Story Tags

Photo of Lamond-Riggs Library Exterior

New Lamond-Riggs Library to be Built

The design process for the new Lamond-Riggs Library is underway. Take our Survey. Click here to learn more about this exciting project.

Read Feed

Bored with your reading options? Feel like you've read all there is to read of a particular subject? DC Public Library is here to help. Click here to find personalized recommendations and online book clubs, or scroll down for staff-curated readings lists.

New Cleveland Park Library

Library Opens June 16, 10:30 a.m.

The new Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Ave. NW, opens June 16. Join Mayor Bowser, Councilmember Cheh, Councilmember Grosso, DC Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan and members of the Library Board of Trustees for a ribbon cutting ceremony at 10:30 a.m. followed by a day of family friendly festivities to celebrate the new Cleveland Park Library. Learn more about the project at dclibrary.org/newclevelandpark.

Great Believers cover

Andrew Carnegie Awards 2019

During the American Library Association (ALA) Mid-Winter meeting, the winners of the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Non-Fiction were announced. The winners officially will receive their medals in June. Below are the winning titles. Copies are available to check out and download from the library. Fiction

Holy or Broken cover

Five Books About One Song

Expertise.  It's a nice thing to have, but it often takes time and effort that we don't have.  Luckily, it's fairly easy to be an expert on one very, very specific thing, like a song.  Think about it.  Would you rather spend 2 years studying American music history, or one afternoon learning all there is to know about "White Christmas?" Here are five books that will have you on your way to faking pop music expertise. 

Finger pointing at a historic plat map

Educators & Students

Now that Washingtoniana has settled into its new interim location, we'd like to invite groups of educators and students from around the city to visit and discover all that our division has to offer. Our collections contain a number of resources that may be useful in the classroom or for specific research projects, such as:   Photographs Maps Books on DC history Vertical files and newspapers Building permits and directories Genealogy and house history resources Archival collections

book image

Homo Economicus

How to get over boredom and frustration when engaging with the most important subject of our time

It turns out, after the 2008 out financial crises, that maybe free market capitalism unhindered by regulation, wasn’t a perfect and flawless mechanism for ensuring growth and prosperity. Suddenly Marx’s Capital was back on the bestseller list and the Social Democrats were taking seats in Congress. So what are “We the People” supposed to think, to believe, to enact?  Here are a few reads to help us get into the problem.

Essex

To See the World in a Grain of Salt

Microhistory Books Looking at Small Things With Big Impacts

Naturally, it’s important to study the grand, sweeping moments of history and analyze why they were so eventful—they were grand moments for a reason, after all. But it can be equally enlightening to practice microhistory, the study of a smaller unit of research, often a single person, family, event or village in excruciating detail so as to extrapolate larger questions about history, humanity and social change during a particular period.

History of the Ladies Night Book Club

It all started ten years ago, when library technicians Darnelle Perry and Martha Robinson came up with the idea to hold a book club at the newly-opened Northwest One Neighborhood Library.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal

How to Read Like a Librarian

Peek at our staff's reading list

There are a lot of librarian stereotypes out there: we’re all women (false), we’re all either uptight and impersonal or coding nerds with tattoos (false), we like to shush people (false), and we have either read everything in the library or we only read books you’d find on lists of importance (definitely false and false).

Pages