Blank 1940 United States Census form (Source: National Archives and Records Administration website)*
Genealogy Notes
Resources for getting a head start on your 1940 census research are available via the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library “Local History Announcements” blog. The 1940 census will be released on April 2, 2012 (the federal census remains closed for 72 years for privacy reasons).
Read some interesting facts about the 1940 census at NARAtions, the blog of the U.S. National Archives.
For researchers tracing families in North Carolina: the North Carolina State Archives recently digitized their WPA Cemetery Surveys. Read about it in this blog post and view the cemetery records here.
Martin Luther King Day
- The “Local History Announcements” blog profiles local dentist and civil rights activist, Dr. Emmett J. Stringer, in this blog post on MLK Day.
- The Library of Congress blog features an image of Dr. King shortly before he traveled to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Martin Luther King’s only visit to Delaware is the subject of this post on the Delaware Public Archives blog.
The Arts
The work of Mississippi artist Theora Hamblett is the subject of this blog post from the Mississippi Library Commission.
The Mississippi Museum of Art discusses its upcoming exhibition, Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H. A. Rey, in this blog post.
Fans of the television series Downton Abbey will appreciate this exploration of that period’s popular music by the Library of Congress “In the Muse” blog.
Can a Stradivari violin be duplicated? Apparently so, using CT scans and advanced manufacturing equipment. Researchers used an instrument from the Library of Congress collection to make the replica.
Of Interest
This blog post describes an interesting function of the Library of Congress: selecting twenty-five films that merit permanent preservation for their “cultural, aesthetic, and historical value.” See this year’s list at http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2011/12/the-registry-and-beyond/.
The United States Copyright Office is now blogging at http://blogs.loc.gov/copyrightdigitization. They discuss issues surrounding the digitization of nearly seventy million pre-1978 copyright records.
The Library of Congress just digitized the 30,000th map for its online collection. Read more at http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2011/05/the-view-from-30000-maps/.
The National Archives wants you! …To help transcribe and tag documents in order to make them more accessible to the public. Check out the “Citizen Archivist” initiative at the NARAtions blog.
*Image from National Archives and Records Administration, “1940 Federal Population Census, Part 1: General Information, 1940 Census Forms,” http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/general-info.html#form (accessed February 17, 2012).
