Digital Library Presentation The Library of Congress > American Memory

Welcome to this Digital Library presentation on the

Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is physically the

most extensive library in the world. It also touts an incredible digital library collection.

The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with nearly 128 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 57 million manuscripts.

~James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress

Library of CongressNumerous Resources

As you can see from the graphic below, the Library of Congress offers numerous digital resources for educators. This presentation will focus on the American Memory portion, however, I couldn’t resist touching on their Global Gateway…

Global Gateway

The Global Gateway is your portal to more digital resources than you could possibly sift through in a lifetime. Thus, an easy to understand design and simple navigation is a lifesaver.

Global GatewayThe Global Gateway features:World Libraries and Collections

– Collaborative Digital Libraries: These are multilingual, multimedia libraries built together with international partners

– Individual Digital Collections: This is a listing of the searchable Library of Congress digital collections that focus on history and collections around the world.

Links, Databases & Resources– There’s just too much great stuff here to explain it all… So, you’ll

just have to take a minute to come have a peek for yourself.

American Memory

American Memory is the Library of Congress’ major collection of digitized U.S. history and cultural material.

Background

American Memory MissionAmerican Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of…

Read more here

American Memory HistoryThe seed that grew into the American Memory historical collections was planted in a pilot program that ran from 1990 through 1994.Fortunately, by 1994, the Internet and its World Wide Web were beginning to transform the presentation and communication of…

…then return and finish this presentation :-)

American Memory Collections

There are over 125 different historical collections relating to our country’s culture and history. Within these collections are over 7 million digital items.

See the entire list of collections or sample just a few by clicking on collections of interest on the right half of this slide.

•Bell, Alexander Graham

•Civil War Images

•Flutes

•Sunday Schools

WARNING: The author of this presentation cannot be held responsible for the excessive amount of time you are likely to spend being sucked into and intrigued by the awesome and extensive digital material you will find if you

click on any of the links on this page

Other Points of Interest

In general, obtaining, organizing, and sharing resources through a digital library presents some interesting challenges. Among these are copyright issues, protocol for metadata harvesting, and preservation of digital objects (with regard to utility and accessibility) in consideration of the limited life-span of any single technological platform.

Find out more about how the Library of Congress deals with these challenges.