Research Center
Rare Book and Special Collections Reading Room
Event Videos
Videos of events organized by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division are freely available online. The full collection of the RBSCD's event videos include book talks, lectures, panels, and more. Ranging from Incunabula to contemporary artists' books, these specialized programs provide new knowledge and perspectives on collection materials to the scholarly community and the public at large.
Film, Video
Tiny Creatures, Big Impact: Bugs and American Science
Discover how the study of insects helped establish American science on the global stage. From Thomas Jefferson’s defense of American nature to Thomas Say’s groundbreaking American Entomology, this video explores how bugs shaped U.S. history and identity in the 19th century.
Contributor:
Young, Ashley Rose
Date:2025-10-02
Film, Video
Book Artist in the Studio
Enjoy book artists, specialists, librarians, and curators at the Library of Congress in this free, in-person symposium celebrating the book-making process and the Aramont Library. Building upon the success of “Making the Modern Book” (2023), RBSCD will host another symposium entitled “Book Artist in the Studio.” The symposium featured a historic and contemporary exploration of studio practice using nineteenth- and twentieth-century artist books in…
Contributor:
Maret, Russell - Moore, Emily - Stillo, Stephanie - Horowitz, Sarah
Date:2025-08-14
Film, Video
Charlotte Temple: America’s First Bestseller
Originally published in London in 1791, Susanna Rowson (1762-1824)’s tragic novel Charlotte Temple became one of the most popular books in the early United States. The Library of Congress’ Charlotte Temple collection reflects the enduring popularity of the book and the deep emotional connection that generations of readers felt to this story of a young English girl seduced and abandoned by a British soldier…
Contributor:
Rose, Rebecca
Date:2025-08-07
Film, Video
The French and Indian War and the Shaping of American Identity
The French and Indian War is often cited as a prelude to the American Revolution, and items from the Library of Congress’s collections reveal how the colonists’ experience of that conflict began shaping, and sharpening, a uniquely American identity.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-08-07
Film, Video
The Sky’s the Limit: Amelia Earhart and the National Woman’s Party
Written by American aviator Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) but compiled and arranged by her husband after her fatal flight, the copy of “Last Flight” in the National Woman’s Party Library in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division has a special provenance linking Earhart to the women’s suffrage movement.
Contributor:
Zimmerman, Amanda
Date:2025-08-06
Film, Video
Thomas Jefferson’s Mouldboard Plow
Thomas Jefferson was a statesman, farmer, and Enlightenment thinker. These three parts of his identity come together in his innovative design for a Mouldboard Plow and his publication of the plans for how to build it.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-08-06
Film, Video
The First American Architectural Handbook
Printed in Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1797, The Country Builder’s Assistant by Benjamin Asher is the first architectural handbook written by an American author specifically for rural American builders.
Contributor:
Stell, Marianna
Date:2025-08-06
Film, Video
From the Vaults: American History
Parents in the colonial period were eager to teach their children to read. The New England Primer taught children their ABCs, entertained them with illustrations, and taught them about the world around them. Explore the content and methods of this very popular early American teaching tool.
Contributor:
Coleburn, Jackie
Date:2025-08-05
Film, Video
Early Baseball in Print
Baseball was a popular game from the very beginning of the United States, but it was played by local rules that varied across the country. However, the mid-19th century explosion of print culture allowed for standardized rules to turn a neighborhood game into a shared national pastime.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-07-21
Film, Video
The Declaration in Print and Script with John Bidwell
Author and historian John Bidwell explained his use of Library collections in the process of researching and writing his new book, “The Declaration in Print and Script: A Visual History of America’s Founding Document,” which traces the history of 19th century artistic reproductions of the Declaration of Independence. This conversation-style event examined broadsides, prints and illustrations that represent the earliest celebrations of the historic…
Contributor:
Bidwell, John - Stillo, Stephanie - Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-07-17
Film, Video
America’s First Cookbook
This video explores a formative moment in the early development of American culture: the publication of the first printed cookbook written by an American specifically for an American audience.
Contributor:
Zimmerman, Amanda
Date:2025-06-16
Film, Video
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” was not always considered so great at all. Unflattering reviews and disappointing sales had confined the novel to obscurity for decades before it re-entered the public consciousness during World War II.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-06-16
Film, Video
The Bay Psalm Book
The first book produced in what becomes the United States was the “Bay Psalm Book,” printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1640.
Contributor:
Butterfield, Kevin
Date:2025-06-16
Film, Video
The First American Math Textbook
In 1729, the first American mathematics textbook, “Arithmetic Vulgar and Decimal,” was published anonymously in Boston. The story of its author, Isaac Greenwood, and his little book, with its shortcuts and blank space for calculations, is one of home-grown American industry, innovation, and tragedy.
Contributor:
Pantozzi, Ralph
Date:2025-06-09
Film, Video
Phillis Wheatley
One of America’s first great poets to achieve international acclaim, Phillis Wheatley wrote about key events and figures of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre and General George Washington. She was also an enslaved woman who had to prove her abilities time and time again.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-06-09
Film, Video
Two 19th Century Board Games
What does it mean to win the game of life? Children’s board games teach cultural values and measurements of success to a society’s youngest members. A comparison of these two 19th century board games, one from 1843 and one from 1889, reveal the cultural shift that occurred in the United States during the second half of the 19th century.
Contributor:
Coleburn, Jackie
Date:2025-05-05
Film, Video
James Monroe as Diplomat and Scholar
Decades prior to becoming our nation’s fifth President, James Monroe served the United States as Minister to France. During his time in Paris, he purchased a rare book about Roman history that he referenced later in life, during his retirement, as he wrote a book about the history of republican governments.
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-04-28
Film, Video
Early American Almanacs
In the American Colonies, pocket sized almanacs outsold all other types of books combined. These little books were handy, everyday tools in print, providing readers with weather predictions, the dates of important religious and civic events, business resources, medical guidance, and informative essays. Benjamin Franklin achieved economic security by writing and publishing Poor Richard’s Almanac, and we even have an almanac used by George…
Contributor:
Hastings, Patrick
Date:2025-04-28
Film, Video
The Goddard Declaration of Independence
In January of 1777, after evacuating Philadelphia for Baltimore, the Continental Congress commissioned Mary Katharine Goddard to print a second issue of the Declaration of Independence. This time, those who signed the Declaration in July of 1776 reasserted their commitment to the cause of Independence by allowing their names to be printed on the broadside. Mary Katharine Goddard put her name in print, too.
Modernism and the Book: Literature, Fine Binding, and Books by Artists
Making the Modern Book will offer visitors an introduction to the Aramont Library and its formation over the past four decades. It will also address the way in which the Aramont Library's unique combination of art, literature, and non-fiction embodies the spirit of modernism, challenging historical conceptions about the content, design, and format of modern books during the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Rare Book Division
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Rare Book Division
Date:2023
Film, Video
Evening Roundtable "Artists Approach the Book"
Watch artists, scholars, and specialists at the Library of Congress during a symposium celebrating the donation of the Aramont Library. A monument to modern Western creativity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and literature, the Aramont Library's 1,700 books strike a perfect balance between book design, content, illustration, and binding. In private hands for over 40 years, the Aramont Library is comprised of literary first…
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Rare Book Division
Date:2023
Film, Video
Lesia Maruschak: When a Book Holds Your Memory
To mark the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, 1932-1933 famine-genocide in Soviet Ukraine, artist Lesia Maruschak spoke about her ongoing exploration of memory surrounding this historic event, titled Project MARIA. The project has been hailed by the National Holodomor Genocide Museum (Kyiv, Ukraine) as one of the most important visual arts exhibitions addressing the famine-genocide in Soviet Ukraine.
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Rare Book Division
Date:2023
Film, Video
Didier Mutel: From the Rosetta Stone to the United States of Acid
Since 1793, the Atelier Remond in France has been printing books, etchings, and engravings. Artist, master printmaker, and current studio manager Didier Mutel will use his projects "United States of Acid" and "Birds of Acid" to consider why the slow and obsolete process of etching and engraving still challenges and inspires us today. This talk is a rare opportunity to engage with one of…
Contributor:
Library of Congress - Library of Congress. Rare Book Division
Date:2023
Location
Library of Congress
10 First Street, SE
Thomas Jefferson Building, LJ 239
Washington, DC 20540-4810 View map External link
Hours
Monday through Friday 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Closed Weekends & Federal Holidays
