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We’re on the hunt for two U.S. communities to include in Vivian Li’s Innovator in Residence Project, Anywhere Adventures! Visitors to the mobile experience are currently able to explore three American communities, Seattle, Chicago, and Southeastern Wyoming, through items from the Library’s digital collections and learn about the stories, people, and events that shaped everyday life in these places. With the site, visitors can do a […]
This post is co-written by Abbie Grotke (Section Head), Amanda Lehman (Digital Collections Specialist), and Melissa Wertheimer (Senior Digital Collections Specialist) of the Web Archiving Section to close our 25th-anniversary celebration year with some highlights of the program. We Have a History In 2025 we wrapped up our 25th year of web archiving at the […]
Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress digital collections? The Signal shares regular updates to our digital collections and we love showing off our colleagues’ hard work from across the Library. Read on for a sample of recent additions and a few favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates. This […]
Illustration: Мария Пестова/Adobe Stock At a time when libraries are facing immense, unprecedented challenges—fiscal, logistical, institutional, existential—the role of library supporters has never been more critical. These types of challenges were top of mind at United for Libraries (UFL) Virtual 2025, held in late July. Every year, UFL brings together trustees, foundation and Friends members, […]
Illustration: Antonio Rodriguez/Adobe Stock The world of college admissions drastically shifted in 2023, when the Supreme Court’s landmark rulings in two cases—Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina—rejected race-conscious affirmative action policies. Just two years later, as some schools report declining enrollment of students of color, a flurry […]
The Monkeypuzzlers were one of 47 teams across 10 branches to compete in Mid-Columbia Libraries’ inaugural speed puzzling tournament in southeastern Washington last January. Photo: Madison Rosenbaum/Mid-Columbia Libraries Hands flew, timers ticked, and tensions ran high. But team Piece Out found success by sticking to a classic strategy: starting its 500-piece jigsaw puzzle with the […]
Brian Selznick Photo: Brittany Cruz-Fejeran Until recently, Caldecott Medal–winning author-illustrator Brian Selznick had never written for young adults, nor written a full-fledged love story. That changed with Run Away with Me (Scholastic, 2025), a YA novel about a transformative summer romance between two teenage boys in 1980s Rome that is interwoven with love stories spanning […]
Zora Neale Hurston. Photo: Library of Congress, Prints and Photography Division 10Number of Zora Neale Hurston plays—most of which were never published—held by the Library of Congress (LC) in Washington, D.C. The prolific 20th-century writer and anthropologist wrote the plays between 1925 and 1944, but they were not widely known until found in an LC […]
Your story matters. Not just because you curate collections or answer reference questions, but because you build bridges between people and knowledge. You have witnessed quiet triumphs: a child learning to read, a student discovering their passion, a senior reconnecting with history. These moments are part of our collective story, and they deserve to be […]
2025 wasn’t the best year in memory. Between job challenges, 8 months of unemployment, and spending weeks recovering after having 20% of my right kidney removed due to renal cell carcinoma….let’s just say it wasn’t the best year for me or my family. But even in the midst of all of the troubles, there were […]
Getting started with web accessibility improvements can feel overwhelming. The ultimate goal should be a website that maximizes accessibility and considers inclusive access in all decisions. But even incremental improvements have real benefits. A good approach is to look at the most high-impact changes you can make early in the process to improve accessibility for […]
Master storyteller Angela Lloyd’s “sunbrella.” Everyone knows Cinderella, the story of the unfortunate young woman who, thanks to her fairy godmother, rides in a pumpkin, misplaces her glass slipper, and ends up marrying a prince. But have you heard the version where she’s aided by a magical fish instead? Or the one where she loses […]
This post is the third in a series about the Library’s 2025 Innovator in Residence, Vivian Li, and her project Anywhere Adventures. Following the selection of three communities, and a visit to the Library for research, the mobile experience has now officially launched! The 2025 Innovator in Residence project, Anywhere Adventures, has officially launched! The […]
More than a decade after its launch, the Science Blogs Web Archive continues to grow and evolve. In this interview, Jennifer “JJ” Harbster reflects on building and maintaining the collection, while intern Yahir Brito brings a fresh perspective on updating and expanding it. Together, they share a few of their favorite blogs and discuss why […]
One of the best collections of education-related AI tools, the Ithaka S+R Generative AI Product Tracker has been upgraded from Google Sheets to Airtable, according to a post on the Ithaka blog. They’ve also taken the opportunity to tweak which tools they’re covering: We have also refined the scope of the tracker. While our tracker […]
When I saw the title of Mita’s most recent post, The internet was designed to route around gatekeepers, I was expecting and hoping for a cool example or tool along the lines of Jump the Paywall. Alas, her post is actually a sober reminder that “publishers don’t need academic libraries to reach faculty or students […]
Today’s guest post is from Lauren Algee, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist & By the People community manager at the Library of Congress. What do patriotic songs, society women’s diaries, and nautical maps have in common? All give context to life in America before, during, and after the Revolutionary War – and you’re invited to transcribe them all […]
Dozens of library cards from around the world on display at Northport-East Northport Public Library. Photos: Kathryn Heaviside Kathryn Heaviside, librarian and gallery coordinator at Northport–East Northport (N.Y.) Public Library, doesn’t do anything by halves. So when she got obsessed with tracking down different library card designs, she ignored her supervisor’s suggestion to limit her […]
Very interesting – I just found myself looking at an article in ScienceDirect, and was presented with a large panel touting an AI Reading Assistant, something I know we don’t subscribe to at the U of Calgary. I wondered if maybe we DID subscribe to it, but it hadn’t yet been announced. After signing in […]
Looking for clever and thoughtful gift ideas for the book lover in your life? Bookmark this article: American Libraries has gathered an eclectic list of literary-themed gifts—covering all price points and ranging from apparel to tech to kitchen accessories. $10 or less Book Club Cocktail Napkins ($9) Make your book club laugh with these “Welcome […]
