library of congress

How Blocking WikiLeaks Actually Hurts the Government

Last week, the Library of Congress confirmed it’s blocking WikiLeaks. Censorship principles aside, the ban has one clear consequence: the Congressional Research Service, responsible for crucial reports to lawmakers, is part of the Library. Now their plug is pulled too. The government prohibiting the public from using government equipment to disseminate secret government information is…

Tech News Sam Biddle Dec 6

Dream-like nature photography from the 1890s

These incandescent pictures and postcards from the turn of the 19th century aren’t true color photography — they were colored using a process known as photochrom that gave the landscapes they depict a fuzzy warm veneer. Here’s the description of the photochrom process from the Library of Congress: Photochrom prints, also called Aäc, are ink-based…

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Aug 11

The Gadgets That Preserve Our Memories

The woman in this photo is an employee at the Library of Congress. She is using a high-tech scanner to map the individual chemical components of a century-old book in order to learn how to better preserve it. Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza visited the two Library of Congress departments dedicated to keeping our memories safe:…

Books & Comics Rosa Golijan Jun 10

How the Library of Congress Preserves Exploding, Shrinking Film Forever

Maybe it’s because I’m a film and video buff, but I just read an article that rocked my world a bit, and I recommend that you read it, too. By Ken Weissman, a member of the LoC since 1982 who has overseen film restorations like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Maltese Falcon, his…

Tech News Mark Wilson May 6

Library of Congress To Acquire All Twitter Messages For Historical Record

Internet, your narcissism has been validated. The Library of Congress will archive all public tweets for historical purposes. Somewhere in the unfathomable future, a historian really, really cares that you had a Reuben for lunch today. [Physorg]

io9 Cyriaque Lamar Apr 14

Your Past and Future Tweets Will Be Archived At the Library of Congress

Maybe you’ll be taking that next tweet a little more seriously, Joe Twitterer: the Library of Congress announced today that they’ll be archiving every public tweet made since 2006. That’s right: Twitter is now your legacy. The LoC has moved towards more active web archiving since 2000, when they began keeping track of presidential and…

Tech News Brian Barrett Apr 14

Big Data, Big Problems: The Trouble With Storage Overload

We collect an astonishing amount of digital information. But as the Economist recently pointed out in a special reports, we’ve long since surpassed our ability to store and process it all. Big data is here, and it’s causing big problems. Walmart’s transaction databases are a whopping 2.5 petrabytes. There are more than 40 billion photos…

Social Media Brian Barrett Mar 17

Giz Explains: How Data Dies (and How It Can Be Saved)

Bits don’t have expiration dates. But memories will only live forever if the media and file formats holding them remain intact and coherent. Time can be as deadly to data storage as it is to carbon-based life forms. There are lots of ways data can die: YouTube can pull a video offline before anybody snags…

Tech News Matt Buchanan Mar 17

Michael Jackson’s Zombie Musical Honored by the Library of Congress

Of all the things the King of Pop was famous for, Michael Jackson‘s music video for “Thriller” was one of his geekiest contributions. Today, the zombie-themed short was officially selected to be preserved in the National Film Registry. The 14-minute video, which aired on MTV for the first time on December 2, 1983, is often…

io9 Sonia Zjawinski Dec 30

iTunes U Gets Library of Congress Videos

The Library of Congress just made a bunch of historical videos available on iTunes U. Now you can watch the original Edison films or Book Festival videos in a “University” setting without the need for booze or girls. Yay. [iTunes]

Tech News Jason Chen Jun 30

U.S. Senate Monorail (1912)

1912 Senate Monorail (Library of Congress) From 1912-61 tunnels below the U.S. Senate building were filled with monorail cars carrying senators on the “shortest and most exclusive railway in the world.” A short history about the monorail system appears on the Senate.gov website and is excerpted below. I’m fascinated with early ideas of what “the…

Tech News Matt Novak Apr 6

The Biggest Advances in Governmental Tech During the Bush Era

With all this talk about Obama’s BlackBerry and weekly YouTube addresses, we tend to assume there was no governmental tech before him. But there actually were some impressive advances in the last eight years. Among the many online weather and emergency alert services, job listings, and the like, the Bush years also found a few…

Tech News Dan Nosowitz Jan 24

French Flying Machines (1890-1900)

These French cards, archived at the Library of Congress, were produced sometime between 1890 and 1900. Most of the cards illustrate important feats from ballooning history between 1795-1846, while card number two (pictured above) depicts futuristic visions of flight from the 1800s. It’s striking how similar these imagined flying machines are to those we looked…

Tech News Matt Novak Nov 19

William H. Boyes Monorail (1911)

This image of the William H. Boyes monorail is from 1911 and can be found in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. The Monorail Society has a description of the monorail which appears below. This test track was built and demonstrated in 1911 in the tideflats of Seattle, Washington. The rails were…

Tech News Matt Novak Feb 7

Spielberg Gets Locked Into Underground Vault

Two films that Steven Spielberg had a hand in, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Back to the Future, were both selected alongside 23 other films to be shelved forever in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. They’ll get locked up inside a hermetically sealed vault, and preserved in mason jars with really…

io9 Kevin Kelly Dec 27

Much-Needed Rest (1903)

A common fear of the future is that life will become much too hectic. This idea is commonly portrayed in cartoons such as the one above, which ran in the June 4, 1903 edition of Life Magazine. The caption reads, “Mr. A. Merger Hogg is taking a few days’ much-needed rest at his country home.”…

Tech News Matt Novak Jul 25

Gardens of Glowing Electrical Flowers (1900)

From October 11 until December 27, 1900 the New York Observer ran a series of eight letters by a man named Augustus. He was reporting from the Paris Exposition of 1900. The second installment of the series, which ran October 18th captures the wonder of seeing a city engulfed in electric light and the hope…

Tech News Matt Novak Jul 20

How Blocking WikiLeaks Actually Hurts the Government

Dream-like nature photography from the 1890s

The Gadgets That Preserve Our Memories

How the Library of Congress Preserves Exploding, Shrinking Film Forever

Library of Congress To Acquire All Twitter Messages For Historical Record

Your Past and Future Tweets Will Be Archived At the Library of Congress

Big Data, Big Problems: The Trouble With Storage Overload

Giz Explains: How Data Dies (and How It Can Be Saved)

Michael Jackson’s Zombie Musical Honored by the Library of Congress

iTunes U Gets Library of Congress Videos

U.S. Senate Monorail (1912)

The Biggest Advances in Governmental Tech During the Bush Era

French Flying Machines (1890-1900)

William H. Boyes Monorail (1911)

Spielberg Gets Locked Into Underground Vault

Much-Needed Rest (1903)

Gardens of Glowing Electrical Flowers (1900)

New London in the Future (1909)

Monsanto House of the Future (1957)

Future Plane Travel (1920)

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