More than 50 years after acquiring its first Guarneri del Gesù violin, the Library of Congress will now be able to boast that it has twins. Around 1730 to 1732, Guarneri made two violins from the same piece of wood. The Library’s newest addition, the "Baron Vitta," will donated by the estate of the late Miyoko Yamane Goldberg, wife of the late teacher and violinist Szymon Goldberg. The other violin is the "Kreisler," owned by the late eminent Austrian violinist Fritz Kreisler and given to the Library in 1952.

Marking the end of an era and preparing for the onset of digital talking books, the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), Library of Congress, announced that it will no longer require its network libraries to retain copies of books on recorded discs.

As the Library of Congress observes Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with a variety of events (www.loc.gov/topics/asianpacific), it is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2007 Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship. Under this program, eight scholars will have the opportunity to conduct research using the Library’s Asian collections. Comprising nearly 2.8 million items, the collections are among the most significant outside of Asia.

The Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc., have awarded commissions for new musical works to five composers. The commissions are being granted jointly by the foundations and the performing organizations that will present the newly composed works.

To support the recently announced initiative by the Library of Congress, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Ken Burns to collect oral histories of America’s World War II veterans, the Library of Congress Veterans History Project has produced new resources to help the public learn about and participate in the effort.

Law Librarian of Congress Rubens Medina has received a Federal 100 Award for shepherding the 2006 upgrade of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), which gave legal researchers access to nearly 130,000 laws and related legal materials from nations across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas – searchable in 13 languages.

A new Web site devoted to the history of the hymn "Amazing Grace" documents the song’s origins from the late 1700s to the current century, as well as its more than 3,000 published recordings.

With a national theme of “The American Jewish Experience: Celebrating Religious Pluralism, Cultural Diversity and Commitment to American Civic Culture,” the second annual Jewish American Heritage Month will be celebrated by the Library of Congress with public lectures and a new Web presentation.

The Library of Congress Veterans History Project, a program of the American Folklife Center, will celebrate Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month throughout May. Eight fully digitized collections of Asian Pacific American veterans will be added to the "Experiencing War" Web series on May 1.

A star-studded cast of performers and presenters has been confirmed, with more to come, to pay tribute to Paul Simon as he receives the first annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on Wednesday, May 23 at 8 p.m. at the Warner Theatre located at 1299 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, D.C.

The Library of Congress might be turning 207 years old tomorrow (April 24, 2007), but with the addition of the first-ever public blog to its award-winning Web site, it quite possibly has never looked younger.

Long a pioneer and leading provider of online content, with a Web site at www.loc.gov that makes 22 million digital items available at the click of a mouse and receives 5 billion hits per year, the Library of Congress will launch the blog at www.loc.gov/blog/.

The Library of Congress's award-winning Web site at www.loc.gov has been nominated for two prestigious Webby Awards, which are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

The original manuscript of "Quintet for Strings," written by 15-year-old composer Jay Greenberg, will be given to the Library of Congress at an April 27 concert benefiting the Project Harmony Child Protection Center in Omaha, Neb. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington will accept the gift from Greenberg at the conclusion of its performance the night of the concert.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington is the recipient of the inaugural Lafayette Prize, given by the French-American Cultural Foundation for contributions to the development of relations between the United States and France.

The Library of Congress Veterans History Project and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) today announced a joint community engagement initiative designed to gather first-hand recollections of the diverse men and women who served our nation during wartime. The public outreach campaign begins this spring and will continue beyond the broadcast of Ken Burns’ new film, "The War," which is scheduled to air on PBS beginning on September 23, 2007.

The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) at the Library of Congress today presented awards to the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (LBPH), Free Library of Philadelphia, and to the Washtenaw County Library for the Blind and Physically Disabled (LBPD) of Ann Arbor, Mich.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington and Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Ismail Serageldin signed an agreement today at the Library of Congress outlining four areas in which the two institutions will cooperate in building a World Digital Library.

The StoryCorps Project, a national initiative encouraging Americans to record one another’s stories in sound, won a rare Institutional Award during the 66th annual Peabody Awards, administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. The StoryCorps recordings, more than 9,000 interviews to date, are being archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

The papers of former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger have been given to the Library of Congress by his widow, Jane Weinberger, in a ceremony held today at the Library. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington accepted the gift from Caspar Weinberger Jr. on behalf of his mother.

"Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal" offers a fascinating look -- through recordings, letters and photographs -- at a way of life that was eventually supplanted by the railroad. The presentation, one of more than 135 thematic collections in the American Memory Web site, is available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/nye/.