Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has named Jeffrey C. Alexander, the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center.

"Traveling the Freedom Road: From Slavery and the Civil War Through Reconstruction" by Linda B. Osborne has been published by the Library of Congress and Harry N. Abrams Inc. The book draws on interviews in the Library of Congress collections with former slaves to convey the aspirations, sorrows, courage and hopes of ordinary people living through this period.

The Library of Congress today announced the next phase of its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries. The Library has commissioned a study to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability.

The Library of Congress has received a Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to support a project that will catalog 125,000 sheet maps of Africa.

The Library of Congress will digitally scan "The Heroic Life of Abraham Lincoln: The Great Emancipator" as the 25,000th book in its "Digitizing American Imprints" program, which scans aging "brittle" books often too fragile to serve to researchers.

From more than 2,000 pieces in its Lincoln document collection, the Library of Congress has selected 40 manuscripts to feature in a new book titled "In Lincoln’s Hand: His Original Manuscripts With Commentary by Distinguished Americans."

Alison Kelly, a reference librarian in the Science, Technology and Business Division (ST&B) at the Library of Congress, has compiled "Presidential Food: Selected Resource Guide" for reporters, culinary historians and the interested public to use during the inauguration and early days of the new presidency.

"Library: The Drama Within," with photographs by Diane Asséo Griliches and a new introduction by John Y. Cole, the director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, has just been reprinted in an edition published by Bunker Hill Publishing.

ibrarian of Congress James H. Billington today named 25 important motion pictures--classics and genres from every era of American filmmaking--to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, including "The Asphalt Jungle," "Deliverance," "A Face in the Crowd," "The Invisible Man," "Sergeant York" and "The Terminator."

President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009, will take the oath of office on a Bible from the Library of Congress’ collections that is steeped in history — the same Bible upon which Abraham Lincoln swore March 4, 1861, to uphold the Constitution.

On Jan. 20, 2009, the United States will inaugurate Barack Obama, the country’s first African-American president. In anticipation of citizens’ efforts to mark this historic time around the country, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress will be collecting audio and video recordings of sermons and orations that comment on the significance of the inauguration of 2009.

Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters has named Maria A. Pallante to the position of Associate Register for Policy and International Affairs, effective December 21, 2008. Pallante brings extensive experience to the position, having worked as a copyright lawyer for more than 18 years in Washington, D.C. and New York City, in both the public and private sectors. She succeeds David O. Carson, who will return to his former position as general counsel of the office.

The following is the holiday operational schedule, including closures, for the public for the Library of Congress through January 2009.

A new version of the Web-accessible Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) was released on Nov. 24, 2008, offering users three new features.

Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Romila Thapar will receive the 2008 Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity in a ceremony Dec. 10 at the Library of Congress. They are the sixth and seventh recipients since the Prize’s 2003 inception.

U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and 30 other noted poets will be featured in the 2009 season of "The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress." The radio series is available to all public radio stations via the Public Radio Satellite System’s ContentDepot.

Beginning Dec. 11, a series of innovative features at the Library of Congress will greet visitors, seamlessly integrating the onsite experience in the Thomas Jefferson Building with the Library’s online experience, all part of the new "Library of Congress Experience," which launched this past spring.

The Library of Congress and the National Library of China have concluded an agreement to cooperate in developing the World Digital Library.

As result of the latest reorganization at the Library of Congress, a book acquired as a copyright deposit, purchase, gift or an exchange will go to one division instead of several for centralized processing—the ordering, cataloging, shelflisting, barcoding and other activities that enable users to find one particular book among more than 23.3 million unique titles in printed formats (plus another 8.9 million that are duplicate copies) held at the Library.

As part of an internal reorganization at the Library of Congress, three new chiefs have been named in newly-created divisions within the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) directorate, according to Beacher Wiggins, director of ABA in Library Services.