News Briefs

In December, the Library announced the addition of 25 films to its National Film Registry for their cultural, historical or aesthetic importance to the nation’s film heritage.

Popular Hollywood releases chosen include the first Star Trek film added to the registry, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” from 1982, and Eddie Murphy’s first feature film on the registry, “Beverly Hills Cop.”

The public submitted nominations for over 6,700 titles. Several selected titles received strong public support, including: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “No Country for Old Men,” “The Social Network” and “Dirty Dancing.”

The selections bring the number of titles on the registry to 900. Some films are among the 2 million moving image collection items held at the Library. Others are preserved in coordination with copyright holders or other film archives.

The Library will host the 2025 National Book Festival on Sept. 6 at the Washington Convention Center, festival organizers recently announced.

The event will mark the 25th anniversary of the festival, which was co-founded in 2001 with first lady Laura Bush. In 2025, the festival will expand its footprint in the Washington Convention Center to host booklovers from across the region and nationwide. Updates on plans will be shared at loc.gov/bookfest and at the Bookmarked blog at https://blogs.loc.gov.

The festival is free and provides a full day of conversations with dozens of authors, poets and illustrators from a variety of genres about their latest books. The festival offers readings, giveaways, book signings and activities for children and young adults, as well as the opportunity to purchase books from the festival’s official bookseller.

The Library recently named Rachael Stoeltje chief of its National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which includes the Library’s Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia.

Stoeltje will oversee the state-of-the-art facility where the Library acquires, preserves and provides access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of films, television programs, radio broadcasts and sound recordings.

Before joining the Library, Stoeltje served, since 2010, as director of the Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive. She also served as president of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

Stoeltje earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Indiana University. She also trained at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. She has expertise with early color photographic processes, a background in fine arts photography and extensive archival experience in film and video preservation.

The Library of Congress and the National Park Service announced that the 2024 Leicester B. Holland Prize will be presented to architectural designer Laura Pressley for a drawing of the Wainwright Tomb at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis designed by noted early American modernist architect Louis Sullivan.

Pressley, an architectural designer from the Chicago area, was chosen as the clear winner from competing entries due to the quality of her field notes, drafting, sheet composition and use of dimensions and annotations.

The Leicester B. Holland Prize recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of a historical building, site or structure prepared to the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record or the Historic American Landscapes Survey.