The Library's Web site is a great way to make your own discoveries about the parallel lives of Lincoln and Whitman. More than 20,000 documents are in the "Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress" presentation. "Mr. Lincoln's Virtual Library" offers a Webcast of a 1998 event at the Library in which the digitization of Lincoln materials was announced. A highlight is a performance by Lincoln impersonator Michael Krebs.

In "The Poet at Work," are four of the notebooks of Whitman that are housed at the Library. According to Alice Birney, a literary-manuscript specialist in the Manuscript Division, Thomas Harned donated to the Library a total of 40 original Walt Whitman notebooks. Other Whitman notebooks were given by others, and several Whitman notebooks are at Duke University, Yale University, New York Public Library and other public repositories, as well as some that are still in private hands. It is safe to estimate that Whitman created at least 100 notebooks of greatly varying sizes and descriptions. Some are basically commercial notebooks in which he wrote with any implement at hand (pencil stub, pen, crayon) and which he amended at will by cutting out and replacing pages and pasting in clippings, photographs or scraps of manuscripts. Others are homemade notebooks that he created by folding or cutting sheets of paper and fastening with a pin or ribbon. A few come down to us as loose sheets.

In these typical writer's notebooks, Whitman jotted down thoughts in prose and expressions in poetry. The earliest examples include journalistic entries with ideas for articles he might write. His first trial lines for what would soon become part of the 1855 edition of "Leaves of Grass" appear in an early notebook, which bears an internal date of 1847; it was his habit, however, to use these notebooks over a number of years, filling in blank pages at will, and the remarkable trial flights of verse for "Song of Myself" in it are likely to date closer to 1854.