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Library of Congress

"Straight Outta Compton" just landed a spot in the National Recording Registry.

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N.W.A., NPR Among This Year’s National Recording Registry Inductees

The latest class of 25 also includes Judy Garland and Vin Scully

Workers labor in the fields in the shadow of Mt. Williamson.

Cool Finds

View Daily Life in a Japanese-American Internment Camp Through the Lens of Ansel Adams

In 1943, one of America’s best-known photographers documented one of the best-known internment camps

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden with Guest Librarian Daliyah Marie Arana

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A Four-Year-Old Bibliophile Is the Library of Congress’ Latest Guest Librarian

Daliyah Maria Arana has read more than 1,000 books

Score was a tiny communications satellite attached to a really big rocket.

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Celebrate Christmas With the First Voice Ever Broadcast in Space

Eisenhower kicked off the space race with a goodwill wish

A panoramic map of the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, MO.

Cool Finds

The Library of Congress Is Putting Its Map Collection on the Map

A new partnership with the Digital Public Library of America will put three major LOC map collections online

Today, America's founding documents reside in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives.

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What Happened to America’s Most Precious Documents After Pearl Harbor?

Librarians and archivists made sure the nation’s records didn’t become casualties of World War II

This map changed how the world saw itself.

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Discover One of History’s Most Ambitious Maps

Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map was the oldest document to use “America” to describe the body of land between Africa and Asia

While on tour in the 1980s and 1990s, Ray Charles played this Yamaha KX88 electronic keyboard MIDI controller, customized with Braille.

Cool Finds

How the Library of Congress Is Digitizing Its Braille Music Collection

It’s not as simple as putting it through a scanner

Carla Hayden will be the nation's first woman and first African-American to serve as Librarian of Congress.

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Meet Your New Librarian of Congress

Carla Hayden will make history as the first African-American in the role—and the first woman

Scene from All is Lost, a 1923 film identified at the Library of Congress's Mostly Lost Film Festival

Cool Finds

The Library of Congress Needs Your Help to Identify These Silent Movies

For the fifth year, the “Mostly Lost” film festival calls on its audience to help identify obscure details in movie-making history

Cool Finds

Three Surprising Finds from the New Alan Lomax Archive

A new online database shares more than 17,000 recordings from the folk music archivist

The Library of Congress, where the subject term "illegal alien" will no longer be used.

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The Library of Congress Will Ditch the Subject Heading “Illegal Aliens”

Student activists are to thank for the change

Book hoarding has never been so lucrative.

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Competitive Book Collecting Is a Thing

Young bibliophiles duke it out in the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest

Tom Randle plays Macheath, or “Mack the Knife,” in a production of Benjamin Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera.

Cool Finds

The Strange Career of “Mack the Knife”

As old Macheath is inducted into the National Recording Registry, here’s a look back at his long musical life

This 1956 poster is just one of thousands of items of Rosa Parks' personal collection now digitized by the Library of Congress.

Cool Finds

Rosa Parks’ Papers Are Now Online

Read about everything from her meditations on the Civil Rights Movement to her recipe for “featherlite” peanut butter pancakes

Gene Luen Yang becomes the first graphic novelist to be appointed as the national ambassador for young people's literature.

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Meet the New National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature

The Library of Congress’ decision to appoint graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang to the post reflects a growing acceptance of comic books

A stunning, modern wing of the Royal Library of Copenhagen, added in 1999.

The World’s Most Interesting (and Accessible) Library Collections

From the Magna Carta to Winnie the Pooh, what you can see at some of the world’s great libraries

Warren Harding's affair with Carrie Fulton Phillips carried on for 15 years, up through the time when he served as a U.S. senator.

Document Deep Dive

Warren Harding’s Love Letters Finally Give Us Something to Remember Him For

Locked away for 50 years, the secret correspondence reveals a steamy relationship between the future president and his mistress

Noon mass at Saint Vincent de Paul's Church on D-Day.

Photos From the Hours After Americans Heard About the D-Day Invasion

Black and white photos from the Library of Congress show New Yorkers rallying, praying, on June 6, 1944

Emma Thompson captures the flinty Mrs. Travers brilliantly, from her tightly-curled hair to the “No No No” mantra she barks endlessly at the Disney creative team.

How Did P.L. Travers, the Prickly Author of Mary Poppins, Really Fare Against Walt Disney?

Historian Amy Henderson searches for the spoonfuls of sugar-coated truth in the new film, “Saving Mr. Banks”

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