Friday, Sept. 27, in order to perform annual inventory. Normal operating hours will resume on Saturday, Sept. 28. 

Click here for more information.

On Tuesday, January 7, 2020, all buildings of the Library of Congress will close at 1 p.m. ET due to anticipated inclement weather. All public areas are closed and all public events are canceled for the remainder of the day.

Beginning Monday, April 6, the Library of Congress will modify the evening public service hours and associated reference services within three reading rooms. The new service hours will be 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday hours in these reading room will remain 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hours in the Library’s other reading rooms are not affected.

Click here for more information.

Take and read.

Modern library conservation was born in the aftermath of a catastrophic flood in Florence, Italy on November 4, 1966. Water from the Arno River devastated the collections of the National Central Library of Florence. An international team of bookbinders and restorers was assembled to save what they could; however in many cases the damage was irreversible. Many lessons were...

The post Lab Notes: The Florence Flood and the emergence of library conservation appeared first on New-York Historical Society.

Research Librarian Allison Heinbaugh stalked the stacks of the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library looking for evidence of spies and spycraft in the 18th century. The bibliography she compiled tells its own story of loyalty, secrecy, and stealth.

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Link to Notice

The University of Lethbridge Library is not able to accept donations of books, journals or magazines for the main library collection at this time.  Several factors have led to this decision: the COVID-19 restrictions that have resulted in restricted access to campus, ongoing budget constraints and staff shortages. 

We will continue to consider significant gifts for Special Collections and Archives. Please contact Wendy Merkley, Associate University Librarian (wendy.merkley@uleth.ca) if you wish to discuss a donation of rare or archival materials. 

The Prelinger Library is a gem. Founded in 2004 and operated by Rick Prelinger and Megan Shaw Prelinger, the library houses over 50,000 books, periodicals and pieces of print ephemera, the collection specializes in materials and works not typically found in public libraries. The public library is privately funded in San Francisco.

The library at the National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., boasts a rare collection of strategy guides, designs, and background materials from old-school video games. Chris Kohler takes a look at the original documents from classic games, including Wizard and the Princess, Mystery House, and King’s Quest II.

The public will have the opportunity to provide input to the Library of Congress on expertise needed by the next Register of Copyrights, the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, announced today.

Click here for more information.

Crumpton, Michael A., author

McKinlay, James, MHRD

The Library of Congress invites you to a talk by Professor Charles King on his new book, Gods of the Upper Air:  How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century.

Friday, December 13, 2019

6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Preceded by a related treasure display: 5:15 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The Montpelier Room, sixth floor, the James Madison Building, The Library of Congress

101 Independence Avenue, S.E.

Metro station:  Capitol South

The talk begins at 6:00pm.  Professor King made use of the Margaret Mead papers at the Library of Congress, and a rare showing of several interesting items from Mead’s manuscripts will be available from 5:15pm to 6:00pm, before the talk, in the same room, the Montpelier Room.

Franz Boas (1858-1942), the pioneering German-American professor of anthropology at Columbia University, rejected the then popular notion of cultural hierarchies. His influential teaching, based on observation, was that cultural differences are not the result of biological differences, such as race. This book is a group portrait of Boas and some of his most eminent students:  Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, Ruth Benedict, and Ella Cara Deloria.  The book has received acclaim in reviews by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Book sale and signing will follow.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gods-of-the-upper-air-a-book-talk-with-author-charles-king-tickets-82855185089

Click here for more information.

The Researcher & Reference Services Division at the Library of Congress is offering research orientation sessions on the following dates in room 139B of the Jefferson Building.  You may register for a single session by selecting a date and completing the online form .  The sessions, taught by librarians, will cover search strategies for finding items in a variety of formats at the world’s largest library.   Individuals requiring accommodations for any of these events are requested to submit a request at least five business days in advance by contacting (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

General Orientation Sessions
Mondays, 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.:

Jan.13^th

Feb.10^th

March 9^th

March 16^th

April 13^th

April 20^th

Thursdays, 6:30 p.m.-8:00 p.m.:

Feb.6^th

March 5^th

April 2^nd

Saturdays, 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

Jan.11^th

Feb.1^st

March 14^th

April 11^th

Genealogy Orientation Sessions

Wednesdays, 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Feb.12^th

March 11^th

April 8^th

May 13^th

Saturdays, 10:00 a.m.-11:30 a.m.

Feb.8^th
March 7^th
April 4th

Click here for more information.

The Law Library of Congress offers free webinars and in-person classes in Washington, D.C. The in-person classes are held in Madison Building, Room LM-201.

 “Orientation to Law Library Collections" (10am-11am) – Thursday March 5.  This session is designed for patrons who are familiar with legal research, and would instead prefer an introduction to the collections and services specific to the Law Library of Congress.

WEBINAR "Orientation to Legal Research (OLR): Statutes” (11am-12pm) – Thursday March 19. This entry in the OLR series provides an overview of U.S. statutory and legislative research, including information about how to find and use the U.S. Code, the U.S. Statutes at Large, and U.S. federal bills and resolutions.

"Orientation to Legal Research (OLR): Tracing Federal Regulations” (10am-11am) – Tuesday March 24. This entry in the OLR series provides an overview of U.S. federal regulations, including information about the notice and comment rulemaking process, the publication and citation of regulations, and the tracing of regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations, to the proposed rule in the Federal Register, to the regulation’s docket.

WEBINAR "Congress.gov"  (2pm-3pm) - Thursday March 26. This orientation is designed to give a basic overview of Congress.gov. While the focus of the session will be searching legislation and the Congressional member information attached to the legislation, the new features of Congress.gov will be highlighted.

To register, visit the Law Library’s “Webinars and In-Person Orientations” webpage, http://www.loc.gov/law/opportunities/seminar-orient.php .

For maps of the Madison and Jefferson Building see, https://www.loc.gov/visit/maps-and-floor-plans/.

Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov

Click here for more information.

Notice: Library buildings are closed to the public until April 1. Public events are canceled until May 11.

Click here for more information.

You can get tickets for any 2020 event that is part of Concerts from the Library of Congress.

PLEASE NOTE: All films, talks and pre-concert events this year are general admission with no ticket required, unless otherwise indicated. You can still register for reminders and updates about those events, but seating will be first-come, first-served.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress announces two cultural events during the 2020 National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual commemoration of Japan’s 1912 gift to the U.S. of 3,020 cherry trees. An artwork display and book launch for “Cherry Blossoms: Sakura Collections from the Library of Congress” will kick off the Library’s celebration on Thursday, April 9. The gift book visualizes the fascinating history of cherry blossoms through original works of art from the Library of Congress collections.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Vibrant springtime traditions of cherry blossom viewing in Japan and Washington, D.C., are explored in the new book “Cherry Blossoms: Sakura Collections from the Library of Congress,” published today by Smithsonian Books, in association with the Library of Congress. Events at the Library in April will feature the book and celebrate the annual return of the cherry blossoms to the nation's capital.

Click here for more information.

Country Music Icon Trisha Yearwood and Gershwin Prize Recipient Garth Brooks “In Conversation with Librarian of Congress,” March 2

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden will host a conversation with Grammy Award-winning country music singer and songwriter Garth Brooks and country music artist, actress, author, celebrity chef and wife of Brooks, Trisha Yearwood on Monday, March 2 at 7:00 p.m. in the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

Brooks will receive the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song later that week on Wednesday, March 4. The country music titan and multiple hall of famer is the youngest recipient of the prestigious prize. You can follow and join in on the #GershwinPrize conversation via Twitter.

During the conversation, Brooks and Yearwood will discuss their success as a country music power couple, their careers as music industry changemakers and the humanitarian projects they devote their efforts to each year. The conversation is being presented as part of the Library’s initiative to Explore America’s Changemakers.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

The Library of Congress is extending its public hours on Thursday evenings and will feature regular live programming for visitors as part of a new initiative, Live! At the Library, beginning April 2 to showcase the broad range of literature, poetry, art, music, digital collections and other holdings at the national library.

The Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building and all exhibitions at the Library – currently featuring the long fight for women’s voting rights and Rosa Parks’ groundbreaking role in civil rights – will be open for extended hours on Thursday evenings from 5 to 8 p.m. every week. Exhibitions and programs will remain free and open to everyone. The Main Reading Room will be open for research during this time, and visitors and researchers will have the opportunity to register for reader cards. Other selected reading rooms may also be open on Thursday nights as a part of evening programming.

Click here for more information.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

Out of an abundance of caution, the Library of Congress announced today that all Library of Congress buildings and facilities will be closed to the public starting at 5 p.m. today until Thursday, April 1, 2020 at 8 a.m. to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus.

Library employees, contractors, authorized visitors and other credentialed Capitol Hill staff will continue to have access to the buildings. During the closure, all Library-sponsored public programs are postponed or cancelled through the end of March.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress announced today that all public events at the Library are canceled until May 11 to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. Whenever possible, the Library will reschedule the public programs that have been canceled. We will also provide regular public updates on the operating status of Library facilities. Library of Congress buildings and facilities remain closed to the public until Wednesday, April 1, 2020 at 8 a.m.

Click here for more information.

Out of an abundance of caution, all Library of Congress buildings and facilities will be closed to the public, including researchers and others with reader identification cards, until further notice to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. The Library has reduced the number of people in Library buildings to a very small number of necessary individuals.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress announced today that it will cancel all scheduled public events at the Library until July 1 as part of its ongoing efforts to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID-19 coronavirus. Whenever possible, the Library will reschedule the public programs that have been canceled. We will also provide regular public updates on the operating status of Library facilities.

Click here for more information.

Browsery Z286.S37 S48 2018

Online training being imparted to librarians

Hayden Library - GA195.L66 B75 2018

Seats are still available for tomorrow's Constitution Day event! Kannon Shanmugam, head of the Supreme Court practice at Paul, Weiss, will speak about the role of the judiciary in our constitutional system and the relationship between the judiciary and the other branches of government.

Kannon is a partner in the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.  He heads the firm’s Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice and is managing partner of the firm’s Washington office. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s premier appellate advocates, Kannon has argued 27 cases before the Supreme Court, including several of the Court’s most significant recent business and criminal cases.  Beyond the Supreme Court, he has argued dozens of appeals in courts across the country.  In ranking Kannon in the first tier of appellate advocates nationwide, Chambers USA praised him as “brilliant” and “unflappable."
 
The discussion will take place at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, September 17, in the Mumford Room (LM-649), located on the sixth floor of the Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. The program is free and open to the public. Registration is highly recommended.

Please register for this event via Eventbrite. 

Save the date on your calendars! The Law Library will present the Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture in Jurisprudence on Wednesday, December 4 at 5:00 p.m.

Registration will open in mid-November.

Click here for more information.

Join us for the 2019 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture in Jurisprudence!

Philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum will be the featured speaker for the 10th anniversary of the event on Wednesday, December 4 at 5:00 p.m. Brian Butler, Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina Asheville, will interview Professor Nussbaum on “Philosophy and Life: Fragility, Emotions, Capabilities.” A question-and-answer period will follow.

Register at kellogg2019.eventbrite.com. We recommend reserving your tickets early, as these will go quickly and space is limited! We will not livestream this event, so you will want to be in the room!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We regret to announce the cancellation of the 2019 Kellogg Lecture. The lecture will be rescheduled to a date in 2020. Registrants have received notices via Eventbrite about the cancellation.

Announcements for the new date will be posted to the Law Library’s blog, sent via our News & Events email list, and posted as a new Eventbrite page.

We hope that you will join us next year.

The Law Library of Congress

Join the Law Library on Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 5:30 p.m. as we commemorate Human Rights Day with a viewing of the Shall Not Be Denied Exhibition and a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Colleen Shogan, the assistant deputy librarian of the Library Collections and Services Group and the Library’s representative on the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission. The panelists include Corrine McConnaughy, associate professor of political science at George Washington University and author of The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment, and Elaine Weiss, journalist and author of The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.

Register at humanrightsday2019.eventbrite.com. We recommend reserving your tickets early, as these will go quickly and space is limited! We will not livestream this event, so you will want to be in the room!

The Law Library of Congress is excited to bring you a new series of webinars focused on foreign and comparative law. The Comparative Law Webinar Series of classes is designed to shed light on some of the comparative law issues researched by the foreign law experts at the Law Library of Congress. This entry in the series provides an overview of the EU and UK perspectives on Brexit, including the UK legal and political actions for Brexit, the Benn Act, the Withdrawal Agreement, art. 50 of the TEU, post-Brexit payments, and the future EU-UK relationship. The webinar will be held on Thursday, January 23rd at 2pm.

Click here for more information and to register perspectives-on-brexit.eventbrite.com.

We hope you can join us for the 2020 Supreme Court Fellows Program Annual Lecture! The Law Library of Congress and the Supreme Court Fellows Program will present a conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Thursday, Feb. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C.

David M. Rubenstein, trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society and chair of the Madison Council of the Library of Congress, will moderate the program.

The event is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Please register via Eventbrite: https://supct2020.eventbrite.com.

Request ADA accommodations five business days in advance at 202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov.

With the upcoming national election in Israel on March 2, the Law Library of Congress is holding a webinar from the Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series on “What You Need To Know About the Upcoming Israeli National Election.” The webinar will be held on February 27, 2020 at 10:00 am. To register to attend the webinar, use our Eventbrite link. 

The Foreign and Comparative Law Webinar Series of classes is designed to shed light on some of the foreign and comparative law issues researched by the foreign law experts at the Law Library of Congress.This entry in the series will address general principles of the Israeli government system, rules governing national election, the method of distribution in Knesset seats, government formation procedures, prime-ministerial qualifications and term limits and the legal implications of a Knesset Member’s indictment and immunity status on presidential discretion in assignment of government formation. Topics may be adjusted as warranted to address ongoing developments.

For more information on the webinar, please read our announcement blog post.

We are excited to launch Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents! Going live this week, this is the Library's first crowdsourced transcription project in languages other than English.

The Law Library of Congress invites you to help improve access to our unique collection of historic Spanish legal materials through the Library's crowdsourcing platform, By the People (BTP). BTP is a virtual volunteering website where anyone with an internet connection can transcribe digitized Library collections to improve discoverability and use while engaging with the materials.

Our aim is not to translate the collection items but to transcribe the documents word-for-word so we can make it easier for researchers to find primary source materials.

Donate your time and expertise as a virtual volunteer. Volunteers will have the opportunity to transcribe and tag these documents online and/or review other volunteers’ transcriptions. No specific time commitment or qualifications are required.

Have questions on how to transcribe these documents? We are hosting a webinar that will provide instruction on how to identify and transcribe the special scripts in the collection.

We encourage you to register in advance using the link below:

How and Why to Transcribe Herencia: Spanish Legal Documents

Thursday, February 27, 2020

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (ET) (English Version)

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (ET) (Spanish Version)

To celebrate the launch of the Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents campaign, we will be hosting an on-site transcribe-a-thon here at the Library of Congress on March 19, 2020 at 5:00 pm ET! 

Register to join us in person in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building for a fun evening of transcribing with fellow volunteers. You do not need to read Spanish, Latin, or Catalan to participate in this project!

Can't make it to the event? We will have a virtual transcribe-a-thon happening ALL DAY on March 19! Register as a virtual attendee to join a worldwide community of transcribers.

Want to know more about how to host a Transcribe-a-thon so you can join in virtually? Register for our upcoming webinar on instructions and tips for hosting a successful transcription event! We’ll cover how to join in on March 19 and how to organize independently.

On March 19 at 7:00 p.m. in the Jefferson Building, National Book Festival Presents Jeffrey Rosen in a discussion of his new book, “Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty and Law,” with Dahlia Lithwick, a senior editor at Slate. Book sales and signing to follow. Co-sponsored by the Law Library of Congress.

Click this link to register for this FREE event and purchase a copy of "Conversations with RBG" (purchase of book not required for attendance).

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This event is part of the Law Library's NIGHT OF LAW at the Thomas Jefferson Building. We also invite you to join our 5:00 p.m. activity, Transcribe-a-thon for Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents. Be sure to register for both events!

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