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Library of Congress Blog

"Light and liberty go together."

I stopped by our Prints and Photographs Division this afternoon to meet blogging legend Robert Scoble, partly because he was interviewing Helena Zinkham, the acting chief of P&P, about our Flickr project, but also to tell him how his book “Naked Conversations” has had an important impact on impelling the Library’s blog forward. Before I knew it, he had turned his camera on me and beamed an interview live to the world via 3G. (Shameless self-promotion alert.)

Robert is also working on a more in-depth piece on the Flickr project, which I’m eager to see. It’s always great when the HD camera comes out!

While I’m at it, in recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of Web 2.0 momentum building here at the Library. I’m confident that this will soon lead to new ways in which we will reaching out to user communities and making the Library’s yummy goodness even more widely known and accessible.

Keeping the Republic, 221 Years LaterSeptember 16

Tomorrow is Constitution Day, when we celebrate the Sept. 17, 1787, signing of that foundational document. If you’re a student who is putting the finishing touches on an assignment or essay, or a teacher who wants to inspire his or her class, you have come to the right place.

The Library of Congress has excellent Constitution Day resources, including this page that has been updated to reflect materials in the new exhibition “Creating the United States.”

The Law Library of Congress also has a site entitled “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates.” The THOMAS legislative tracking system also has links to a number of Library sites about the Constitution.

When delegates to the Constitutional Convention adjourned their business, Benjamin Franklin famously replied to a woman who had asked what kind of government had just been formed: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It was an audacious experiment, launched by a group of men both ordinary and extraordinary, and it has been tested many times. But 221 years later, we are still he

St. Paul: That’s a WrapSeptember 5

Carol Highsmith brings us more (copyright-free) photos from the closing-night convention festivities in the Twin Cities:

John McCain accepts the presidential nomination

Sarah Palin waves to the delegates

As in Denver, St. Paul had its share of protesters

Cindy McCain joins her husband on stage

National Book Festival Online Author Chats BeginSeptember 5

“Talk, talk, talk,” you say. “That’s all Matt does is talk to the 2008 National Book Festival Authors. But when will we, the readers and fans of those authors, get a chance to ask the questions?!”

Well, you can come in person, of course, to the National Book Festival on Sept. 27, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on the National Mall in DC. But if you just can’t wait that long, our longtime charter sponsor, The Washington Post, has begun to schedule online chats with National Book Festival authors.

The first three have been scheduled, and are as follows:

Bob Schieffer (CBS newsman and author), Monday, 9/15 at 2 p.m. EDT

Arthur and Pauline Frommer (noted travel writers), Tuesday, 9/16 at 10 a.m. EDT

And Alexander McCall Smith, (prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction), Friday, 9/19 at 11 a.m. EDT

You can follow the links above and start submitting your questions now, or anytime up to and even during the chats. We expect to be able to announce at least a couple more in the days leading up to Sept. 27.

Images from the Twin CitiesSeptember 4

Carol Highsmith reports in with images from last night at the convention in St. Paul:

Former Sen. Bob Dole chats with the North Carolina delegation

Gov. Sarah Palin takes the stage