The genesis of this project was a proposal in the summer of 1999 by Marvin Kranz, Historical Specialist in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, to present a selection of manuscript materials related to presidential inaugurations such as drafts of inaugural addresses, diaries, and letters. A key element of Marvin Kranz's initial proposal was the inclusion of Ruth Freitag's bibliography of fifteen hundred citations, Presidential Inaugurations: A Selected List of References, 3rd edition, revised and enlarged (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969). Subsequently, the proposal was awarded a grant from the Library of Congress Billington-Krasnoff Fund.

Given the diverse sources assembled for this collection from within and outside the Library of Congress, the list of those who made contributions to this project is extensive. It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that we thank the following persons for their assistance and contributions to this Web site:

National Digital Library Program (NDLP)
Tamara Swora-Gober, Digital Conversion Projects Coordinator, for her overall role as mentor on this project, for keeping the project on schedule, for offering advice on each step in the process of mounting a digital collection.

Jan Lancaster, Digital Conversion Specialist, Project Leader for this online collection, for coordinating all of the day-to-day production of the Presidential Inaugurations site. Ms. Lancaster acted as the liaison between the various custodial divisions, the Conservation Division, and the ITS Digital Scan Center within the Library and was the contact person for institutions outside the Library. She also planned the Web site, designed the Access database which includes the sequencing of each item by inauguration and within an inauguration and contains, as well, bibliographic information, and conservation, scanning and reference notes on each item. Ms. Lancaster also researched and wrote the descriptive texts throughout the site and obtained all the necessary permissions to reproduce materials in this presentation.

Elizabeth Madden, Digital Conversion Specialist, deserves special credit for her expertise and oversight of all the technical aspects related to building this digital collection. She built the Access database which contains all the necessary bibliographic information on each item, as well any conservation or scanning issues associated with certain items. The conversion of the Freitag bibliography into digital form with links from its index to its fifteen hundred citations is also due to her great technical skills.

Martha Anderson, Collections Production Coordinator, for her advice on technical aspects of the digital conversion process, in consultation with Elizabeth Madden.

Debra Fulmore, Digital Conversion Specialist, for keying the fifteen hundred citations and index of the Freitag bibliography, and for her care in seeing that every detail was perfect.

Carolyn Janiczek, Computer Specialist, Automated Operations Coordinator for NDLP, for general computer support throughout the project.

Steven C. McCollum and Elizabeth Gettins, Digital Conversion Specialists, for creating the derivative images of the manuscript materials for Web presentation, with additional thanks to Ms. Gettins for a final review of all the links on the Web site just prior to its public release.

Melissa Levine, Legal Advisor to the NDLP, for her advice on all questions relating to obtaining any necessary permissions for this project and her review of the copyright statement that appears on this Web site.

Emily Howie, Program Specialist/Librarian, for her assistance in researching copyright permissions for this Web site.

Randolf Wells and Andrew Cook, Digital Conversion Specialists, for giving advice on searching techniques to discover relevant inaugural materials in the Senate and House Journals and the Annals of Congress, and making links to them from the American Memory Century of Lawmaking Web site.

Glenn Ricci, Digital Conversion Specialist, the Presidential Inaugurations Web designer and leader of the NDLP Web team, for his innovative Web work.

Melissa Front and Amber York, Digital Conversion Specialists, for their assistance to Glenn Ricci with the construction of the Presidential Inaugurations Web site, with additional acknowledgment to Amber York for her assistance to Emily Lind Baker, the Editor of this Web site.

Emily Lind Baker, Digital Conversion Specialist and the principal editor of the Presidential Inaugurations descriptive texts, for her care in reviewing all of the Web presentation texts. Jurretta Jordan Hecksher, Digital Conversion Specialist and editorial team leader, for her help with the editorial process.

Nancy Eichacker, Operations Manager, for her general support and encouragement throughout the project.

Karen Needles, Education Resources Specialist, for initiating, coordinating, and digitizing the video presentation in this Web site.

Information Technology Services
David Woodward, Computer Specialist, for programming related to the Presidential Inaugurations Web site.

Elizabeth Wulkan, Multi-Media Coordinator, for coordinating the creation of Marvin Kranz's video presentation on inaugurations for the Interpretive Programs Office in the Library of Congress, to which a link has been provided in the Presidential Inaugurations Web site.

Prints and Photographs Division
Samuel V. Daniel III, Reference Specialist, for selecting the prints and photographs for this Web site, and for his involvement with them through the process of reproduction, cataloging, and design, and for his help with writing and editing.

Phil Michel, Digital Conversion Specialist, for technical-imaging expertise and his coordination of the digitization of all Prints and Photographs as well as the Architect of the Capitol materials. Mr. Michel made the derivative images from the original scans of the Prints and Photographs and Architect of the Capitol materials for the final Web site and also contributed to "Building the Digital Collection".

T. J. Jeffers, National Digital Library Processing Technician, for scanning several original inaugural photographs.

Mary Ison, Head, Reference Section, for her support of the project and her facilitation of the selection process.

Tracy Meehleib, National Digital Library Visual Materials Cataloger, for cataloging the prints and photographs included in this Web presentation.

Arden Alexander, Cataloger, for her review of all the catalog records for the prints and photographs on this site.

JJT, Inc. of Austin, Texas, for scanning about fifty existing black and white or color negatives of inaugural images.

Private Collection
Louis Alan Talley, a private collector, for generously allowing the use of his rare engraving, Federal Hall by Amos Doolittle, which depicts George Washington's first inauguration.

Manuscript Division
James Hutson, Chief of the Manuscript Division, for permission to scan the original manuscripts in the Presidential Papers collection for this project.

Marvin Kranz, Historical Specialist and curator for this presentation, for his proposal of a Web site on inaugurations and his thoughtful selection of all the manuscript materials. Marvin Kranz's selections were based, in part, on lists of inaugural materials from three previous exhibitions mounted by the Manuscript Division--a 1981 exhibition on inaugural addresses curated by John McDonough, retired Historical Specialist; a 1993 exhibition, "I Do Solemnly Swear . . .," and a 1997 exhibition, "Inauguration Day," both jointly organized by Jeff Flannery and Andrew Cosentino of the Manuscript Division.

Heather Klein, a summer intern in the Manuscript Division in 1999, who assisted Marvin Kranz in the initial review of the Presidential Papers and made preliminary selections of inaugural materials for consideration in this presentation.

Emily Zehmer, Senior Cataloger, for her assistance in the early stages of this project in identifying appropriate fields for information on the manuscript materials.

John Sellers, Historical Specialist, for his advice on the Journals of Montgomery Meigs.

John McDonough, retired Historical Specialist, for his advice to the conservators on the preservation of President Jackson's 1833 inaugural address.

Manuscript Reading Room and Reference Staff
For their support and expeditious retrieval of manuscript materials from the Presidential Papers for research purposes for this project. Our thanks and appreciation are offered to the following persons: Mary Wolfskill, Jeff Flannery, Patrick Kerwin, Frederick Bauman, Bruce Kirby, Ahmed Jamal Johnson, Ernest Emrich, and Bradley Gernand.

Manuscript Division Preparation Section
Staff of the Manuscript Division Preparation Section who suggested additional sources for inaugural materials within the Presidential Papers or in the papers of contemporaries of the presidents.

Information Technology Services (ITS) Digital Scan Center
Lynn Brooks, Head of the ITS Digital Scan Center in the Library of Congress, for his support of this project.

Domenico Sergi, Computer Specialist, ITS Digital Scan Center, for scanning the Presidential Papers in the Manuscript Division, as well as many of the original prints and photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division, and the inaugural images and documents from the Rare Book Division and the General Collections. Mr. Sergi also wrote a portion of "Building the Digital Collection."

Lisa Cope, Computer Specialist, ITS Digital Scan Center, for scanning a large portion of the Prints and Photographs and Architect of the Capitol inaugural materials.

Karl Rogers, Computer Assistant, ITS Digital Scan Center, for scanning in the fall of 2001 the recently conserved drafts of inaugural addresses for Jefferson (1801) and Jackson (1829).

Jade Curtis and LaCharles Earle, summer interns, for scanning color transparencies of Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address and Lincoln's inaugural address of 1865.

Conservation Division
Mary Wootton, Senior Rare Book Conservator, for coordinating the conservation review of the Presidential Papers with her colleague conservators before scanning and for carrying out the majority of the conservation treatment of the manuscript materials. Ms. Wootton also built a custom cradle to handle letters hinged into bound volumes and she visited the ITS Digital Scan Center to demonstrate how to handle these items properly to minimize stress on the documents and their bindings during the scanning process.

Yasmeen Khan, Senior Paper Conservator, for her conservation treatment of some of the manuscript materials, especially for her review of Jackson's 1833 inaugural address in the Manuscript Division, a pen and ink drawing attributed to Latrobe in the Rare Book Division, and Madison's March of 1809 in the Music Division.

Alan Haley, Conservator, for separating taped pages in a book in poor condition from the General Collections in order to scan an image of Tyler without causing it further harm.

Andrew Robb, Senior Photograph Conservator, for his advice on handling and his conservation treatment of a rare 1857 photograph of Buchanan's inauguration, as well as his review of an 1861 photograph of Lincoln's first inauguration, both from the journals of Montgomery Meigs in the Manuscript Division.

Terry Boone, Senior Book Conservator, together with Andrew Robb, for their advice on handling the journals of Montgomery Meigs during scanning, as these diaries are filled with folded drawings and photographs.

Heather Wanser, Senior Paper Conservator, for her conservation treatment of George Washington's first inaugural address of 1789, completed in the fall of 1999 after several years' work, and for her handling of it during scanning.

Sylvia Albro, Senior Paper Conservator, for permitting the digital capture of a silked, oversize draft of Jefferson's 1801 inaugural address, which is undergoing conservation treatment.

Doris Hamburg, Head, Preventive Conservation Section, for allowing us to view one of the Library's greatest treasures, Jefferson's reading copy of his 1801 address, and for arranging for photographs from which the scans were made.

Louise K. Condon, Exhibitions Conservator, for arranging for us to view Lincoln's 1865 inaugural address, and together with Mark Roosa, Chief of the Preservation Division, for arranging for new color photography of this address, the color transparencies of which were scanned for this Web site.

Maria Nugent, Acting Head of the Book and Paper Section, for her assistance in arranging for new color photographs of Lincoln's 1865 inaugural address.

Marita Clance, Conservator Photographer, for kindly providing new color transparencies of Jefferson's 1801 address and color transparencies of Lincoln's 1865 address.

Rare Book and Special Collections Division
John Pull, Digital Conversion Specialist, for coordinating the scanning, review and cataloging of fifteen inaugural items from the Printed Ephemera Collection.

Gerald Wager, Head of the Rare Book Reading Room, for permission to scan and for arranging to borrow inaugural items from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Clark Evans, Reference Librarian, for his joint permission, along with Gerald Wager's, to scan inaugural materials from the collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and for sharing his insights on inaugural Bibles in the Rare Book collection.

Tracy Arcaro, of the Rare Book Reading Room reference staff, for her help in retrieving items for research and conservation review and for arranging for the transfer of the Rare Book selections for scanning.

Cynthia Earman, formerly of the Rare Book Reading Room reference staff, now a cataloger for the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections Team of the Special Materials Cataloging Division, for her help in retrieving inaugural items from the Rare Book collections for review and for scanning.

Rosemary Plakas, Curator for Rare Americana, for permission to remove the frame from a pen-and ink drawing attributed to Latrobe for scanning purposes in order to obtain a full, unobstructed image of the drawing.

Elizabeth Robinson, Rare Book Cataloging Team Leader, for cataloging a pen and ink drawing attributed to Latrobe, and for her review of the cataloging needs of other selections of inaugural materials in the Rare Book collections.

Systems Integration Group, Inc. (SIG), of Lanham, Maryland, for producing the digital images for the inaugural materials in the Printed Ephemera collection and for coordinating production of the searchable text. Special acknowledgment goes to Art Brown and Valencia Bullock.

Music Division
Jon W. Newsom, Chief of the Music Division, for permission to scan Madison's inaugural march of 1809.

Ruth Foss, Head, Reader Services Section and the Performing Arts Reading Room, for her help in arranging to borrow Madison's inaugural March of 1809 for scanning.

William Parsons, Reference Librarian and Senior Music Specialist, for arranging for conservator Yasmeen Khan to view Madison's inaugural March of 1809 for conservation purposes and then to borrow it for scanning.

Decimal Classification Division
Ruth Freitag, formerly the Head of the Bibliography Section, and currently a Classification Specialist, for her contribution to this Web site in the form of her bibliography of fifteen hundred citations, Presidential Inaugurations: A Selected List of References, 3rd edition, revised and enlarged (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969) and her generosity in allowing us to provide this valuable resource in this Web presentation.

Architect of the Capitol
Alan M. Hantman, Architect of the Capitol, deserves our special thanks for presenting the Prints and Photographs Division in the Library of Congress with a gift of over thirty copy photographs of inaugurations in special consideration of the Library's Web site Presidential Inaugurations.

Barbara Wolanin, Curator, for her support of the project, and especially for allowing Sam Daniel, Marvin Kranz, and Jan Lancaster to review and select inaugural photographs from the collections of the Architect of the Capitol, and for permitting the use of three reference lists, Bibles, Oaths of Office, and Precedents, compiled by the staff of the Architect of the Capitol, on this Web site.

Pamela McConnell, Registrar, Curatorial Office, Architect of the Capitol, who facilitated our research there.

Phyllis Bolden, Secretary, for sending three reference lists, Bibles, Oaths of Office, and Precedents, compiled by the staff of the Architect of the Capitol, to the Library in electronic form.

Wayne Firth, Chief, Photography Branch, for researching the Architect of the Capitol photography collections for inaugural materials, and for arranging the creation of copy photographs for the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.

Michael Dunn, Photographic Archives Technician, who, along with Wayne Firth, was helpful in providing the Library with copy photographs or with color scans made directly from color negatives in the Architect of the Capitol's photography collections.

Becky Daugherty, Office of the Sergeant at Arms, for arranging for permission to use a photograph of President Reagan's 1985 oath of office in Capitol Rotunda, and for making arrangements for a photographic print to be made in the Senate Photographic Studio.

Steven Benza, Senate Photographic Studio, for making a photographic print of President Reagan's 1985 oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda.

U.S. Senate Historical Office
Richard Baker, Historian of the Senate, for permission to use three transcriptions from Meigs's shorthand journals regarding Buchanan's 1857 inauguration and Lincoln's 1861 inauguration from his forthcoming book Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs 1853-1859, 1861 (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000).

Wendy Wolff, Editor, Office of the Historian of the Senate, for arranging with Richard Baker for permission to use these three transcriptions, and for sharing biographical information on Meigs, especially during his years as the Supervisory Engineer of the Capitol.

Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies
Lani Gerst, Executive Director, and Kimberly Badenhop, Web Site Coordinator, for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, for coordinating links between the Library of Congress and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies Web sites. Their Web site will describe the role of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (under the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration) in the organization of the inaugural ceremonies and luncheon, and will include historic inaugural photographs from the Senate's photography collections.

Smithsonian Institution
Lonnie C. Bunch III, Associate Director, National Museum of American History, and Lynn Chase, Project Manager for the Presidency exhibition, for encouraging the establishment of links between the Library's Web site "I Do Solemnly Swear. . .": Presidential Inaugurations and the Smithsonian's Web site The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, which will be released in stages, the Campaign portion in October 2000 and most of the other sections in November 2000.

Judy Gradwohl, Webmaster, National Museum of American History, for providing an overview of the contents of the Smithsonian special exhibition on the presidents and its associated Web site and for her assistance in providing a link to the Library of Congress Web site.

The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
William Fray and Lisa Spar, Co-Directors of the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, for their permission to link to the online presidential inaugural addresses on their Web site. Contacted for the first time in the fall of 1999, Mr. Fray and Ms. Spar were very receptive to creating online links from the proposed Library of Congress Web site on Presidential Inaugurations to the transcriptions of the inaugural addresses on the Yale Web site. As our first contacts outside the Library in the early stages of our project, Mr. Fray and Ms. Spar deserve especial thanks for their positive response to our request to link to their site.

Presidential Libraries (National Archives and Records Administration--NARA)
For permission to link to images and/or audio presentations in the following Presidential Libraries, we are very grateful to the following persons: Robert Bohanan, Chief Archivist, Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Georgia; Kenneth G. Hafeli, Audiovisual Archivist, Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, Ann Arbor, Michigan; Philip Scott, Audiovisual Archivist, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas; Ron Whealan, Librarian, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts; John Ferris, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York; Diana Borowik, Archives Technician, and Lydia J. E. Reid, ARC Assistant Project Manager, Richard M. Nixon Presidential Materials Staff, College Park, Maryland; Steve Branch, Audiovisual Archivist, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, California; Scott Roley, Deputy Director, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri

New Hampshire Historical Society
David Smolen, Special Collections Librarian, New Hampshire Historical Society, for permission to reproduce on our Web site a photostat of President Pierce's 1853 inaugural address in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the original of which is in the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, New Hampshire.