January 13, 1997

Contact: Guy Lamolinara, Public Affairs (202) 707-9217
Martha Dexter, National Digital Library (202) 707-0805

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Library of Congress Celebrates Inauguration On-Line

National Digital Library Joins Other Washington Cultural Institutions
To Commemorate Presidential Inauguration on World Wide Web

The Library of Congress today debuts an on-line feature presentation celebrating the presidential inauguration. The presentation, "Inaugurations in American Memory," is available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pihome.html. The presentation highlights photographs, films and oral histories of past presidential inaugurations as found in the more than 500,000 historical primary sources available from the Library of Congress over the World Wide Web (http://www.loc.gov/).

Feature presentations are a regularly updated offering on the Library's Learning Page, a World Wide Web initiative specially designed for teachers, students and lifelong learners. It is accessible at http://memory.loc.gov/learn.

"Inaugurations in American Memory" is part of a larger body of material, including presidential papers, images of presidents and first ladies, and a presentation called "Elections," compiled by the Library as part of a cooperative World Wide Web site created by Washington cultural institutions. The cooperative Web site, "Celebrating Democracy," (site no longer available), was jointly developed by the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

"Celebrating Democracy" features on-line presentations of presidential memorabilia, photographs and documents from past inaugurations and inaugural balls as well as up-to-the-minute photographs of the 1997 inaugural festivities. The goal of the Web site is to encourage teachers, students and lifelong learners to connect current events with American history by tapping into the vast resources now available on-line from the Library of Congress and other Washington cultural institutions.

The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress aims to make millions of items of Americana from the Library's collections freely available on the Internet. Collections currently available include Civil War photographs; documents relating to slavery, the civil rights movement and women's suffrage; early motion pictures; and sound recordings of political leaders.

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PR 97-3
1/13/97
ISSN 0731-3527