- Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (July 14, 1912-October 3, 1967) was a prolific American folk musician. He described himself in one of his songs as "The Great Historical Bum", a first hand observer and survivor of the economic and environmental hardships of the dust bowl, which shook the great plains states during the great depression. Guthrie's body of music consists of hundreds of songs, ballads and improvised works. - Rita Dove
Rita Dove is the Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. From 1993 to 1995 she served as Poet Laureate of the United States, the youngest person and first African-American ever to hold that title. Her volumes of poetry include Mother Love, Selected Poems, Grace Notes, Museum, The Yellow House on the Corner, and the poetic narrative Thomas and Beulah, which won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. - George Grantham Bain
George Grantham Bain (1865-1944) was a New York photographer. Originally working for United Press, he founded the first news photography service "Bain News Service" in 1898. His news photo service, including portraits and worldwide news events, had special emphasis on life in New York City. - Daniel J. Boorstin
Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 - February 28, 2004) was a prolific American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He served as the U.S. Librarian of Congress from 1975 until 1987. Boorstin was born in Atlanta, Georgia and died in Washington, D.C. Boorstin was of Jewish descent. Boorstin graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD. at Yale University. - Stanley Kunitz
Stanley Jasspon Kunitz /'kju:nɪts/ (July 29, 1905 – May 14, 2006) was a noted American poet who served two years (1974-1976) as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (a precursor to the modern Poet Laureate program), and served another year as United States Poet Laureate in 2000. - Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry (24 October 1911, Greenboro, Georgia - 11 March 1986, Mineloa, New York) was a blues musician. He was most widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts. - John Burroughs
John Burroughs (April 3, 1837-March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and essayist important in the evolution of the U.S. conservation movement. According to biographers at the American Memory project at the Library of Congress, John Burroughs was the most important practitioner after Thoreau of that especially American literary genre, the nature essay. - Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett (b. April 13 1944, Vicksburg, Mississippi) is a MacArthur Award-winning American filmmaker, educated at the University of California, Los Angeles. Burnett's style is rarely violent and his most original work concentrates on the lives of the African American middle class. His first feature, "Killer of Sheep" (1977), was made while he was a graduate student at UCLA. - Willie Brown
Willie Brown (August 6, 1900 - December 30, 1952) was an American Delta Blues guitarist and singer. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, he played with such notables as Charley Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson. He was not known to be a self-promoting frontman, preferring to "second" (accompany) other musicians. - Rick Prelinger
Rick Prelinger prelinger.com , an archivist, writer and filmmaker, founded Prelinger Archives, whose collection of 51,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation. Rick has partnered with the Internet Archive to make 2,000 films from Prelinger Archives available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. - Alan Jabbour
Alan Jabbour (born 1942) is an American musician and folklorist. Jabbour was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and was educated in Jacksonville public schools and at the Bolles School, where he graduated from high school in 1959. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Miami in 1963 and received his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) from Duke University. A violinist from the age of seven, Alan Jabbour was a member of the Jacksonville Symphony, … - Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart (born September 11, 1943) is best known as one of the two drummers from the rock band the Grateful Dead. He and fellow Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann earned the nickname "the rhythm devils". He joined the Grateful Dead in September 1967, and left in February 1971, after some bad business deals by his father Lenny Hart, who had briefly managed the Dead. During his sabbatical, in 1972, he recorded the album "Rolling Thunder". - Winston Tabb
Winston Tabb is the current Sheridan Dean of University Libraries at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tabb receieved his B.A. from Oklahoma Baptist University and earned a M.A. from Harvard University as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. After returning from Thailand as an instructor of English for the U.S. Army, Tabb receieved his degree in library science in 1972 from Simmons College. - Lowell Thomas
Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 - August 29,1981) was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveller best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous. So varied were Thomas's activities that when it came time for the Library of Congress to catalog his memoirs they were forced to put them in "CT" in their classification - biographies of subjects who don't fit into any other category. - Sarah Thomas
Sarah E. Thomas is an internationally-known university librarian. She has held the office of Bodley's Librarian and Director of University Library Services at the University of Oxford since February 2007. In this position, she is responsible for the operation of the largest university library in the United Kingdom, and one of the major research libraries in the world. Dr Thomas was raised in Haydenville, Massachusetts and studied at Smith College. - John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly with Harvey Klehr). He received his undergraduate degree from Florida State University in 1966, … - Arthur Szyk
Arthur Szyk (Łódź, Poland, 1894 - New Canaan, Connecticut, September 13, 1951) was a Poland-born American artist, famous for his anti-Axis political illustrations, caricatures, and cartoons during World War II, as well as his illustrations for magazine and newspaper articles and books; including an illustrated Haggadah of Pesach, the Szyk Hagaddah, … - Peggy Bulger
Peggy Bulger is a folklorist and the director of the American Folklife Center at the (Library of Congress). A native of Albany, New York, she received her BA in Fine Arts from SUNY at Albany in 1972; her MA in Folk Studies from Western Kentucky University in 1975; and her PhD in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Her dissertation topic was on Florida folklorist, author, … - Ainsworth Rand Spofford
Ainsworth Rand Spofford (September 12, 1825 - August 11, 1908) was the sixth United States Librarian of Congress, serving from 1864 to 1897. Spofford was born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. Ill health prevented him from attending Amherst College. He instead, at age 19, moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he became a bookseller, publisher, and newspaper man. In 1859 he became associate editor of the "Cincinnati Commercial". - Robert Fitzgerald
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald was a poet, critic and translator whose renderings of the Greek classics "became standard works for a generation of scholars and students." He was best known as a translator of ancient Greek and Latin. In addition, he also composed several books of his own poetry. Fitzgerald grew up in Springfield, Illinois and, when he was 18, attended The Choate School for a year before entering Harvard University in 1929. - Michael Feinstein
Michael Feinstein is an American singer, a pianist, and an interpreter of, and anthropologist and archivist for, the repertoire known as the "Great American Songbook." The Library of Congress elected him to the National Sound Recording Advisory Board, an organization dedicated to safeguarding America’s musical heritage. Feinstein was born to Jewish-American parents Edward, a former singer and sales executive for the Sara Lee Corporation, and mother Maizie, … - Anne Fadiman
Anne Fadiman (born August 7, 1953) is an American author, editor and teacher. A native of New York, Anne Fadiman is the daughter of the renowned literary, radio and television personality Clifton Fadiman and World War II correspondent and author Annalee Jacoby Fadiman. She attended Harvard University, graduating in 1975 from Radcliffe College. Fadiman's 1997 book "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" won the National Book Critics Circle Award. - Mamie Smith
Mamie Smith (May 26, 1883 - September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, and appeared in several motion pictures late in her career. As a vaudeville singer she performed a number of styles including jazz and blues. She entered blues history by being the first African American to make vocal blues recordings in 1920. Smith was born Mamie Robinson in Cincinnati, Ohio. - David Francis
David Francis, a British film archivist, was the second curator of the UK's National Film and Television Archive. He was curator from 1974 until 1989, when he was succeeded by Clyde Jeavons. Francis went on to become the Chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress. In 1994 Francis was awarded the Premio Jean Mitry by the organisers of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the Pordenone-based festival devoted to silent cinema. - Hobart Smith
Hobart Smith and his sister, Mrs. Texas Gladden, first came to be known to the public through a record made in 1963, recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress, which was issued on Folk Legacy Records. A large majority of these and other recordings have now been made available on several labels, including Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Rounder Records. - Barry Moser
Barry Moser is a renowned artist, most famous as a printmaker and illustrator of numerous works of literature. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Moser studied at the Baylor School, Auburn University, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and did post-graduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. - Morton Gould
Morton Gould (December 10, 1913 - February 21, 1996) was an American pianist, composer, conductor, and arranger. Born in Richmond Hill, New York, Gould was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities in improvisation and composition. His first composition was published at age six. Gould studied at the Institute of Musical Art, although his most important teachers were Abby Whiteside and Vincent Jones. - William Jay Smith
William Jay Smith (born 1918) is an American poet. Born in Winnfield, Louisiana, Smith has studied at Washington University, Columbia University, and Cambridge University as a Rhodes scholar. He was appointed as Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress (the position now called Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress) from 1968 to 1970. A member of the Academy of Arts and Letters since 1975, … - Josephine Jacobsen
Josephine Jacobsen was an American poet, short story writer, and critic. Born in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, she moved with her family to New York at a young age. When she was fourteen, she moved to Maryland where she lived for the rest of her life. Jacobsen served as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress from 1971 to 1973 and as honorary consultant in American letters from 1973 to 1979. - Reed Whittemore
Edward Reed Whittemore Jr. (born September 11, 1919) is an American poet and college professor. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he attended Phillips Academy and received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University in 1941. As a sophomore at Yale, he and his roommate James Angleton started a literary magazine called Furioso which became one of the most famous "little magazines" of its day and published many notable poets including Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. - James Black
James Black (1823 - 1893) became a leader of the temperance movement in the United States after having a bad experience with alcohol intoxication, if not alcohol poisoning. Black was born in Union County, Pennsylvania to John Black and Jane Egbert Black. He married Eliza Murray in 1845. Black was actively involved in establishing the Good Templars, a temperance organization. In addition, he co-founded the National Temperance Society and Publishing House with Neal S. Dow, … - Don Edwards
Don Edwards is a cowboy singer and guitarist who plays Western music. He has a number of albums, two of which, "Guitars & Saddle Songs" and "Songs of the Cowboy," are included in the Folklore Archives of the Library of Congress. Edwards also recorded the album "High Lonesome Cowboy" with Peter Rowan and Tony Rice. - Archie Green
Archie Green (b. June 29, 1917) is a folklorist and musicologist. He is a scholar of laborlore, defined as the special folklore of workers. Devoted to understanding vernacular culture, he has gathered and commented upon the speech, stories, songs, emblems, rituals, art, artifacts, memorials, and landmarks which constitute laborlore. He is credited with winning Congressional support for passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act of 1976 (P.L. 94-201), … - Archer M. Huntington
Archer Milton Huntington (March 10 1870 - December 11 1955) was the step-son of railroad magnate, Collis P. Huntington. Archer Huntington is best known for his scholarly works in the field of Hispanic Studies and for founding The Hispanic Society of America in New York City. The society, founded in 1904, is a museum and rare books library whose collections of Hispanic materials are unrivaled outside of Spain. He also founded the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. - Jean Hersholt
Jean Hersholt (July 12, 1886 - June 2, 1956) was a Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning Danish actor who lived in the United States. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark to a stage family, Hersholt went on to become a well-known actor in the United States. According to the Internet Movie Database, he appeared in 140 films and directed four. His first two films were made in Germany in 1906. - Michael Bierut
Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. Prior to joining the international design consultancy Pentagram as a partner in 1990, he was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Montreal. - Henriette Avram
Henriette Davidson Avram (1919 - 2006) was a computer programmer and systems analyst who developed the MARC format (Machine Readable Cataloging), which is the national and international data standard for bibliographic and holdings information in libraries. Avram's development of the MARC format in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the Library of Congress had a revolutionizing effect on the practice of librarianship, … - Bruce Lehman
Bruce A. Lehman (born September 19, 1945) served from August 5, 1993 through 1998 as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks. Nominated by President Clinton on April 23, 1993, and confirmed by Senate on August 5, 1993. During this short period of time, he was responsible for significant changes to the United States patent law. - Henry Stevens
Henry Stevens (August 24, 1819 - February 28, 1886), American bibliographer, was born in Barnet, Vermont. He studied at Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1838-1839, graduated at Yale in 1843 and studied at the Cambridge (Massachusetts) Law School in 1843-1844. In 1845 he went to London, where he was employed during most of the remainder of his life as a collector of Americana for the British Museum and for various public and private American libraries. - Seymour Lubetzky
Seymour Lubetzky (April 28, 1898-April 5, 2003) was a major cataloging theorist and a prominent librarian. Born in Belarus as Shmaryahu Lubetzky, he worked for years at the Library of Congress. He worked as a teacher before he immigrated to the United States in 1927. He earned his BA from UCLA in 1931, and his MA from UC Berkeley in 1932. Lubetzky also taught at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, …
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