As the world marks the one-year anniversary of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Library of Congress has been collecting materials and documenting this time in history through a variety of initiatives.

The Library’s rapid-response collecting since the start of lockdowns and social distancing measures over the past year has included acquiring photographs that document the pandemic’s impact on individuals and communities, capturing artists’ responses to the outbreak, mapping the pandemic’s spread and archiving the world’s response online.

Click here for more information.

While Russell Lee’s work is widely known, his story has remained more elusive. A new definitive biography, published by Liveright in association with the Library of Congress, establishes Lee as one of the most influential documentary photographers in American history.

In “Russell Lee: A Photographer’s Life and Legacy,” historian and archivist Mary Jane Appel examines the paradoxes of Lee’s dual status as an independently wealthy man and the most prolific photographer of the Great Depression.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress has acquired more than 200 sketches of the Rodney King police brutality trials against four Los Angeles police officers in the 1990s, drawn by courtroom sketch artist Mary Chaney (1927-2005).

Although the focus is on the police officers, some of the sketches feature King on the witness stand describing his injuries while recording of the beating plays at his civil trial against the city of Los Angeles. Others show Judge John G. Davies (1929-2020) and members of the jury.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress will continue its critically acclaimed season of Concerts from the Library of Congress with an offering of virtual concerts, interviews and conversations with artists and composers, lectures, curator talks and educational programs. The spring series kicks off on March 12 with a performance from the young musicians of the New World Symphony, followed by performances from Scottish pianist Steven Osborne on March 19 and the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam on March 26.

All events will be made available at 8 p.m. ET on the scheduled premiere date on loc.gov/concerts, the Library’s YouTube channel and the Performing Arts at the Library of Congress Facebook page. All events of the season are free, and tickets are not required.

Click here for more information.

A series of new events exploring ideas and actions to strengthen America’s democracy will debut in March, April and May with the launch of Our Common Purpose: A Campaign for Civic Strength at the Library of Congress. The initiative is created and hosted by Danielle Allen, who was awarded the 2020 John W. Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Study of Humanity.

This new campaign will feature public events hosted virtually on the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site, along with workshops for K-12 educators to help educators across the country experiment and create new ways of making civic education come to life.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress has acquired the Aramont Library, a collection of rare books from some of the most prolific authors and artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The gift by a donor who wishes to remain anonymous marks the first time the Aramont Library has been made available to the public. 

The latest issue of the Library of Congress Magazine features the Aramont Library and some of the most distinctive examples of the library’s volumes. 

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress announced this week that it is convening a public committee to enhance communication with external stakeholders about the technology-related aspects of the U.S. Copyright Office’s ongoing modernization initiative.  The announcement was published in the Federal Register.

Members of the public interested in participating on the Copyright Public Modernization Committee are asked to submit a current curriculum vitae and a statement of interest addressing the questions identified in the Federal Register no later than March 15, 2021, to cpmc@loc.gov.

Click here for more information.

Important new books on Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt and on humanity’s inclination to war will headline the winter literary season of the Library of Congress. The Library will also feature a conversation with the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and a symposium on diversity in books for young people.

All programs will be virtual and premiere on the Library's Facebook page and its YouTube site (with captions). These presentations will be available for viewing afterward at those sites and on the Library’s website at loc.gov/collections/event-videos/.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress today announced a new, multiyear initiative to connect more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other minority communities by expanding its collections, using technology to enable storytelling and offering more internship and fellowship opportunities, supported by a $15 million investment from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The new initiative, Of the People: Widening the Path, creates new opportunities for more Americans to engage with the Library and add their perspectives to the Library’s collections, allowing the national library to share a more inclusive American story. This work will expand the Library’s efforts to ensure that a diversity of experiences is reflected in our historical record and inform how we use those materials to understand our past.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress today announced the digitization of 46 Malay letters from the 19^th century, mainly from Malay kings and Southeast Asian notables to William Farquhar, a pioneering British colonial administrator in Singapore (1819-1823), providing online access to an important resource on the founding of that country.

Written in Jawi script, an adaptation of the Arabic script for writing the Malay language, the 46 letters reflect exchanges between Malay rulers and Farquhar, a key figure in the founding of modern Singapore. 

Click here for more information.

Applications are being accepted for the 2021 Library of Congress Literacy Awards from Jan. 15 to March 5. The awards are made possible through the generosity of philanthropist David M. Rubenstein. The Literacy Awards — established by the Library and Rubenstein — were first conferred in 2013 to honor and support organizations working to promote literacy both in the United States and abroad. 

The application rules and a downloadable application form may be accessed at read.gov/literacyawards. Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. ET on March 5, 2021.

Click here for more information.

To honor the innovations and successes of federal libraries, librarians and library technicians in meeting the information demands of government, businesses, scholarly communities and the public, the Federal Library and Information Network (FEDLINK) in the Library of Congress has opened nominations for its national awards for federal librarianship in fiscal year 2020.

For nomination materials, visit the awards section of the FEDLINK website or send an email to fliccfno@loc.gov. The nomination packet includes the nomination form, selection criteria and a list of required supporting materials. All completed nominations must be emailed to fliccfno@loc.gov no later than 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 15, 2021.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress has completed a more than two decade-long initiative to digitize the papers of nearly two dozen early presidents. The Library holds the papers of 23 presidents from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, all of which have been digitized and are now available online.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress has appointed Dennis Clark as chief of Research and Reference Services. Clark brings more than 22 years’ experience as an administrator and librarian to the Library, where he will lead public research services, onsite and online user engagement and the development of the majority of the 30 million items in the Library’s General Collections.

Click here for more information.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today the annual selection of 25 of America’s most influential motion pictures to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will host a television special Tuesday, Dec. 15, starting at 8 p.m. ET to screen a selection of motion pictures named to the registry this year. Hayden will join TCM host and film historian Jacqueline Stewart to discuss the films.

Select titles from 30 years of the National Film Registry are freely available online in the National Screening Room. 

Click here for more information.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced today the annual selection of 25 of America’s most influential motion pictures to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. These films range from the innovative silent film “Suspense,” which was co-directed by a woman in 1913, and Sidney Poitier’s Oscar-winning performance in 1963’s “Lilies of the Field” to the 1978 mega-hit musical “Grease,” 1980’s musical comedy “The Blues Brothers,” and one of the biggest public vote getters, Christopher Nolan’s 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.”

Selected because of their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage, the 2020 titles include blockbusters, musicals, silent films, documentaries and diverse stories transferred from books to screen. They bring the number of films selected for preservation in the registry to 800, a fraction of the 1.3 million films in the Library’s collections.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress will award the 2020 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry to Terrance Hayes, for his book “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin,” and to former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey for lifetime achievement.

The poets will receive their honors during a virtual ceremony Thursday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. ET on the Library’s Facebook page at facebook.com/libraryofcongress and YouTube channel at youtube.com/loc. The public is invited to attend this virtual event.

Click here for more information.

The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation is donating $1 million to reimagine and enhance the visitor experience at the Library of Congress with a new orientation gallery, exhibitions and learning lab, the Library announced today.

The Phoenix-based foundation’s donation to support design and construction of the Library’s visitor experience is one of several major gifts to the project in 2020 and was announced just after Giving Tuesday.

Click here for more information.

Watch these videos just added to the Library of Congress website.

2020 Library of Congress National Book Festival
The National Book Festival continues! Curl up this weekend and watch your favorite authors in newly-released Q&A sessions on these stages:

• Children's Authors
  
  • Don Tate
  • Jon Scieszka & Steven Weinberg
  • Barb Rosenstock
  • Kate DiCamillo & Ann Patchett
  • Pam Muñoz Ryan
  • Angela Dominguez
  • K.A. Holt
  • Deborah Hopkinson
  • Kwame Mbalia
  • Jessica & Parker Curry
  • Jerry Craft
  • Chelsea Clinton
• Teen Authors
  • Becky Albertalli & Aisha Saeed
  • Gene Luen Yang
  • Jason Reynolds
  • Mike Curato
• Family, Food & Field
  • Bill Buford
  • Jesse Dougherty
  • Bruce Feiler
  • David Kamp
  • Judith Warner & Esther Wojcicki
  • Gail Collins
• Fiction & Genre Fiction
  
  • Kali Fajardo-Anstine
  • John Grisham
  • James McBride
  • Ishmael Beah & Maaza Mengiste
  • Colson Whitehead
  • Emily St. John Mandel
  • Alaya Dawn Johnson
  • David Ignatius
• History & Biography
  • Harold Holzer, Ted Widmer & Kai Bird
  • Erica Armstrong Dunbar
  • Eric Foner
  • Heather Cox Richardson
  • David Rubenstein
• Poetry & Prose
  • Juan Felipe Herrera & Robert Pinsky
  • Elizabeth Tallent
• Science
  • Katherine Eban
  • Edward D. Melillo
  • Leland Melvin & Jonathan Eller
• Understanding Our World
  • James A. Robinson
  • Haben Girma
  • Christopher Caldwell & Thomas Frank
  • Daniel Markovits
  • Barton Gellman, David Ignatius & Thomas Rid

Homegrown from Home 2020
Our stay-at-home summer folklife series included talks with the artists. Here are two newly-available chats.

• Conversation with Joe Jencks
• Conversation with Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas

Ron Howard & J.D. Vance on "Hillbilly Elegy"
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden spoke with film director Ron Howard and J.D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis," about the creative process of bringing the book to the screen with the release of the new film, "Hillbilly Elegy."

Celebrating Beethoven at 250 at the Library of Congress
The Library's Raymond White discussed some of the Beethoven treasures held in the music division of the Library of Congress.

The People's Art
Julie Goldsmith discussed "The People's Art: The Chicago Tribune's Transformation of Visual Journalism and Printing in the 20th Century."

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden has announced the appointment of U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo to a third term, making Harjo the second laureate to receive this extension since terms for the position were established in 1943. Harjo’s third term, to begin in September 2021, will offer her an opportunity to complete projects and programs whose timelines continue to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including her signature project being launched today in celebration of Native American Heritage Month.

Click here for more information.

The Library of Congress and the National Park Service announced today that the 2020 Leicester B. Holland Prize will be presented to an architectural team at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana, led by Guy W. Carwile, architect emeritus and the Ken Hollis endowed professor of the School of Design. The prize honors an outstanding historic building, structure or landscape drawing.

Click here for more information.