The Library of Congress is a library for you. Join us on our path forward with a look at our new strategic plan & our new digital strategy. https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-18-123?loclr=fbloc | The Library of Congress

Join Friends of the Library of Congress to enrich your experience with the Library and enhance the Library’s role as an enduring source of knowledge and creativity. Friends of the Library of Congress membership (starting at $50) comes with benefits including: • A voice in what the Library chooses to fund during the annual Friends’ Choice Award • Exclusive events for Friends of the Library • Advance notice for Library exhibitions and public programming • A community of fellow library lovers acros

Absolutely nobody wants Library of Congress collections getting WET. 🫣 However, it does happen from time to time, and that’s why the Preservation Emergency Response Team (PERT) exists. They are on-call to help mitigate damage when, for different reasons, collections encounter water. Recently, a training was held for the PERT members so they could get more comfortable handling large, wet paper items, such as maps and posters. (No Library collection items were damaged in the making of this video!

The archival collections of the Library include the largest body of early indigenous American music recordings in the U.S.: about 10,000 wax cylinders of songs and stories. Many of them are recordings made by Omaha ethnographer Francis La Flesche (pictured). La Flesche was the first professional Native American ethnologist and a member of the Omaha Nation. His recordings and others like them are used by both native and non-native researchers. Their greatest value lies in the cultures and languag