By BERNICE TELL
In recognition of Presidents' Day, a new collection of American presidents and first ladies is going online, bringing to 18 the number of collections available from the Library.
On Feb. 16 the Prints and Photographs Division, in cooperation with the National Digital Library (NDL) Program, will put 156 images of presidents and first ladies on the Library's American Memory home page (http://memory.loc.gov). The portraits are a much-expanded electronic version of the Prints and Photographs Division's ever-popular "Illustrated Reference Aid" on American presidents, a printed sheet containing images of all the leaders.
The electronic images on the computer screen capture the fine detailing and shading of the originals from the Library's collection -- whether prints, posters, watercolors, lithographs or engravings. Each portrait is shown with the title of the image, its creator, the year of its creation and the Library's reproduction number (for ordering purposes).
The project was designed by the Reference Section of the Prints and Photographs Division to offer an online "Illustrated Reference Aid" to those users who cannot wait for reproductions from the Library's Photoduplication Service. These images can be downloaded and used in publications. For those without Internet access, the Library will continue its 25-year practice of issuing a printed "Illustrated Reference Aid" of the presidents.
Thousands of requests are received annually at the Library for a president's image. The reproductions are usually hung in banks, public buildings or private homes and are used to illustrate textbooks or to serve other educational purposes.
The head of the Reference Section in the Prints and Photographs Division, Mary Ison, noted that because the 156 images of presidents and first ladies are just a small fraction of the Library's collection of 120,000 "high-demand" prints and photographs of these and other subjects, the choice was not always easy. In addition to traditional, formal portraits, an attempt was made to pick images showing each of the presidents in interesting or unusual surroundings. Warren G. Harding, for example, is pictured frolicking with his dog; 300-pound William H. Taft, golf club in hand, is ready to take a swing; and a relaxed Calvin Coolidge is shown shaking hands with major league pitcher Walter Johnson at a baseball game in Griffith Stadium.
In expanding the images available from the printed page to an electronic 156-image version, the Prints and Photographs Division was able to choose at least one portrait of every president, although the more popular and requested images of leaders such as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR are accorded additional portraits. For the first ladies, the choices are far fewer, as likenesses of the early first ladies are rarer and more difficult, if not impossible, to discover. For example, there is no portrait of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, who died in 1782.
"Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present" is being "previewed" in the Presidential Picture Gallery of the Library's American Memory page so that browsers can inspect 12 of the portraits prior to the official Presidents' Day "opening."
In the full presentation, the section devoted to Abraham Lincoln will contain seven images of the 16th president. The first, a poster, is titled "$100,000 reward! The murderer of our late beloved President, Abraham Lincoln, is still at large." In the second, Lincoln is seated at a table surrounded by his Cabinet members during the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. The third portrait by Mathew Brady shows Lincoln in a chair reading a book with his young son Tad standing at his side. The fourth image illustrates the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theater. The fifth and sixth images are formal portraits of the president in different poses, and the seventh image presents Lincoln with abolitionist Sojourner Truth. (The Lincoln section also contains one portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln.)
Over time, the Prints and Photographs Division expects to place a significant percentage of its "high-demand" file online under the series title "By Popular Demand." Its first choices will be staff-selected "Illustrated Reference Aids." Thirty images from the women's suffrage movement are expected to be online for National Women's History Month in April.
It is expected that by putting these "Illustrated Reference Aids" online, users will be encouraged to visit the Library to learn more about the collections. But for those unable to make the trip, "Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies" makes a worthy contribution to the Library's ever-growing content on the Internet.
Bernice Tell is a Washington free-lance writer.