The Learning Page Web site has a special activity called "Immigration: The Changing Face of America." Most of us can point to a place other than America as the origin of our ancestors. In what may be considered the first North American immigration, the people who are called American Indians crossed the land bridge from Asia to North America about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago.

The Library's Asian Division Reading Room serves as the gateway to material in all languages of Asia and about Asian American Studies, the Asian Diaspora and the Pacific Islands. The Local History and Genealogy Reading Room offers a wealth of material relating to ancestry. It has one of the world's premier collections of U.S. and foreign genealogical and local historical publications. The genealogy collection began as early as 1815, when Thomas Jefferson's library was purchased to help rebuild the collections of the Library of Congress that were lost during a fire in 1814 in the U.S. Capitol (where the Library was then housed).