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Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection – Library of Congress

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Photograph of digital display by Shawn Miller/Library of Congress.

Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection The nation’s library is an ever-expanding temple of knowledge and creativity. Here are a few of its most incredible, unexpected, and otherwise historic jewels.

Written by Ron Cassie | Published on July 24, 2025

During the War of 1812, British troops famously torched the US Capitol, burning down the still-new home of the fledgling country’s legislative body. Also going up in flames? Roughly 3,000 books, largely about law, that made up the Library of Congress’s core collection.

Within a month, former President and noted bibliophile Thomas Jefferson offered his personal library as a replacement. His offer was warmly received by many in the House and Senate, but not by all. Massachusetts representative Cyrus King, an opposition Federalist, argued that Jefferson’s diverse holdings—which included works in Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and Old English, as well as a translation of the Qur’an—would foster his “infidel philosophy” while being “in languages which many cannot read, and most ought not.”

The bill narrowly passed, along party lines, and Congress paid almost $24,000 for Jefferson’s 6,487 books. On May 8, 1815, as a final wagonload of books left Monticello, Jefferson wrote to Samuel Harrison Smith, who had helped facilitate the sale, that “an interesting treasure is added to . . . the depository of unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the U.S. and I hope it will not be without some general effect on the literature of our country.”

Jefferson eventually got his wish. Today, the Library of Congress is a national jewel. Its main building on Capitol Hill, opened in 1897 and later named for the Founding Father, is home to a domed Main Reading Room that endures as one of Washington’s most elegant spaces. Within the library’s collection of more than 178 million items, the world’s largest, are a number of incredible treasures—and across the following pages, we’ve highlighted some of our favorites.

More incredible still? Most of what the institution has to offer is accessible with a simple library card.

In many ways, the modern library is the brainchild of former Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford, a visionary who lobbied Abraham Lincoln for the job and then stayed on through nine (!) Presidents. Spofford led construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building and a major expansion of the collection, working toward his broader goal of establishing a national library. He succeeded yet never lost sight of the institution’s original mission to serve legislators: For decades, the Jefferson Building and the Capitol were connected by an underground tunnel equipped with an electric book trolley and pneumatic message tubes. Lawmakers (or really, their staffers and pages) could send book requests to librarians via the tubes, and librarians could send books back via the trolley.

In the early 2000s, the book tunnel was demolished to make room for the underground Capitol Visitor Center. A separate, pedestrian-friendly tunnel now links the two buildings, where librarians can still be spotted wheeling book carts from time to time. That’s hardly the only way the library has evolved. Its physical collection is now housed in three Capitol Hill buildings and other facilities in Maryland and Virginia; its digital collection, begun in 1994, contains more than 900 million files; its collections of sounds, music, prints, moving images, and photographs date back more than 100 years and continue to grow alongside audiovisual media and communication.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Inside the Library of Congress’s Collection

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Columbia deal with Trump administration may set stage for other schools – The Washington Post

Jay Yi Hu, left, and John Perino, two medical students at Columbia University, pick up their regalia for graduation in New York City on May 1, 2024. (Ed Ou / For The Washington Post)

Education lawyers and advocates said Columbia’s deal with the White House was a potentially dangerous government intrusion into higher education.

Updated, July 24, 2025 at 4:37 p.m. EDT, yesterday at 4:37 p.m. EDT, 8 min

By Susan Svrluga, Laura Meckler, Justine McDaniel and Joanna Slater

The Trump administration hailed its deal with Columbia University as a victory and a template for agreements with other institutions on Thursday, even as concerns mounted that the settlement represents an unprecedented intervention by the government in the inner workings of higher education.

Under the terms of the deal, announced late Wednesday, Columbia will pay more than $200 million to settle claims over antisemitism and discriminatory hiring. In return, the government will unfreeze more than $1 billion in federal grants and funding to the university.

The settlement represents a dramatic new stage of President Donald Trump’s aggressive effort to exert control over some of the nation’s most prestigious college campuses, cracking down on anti-Jewish bias as well as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and demanding a shift away from a liberal worldview.

In agreeing to the deal, the elite Ivy League institution in New York City is entering uncharted territory: It is making an enormous payment to the federal government despite not admitting any wrongdoing while relinquishing a certain measure of oversight to an independent monitor.

Columbia’s deal follows one between the University of Pennsylvania and the Trump administration this month. The administration had announced this spring that it was freezing $175 million to Penn over its policies on transgender athletes – which were in alignment with the NCAA’s rules at the time. Penn agreed to no longer allow transgender women to compete on its female teams and said it would send apology letters to swimmers who were affected by its policy.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Columbia deal with Trump administration may set stage for other schools – The Washington Post

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How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World 1880 Sherlock Holmes Drawing (Getty)

By Gareth Rubin

How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel

It wasn’t so elementary, Watson, Wednesday, July 23, 2025

I don’t think anyone has ever come up with a word to describe an authorized author. It’s not quite a tautology. The writer, who has been invited to write a novel continuing the body of work of another, might, possibly, be an example of literary parthenogenesis. Or, more pejoratively, karaoke.

Who knows? But either way, it’s a growth industry. You will have seen the new authorized James Bond novels, the recently crafted Miss Marple and George Smiley outings that have appeared on the bookstore shelves over the past few years to some fanfare – despite the fact that those characters’ creators are very much pushing up the daisies. No, the mortality status of said celebrated novelists is no barrier – perhaps it’s even an incentive – to fans of the series rushing out and handing over their cash for the work featuring their favorite sleuth or spy.

In those cases, the literary estate of Ian Fleming, for instance, will have authorized the new book in return for a cut of the proceeds. But sometimes – perhaps more strangely – the originators are alive and kicking but don’t fancy another ten months in front of their laptop, and so they subcontract the work. Hence, Lee Child can still introduce his latest smash-hit Jack Reacher thriller to a hungry readership, without hiding the fact that the actual words were written by his brother Andrew. Either way, the arrangement leaves everyone content and fulfilled.

I know whereof I speak. When it was announced that the Conan Doyle literary estate had authorized me to write a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first question I was publicly asked was whether I thought I was up to the job. After all, Holmes is a uniquely popular character, listed in the Guinness World Records as the most-portrayed human literary creation, with hundreds of films and television shows about him. But I do, as it happens, think I’m up to it. I wouldn’t have written it otherwise, would I?

Holmes and Moriarty was published in the US this past May, with near-simultaneous publication in a wide range of European countries. My literary agent, Jon, came up with the idea. He had previously published the last two authorized Holmes novels, written by Anthony Horowitz, and was therefore in touch with the Conan Doyle estate, made up of Sir Arthur’s descendants. They were interested in finding a new author to continue their ancestor’s legacy, and my previous Gothic-tinged Victorian-set mystery, The Turnglass, had been a Sunday Times bestseller, so they wanted to know what I would do with Holmes.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel – The Spectator World

#2025 #America #ArthurConanDoyle #Books #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Novels #Reading #SherlockHolmes #TheSpectator #TheSpectatorWorld #UnitedStates #Writing