September 8, 1997

Contact:
Guy Lamolinara (202) 707-9217

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Three On-Line Collections Debut from the Library of Congress

Approximately 90 documents spanning the 15th to mid-20th centuries and more than 4,000 photographs from the incomparable collections of the Library of Congress have just made their debut on American Memory, the Library's on-line offering of its most important materials relating to American history.

"Words and Deeds in American History," "Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991," and "By Popular Demand: Votes for Women' Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920" can now be seen on the Library's World Wide Web site at .

"Words and Deeds in American History" honors the centennial of the Manuscript Division with a representative sampling of materials from its collections in eight categories: the Presidency; Congress, Law and Politics; Military Affairs; Diplomacy and Foreign Policy; Arts and Literature; Science, Medicine, Exploration and Invention; African American History and Culture; and Women's History. Highlights of this offering include:

• Letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to Abraham Lincoln advising him to remove from command Gen. George B. McClellan, 1862;
• Petition for bail from accused witches, ca. 1692;
• Memorandum from Joseph Stalin about opening a second front in Europe during World War II, 1942;
• Prescription written by Sigmund Freud for the wife of the patient known as the "Wolf Man," 1919.

The panoramic photograph collection contains images featuring cityscapes, landscapes and group portraits. For example, there are photographs of San Francisco following the great earthquake of 1906; of the Detroit Tigers baseball team; of beauty contests; and of the Old Mormon Trail in Colorado.

"Votes for Women" offers portraits of many individuals who campaigned for women's suffrage in the United States, such as Julia Ward Howe, Lucretia Mott, Mary Church Terrell and Susan B. Anthony. There are also images of parades, suffragists on picket lines and cartoons commenting on the movement.

The new collections join the already rich and varied American Memory collections, which offer, among other items, selected notebooks of Walt Whitman, early films of Thomas Edison, political speeches and oral histories, panoramic maps and photographs, and documents relating to civil rights and women's suffrage.

With more than 111 million items, the Library of Congress is the world's largest library. In addition to American Memory, the Library freely offers such Internet initiatives as THOMAS, a congressional database; major exhibitions; an on-line "card catalog"; records of the U.S. Copyright Office; the Global Legal Information Network; and general information about the Library.

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PR 97-145
9/8/97
ISSN 0731-3527