Among theDigital Collections on the Library of Congress website are some that contain books, pamphlets, and/or other printed materials. File formats vary with some including page images, some with only transcriptions, and some with both.
Abdul-Hamid II Collection of Books and Serials
The Abdul-Hamid II Collection of Books and Serials includes 304 Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic books, plus some serial publications.. The collection was an 1884 gift to the Library of Congress from Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.
African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection
The 800+ titles in this collection provide" a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history.
Ainu and Ezochi Rare Collection
This collection of rare materials brings together books, manuscripts, and maps produced during the 18th and 19th centuries that document Japanese exploration and observation of the island and prefecture now known as Hokkaido in Japan, as well as Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in Russia. For several centuries these areas were inhabited primarily by Ainu peoples, who shared closely related languages, traditions, and modes of existence that were distinct from their ethnic Japanese neighbors to the south. Prior to and during much of the Edo period (1600-1868), the range of Ainu communities also extended south across parts of northern Honshu, the largest of the four major islands that comprise modern Japan, in addition to the eastern Amur River region and southern Kamchatka.
This collection includes all 12,253 libretti and 128 oratoria and cantata libretti once held by Albert Schatz (1839-1902), a German music dealer with a life-long interest in opera and its history and collected during his travel and research throughout Europe.
The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana
The collection contains more than 11,100 items with more than 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern's contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items.
This collection highlights the history of the hymn “Amazing Grace” from the earliest printing of the song to selected performances of it on published and field recordings. These items have been collected from several divisions in the Library of Congress, including the Music Division, the American Folklife Center, the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, and the Rare Books Division.
An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920
This collection holds 250 social dance manuals from the Library of Congress. The list begins with a rare late fifteenth-century source, Les basses danses de Marguerite d'Autriche (c.1490) and ends with Ella Gardner's 1929 Public dance halls, their regulation and place in the recreation of adolescents. Along with dance instruction manuals, this online presentation also includes a significant number of antidance manuals, histories, treatises on etiquette, and items from other conceptual categories. Many of the manuals also provide historical information on theatrical dance. All illuminate the manner in which people have joyfully expressed themselves as they dance for and with one another.
American Colony in Jerusalem, 1870-2006
This presentation features selected materials from the physical American Colony in Jerusalem Collection. The full collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress represents well over 16,600 items stemming from the history of the American Colony, a non-denominational utopian Christian community founded by a small group of American expatriates in Ottoman Palestine in 1881.
American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940
This collection of life histories consists of approximately 2,900 documents, compiled and transcribed by more than 300 writers from 24 states, working on the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program that was part of the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936 to 1940. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents vary in form from narratives to dialogues to reports to case histories. They chronicle vivid life stories of Americans who lived at the turn of the century and include tales of meeting Billy the Kid, surviving the 1871 Chicago fire, pioneer journeys out West, grueling factory work, and the immigrant experience. Writers hired by this Depression-era work project included Ralph Ellison, Nelson Algren, May Swenson, and many others. The documents often describe the informant’s physical appearance, family, education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores.
American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920
This collection includes published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources, Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, published between 1904 and 1907 compiled by Reuben Gold Thwaites. Authors include Matthew Arnold, Fredrika Bremer, William Cullen Bryant, François-René de Chateaubriand, William Cobbett, James Fenimore Cooper, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Sir Charles Lyell, William Lyon Mackenzie, André Michaux, Thomas Nuttall, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Early writings about music published before 1801 were identified as having both historical significance and a high research value. These treasures range from incunabula such as Johannes Tinctoris' Terminorum musicae diffinitorium of ca. 1474 (one of the earliest examples of a glossary of musical terms) to Franchinus Gaffurius's Theoricum opus musiche discipline of 1480 (the first printed book principally devoted to the study of music). This online presentation includes digital scans of more than 2000 pre-1801 publications about music. The literature relates to the theoretical, historical, aesthetic and technical aspects of music.
California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900
The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely American dreams. The 207 books in this collection are first-person accounts from the time of the Gold Rush and California statehood through the turn of the century.
Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600-1925
The Capital and the Bay comprises first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs in an attempt to capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation contains the printed the records of the United States Congress from 1774-1875. The records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress make up a rich documentary history of the construction of the nation and the development of the federal government and its role in the national life. These documents record American history in the words of those who built our government.
This special collection presents seventy children’s books selected from the General and Rare Book Collections at the Library of Congress. The collection includes classic works that are still read by children today, and lesser-known treasures drawn from the Library’s extensive collection of historically significant children’s books. The books in this collection were published in the United States and England before 1924, are no longer under copyright, and free to read, share, and reuse however you’d like.
Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection
The Chinese Rare Book Digital Collection draws from the 5,300 titles of Chinese rare books housed at the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The initial online presentation includes nearly 2000 digitized rare titles. The majority are editions from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and early Qing dynasty (1644-1795), while nearly 30 titles are Song dynasty (960-1279) and Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) editions.
Contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world.
This collection consists of: Department of Defense Annual Reports (1948-1996) and military service branch Justification of Estimates Books, "J-Books" (1980-1996). The digital collection is based on a large physical reference collection held by the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Section of the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789
Contains 277 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Most broadsides are one page in length; others range from 1 to 28 pages. A number of these items contain manuscript annotations not recorded elsewhere that offer insight into the delicate process of creating consensus.
Early Copyright Records Collection, 1790 to 1870
The documents in this collection are the result of the first federal copyright laws in 1790 and 1831 (as amended) and contain the early copyright records and material held by the federal district courts and numerous government offices in Washington, DC.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage, through books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and motion picture footage drawn from the collections of the Library of Congress.
The collection consists of 62 books and pamphlets, 140 Federal statutes and Congressional resolutions, 34 additional legislative documents, excerpts from the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record, 360 Presidential proclamations, 170 prints and photographs, 2 historic manuscripts, and 2 motion pictures.Felix Mendelssohn at the Library of Congress
This collection includes essays and a selection of compositions and items from the Library of Congress Music Division related to the composer Felix Mendelssohn.
Finding Our Place in the Cosmos: From Galileo to Sagan and Beyond
A thematic collection exploring changing models of the universe through time, ideas of life on other words and Carl Sagan’s place in the tradition of science. It features manuscripts, rare books, celestial atlases, newspaper articles, sheet music and movie posters.
Home Sweet Home: Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio
This collection includes sheet music and audio recordings of parlor music, and focuses on themes that reflect the social, economic, and religious values in and around Cincinnati, Ohio in the Nineteenth Century.
Japanese Censorship Collection
The Japanese Censorship Collection contains marked-up copies of censored monographs and galley proofs, mostly from the 1920s and 1930s. Included are copies submitted by publishers for examination by censors in the Home Ministry of the Japanese imperial government as well as books lawfully confiscated by the ministry and local authorities for censor review. Many of the materials in this collection were banned from publication and distribution. The vast majority of these items are books, but the collection also includes atlases, manuscripts, scrolls, and three-dimensional objects.
Japanese Rare Book Digital Collection
This collection features selections from the Library of Congress Japanese Rare Book Collection, including 16th-17th century illustrated and manuscript editions of Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), a work written primarily by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century and widely considered the world’s first novel; selected of Nara ehon (“Nara picture books”), a style of manuscript book with hand-painted color illustrations produced between the 16th and 17th centuries; and selected Chinese-language works that were reprinted or hand-copied in Japan, some of which contain prefaces or annotations by Japanese scholars.
Korean Rare Book Digital Collection
The rich resources found in this collection will interest those conducting research on diverse topics in the study of pre-modern Korea, including history, geography, politics, social and economic life, education, agriculture, and biology. Representative works from the Korean Rare Book Collection include: "Tongguk Yi Sangguk chŏnjip" 東國 李 相國 全集 (The collected works of Yi Munsun); "Tongŭi pogam" 東醫 寶鑑 (A valuable treatise on Oriental medicine); "Yenyŏm mit'a tojang ch'ambŏp" 禮念 彌陀 道場 懺法 (Buddhist deity); and "Han'guk hwalchabon" 한국 활자본 (Korean metal movable type).
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection
The Rosenwald collection, housed in the Rare Book Division at the Library of Congress includes books and manuscripts from the last six centuries with strong thematic concentrations in the history of science, typography, natural history, decorative arts, and private presses. The full collection is availble for research consultation in the Library of Congress Rare Book Division. This online collection contains selection of the rare book collection with new material added to the digital collection as files are prepared.
The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America
The Songs of America presentation includes sheet music, manuscripts, historic copyright submission, audio recordings, biographies, essays and curated content about popular and traditional American songs, poetic art songs, sacred music, and more. The site also includes interactive maps, a timeline, and teaching resources offering context and expert analysis to the source material.
Martha Graham at the Library of Congress
The Martha Graham Collection is comprised of materials that document the career of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham and traces the history of the development of her company and school. The Collection includes a significant assembly of manuscript music scores, scrapbooks, photographs, clippings, choreographic notebooks, publicity and production materials, correspondence, programs, and business papers culled from many different collections held within the Library of Congress Music Division.
Meeting of Frontiers is devoted to the theme of the exploration and settlement of the American West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. In addition to items from the Library of Congress and the national libraries in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, this collection includes items digitized at thirty-three libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies in twenty cities in Siberia and the Russian Far East: Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsky (Sakhalin Island), Barnaul, Berdsk, Birobidzhan, Blagoveshchensk, Igarka, Kemerovo, Kolyma, Krasnoyarsk, Kyakhta (Buriat Republic), Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, Noril'sk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Tobolsk, Tomsk, Ulan-Ude, Vladivostok, and Yakutsk. Much of the material also relates to the history of Canada, China, Japan, and other countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.
National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Collection is a library of nearly 800 books and pamphlets documenting the suffrage campaign that were collected between 1890 and 1938 by members of NAWSA and donated to the Rare Books Division of the Library of Congress on November 1, 1938. The collection consists of a variety of materials including newspapers, books, pamphlets, memorials, scrapbooks, and proceedings from the meetings of various women's organizations that document the suffrage fight. In addition to NAWSA's president, Carrie Chapman Catt, contributors include Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, and Mary A. Livermore.This collection features selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions. It includes hundreds sound recordings made in the 1890s, 1980s, and 1990s and hundreds of black and white and color photographs from the 1980s. Additional documentation includes 35 pages of fieldnotes, 30 pages of handwritten tape recording logs, an 8-page program, two posters, and selected essays.
This is a growing online collection of contemporary open access e-books. All of these books have been made available for download on the Library's website in keeping with the intent of their creators and publishers, which chose to publish these works under open access licenses to allow the broadest possible access and reuse. All books added to the collection go through a selection process whereby subject matter experts determine which works are in scope based on the Library's Collections Policy Statements. Although the Library of Congress holds print copies of some open access books received through multiple routine acquisition streams, these openly licensed works can be made much more broadly accessible in their digital form.
Persian Language Rare Materials
These rare Persian manuscripts, lithographs and early imprint books comprise works in many disciplines, but historical and literary works are dominant. A number of these items are exquisitely illuminated anthologies of poetry by classic and lesser known poets, written in fine calligraphic styles, and illustrated with miniatures. Many also have beautiful bindings. A number of the illuminated books are multilingual works, which include Arabic and Turkish passages in addition to Persian, focusing on scientific, religious - philosophical and literary topics, and others are holy books important to all confessional traditions within the Islamic world.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
The books in this collection portray the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division. The collection's 138 volumes depict the land and its resources; the conflicts between settlers and Native peoples; the experience of pioneers and missionaries, soldiers and immigrants and reformers; the growth of local communities and local cultural traditions; and the development of regional and national leadership in agriculture, business, medicine, politics, religion, law, journalism, education, and the role of women.
Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
The collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. There are more than 28,000 items in the physical collection with 10,172 available online. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics.
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age encompasses historically important writings by prominent Puerto Rican political activists and historians dating from 1831 through 1929. Texts from the post Spanish-American war period include the only English-language works in the collection. Among these are soldiers' reminiscences about the conflict and short histories designed to acquaint an American audience with Puerto Rico in the earliest years of its affiliation with the United States. The collection's pamphlets are all in Spanish; some of the books are in English, while others are in Spanish.
The digitized selections offered here represent a few of the most interesting and important items in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress. Selections include a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, Thomas Jefferson’s copy of The Federalist, medieval manuscripts, books relating to cookery, children's literature, and many more.
Samuel F. B. Morse Papers at the Library of Congress, 1793-1919
This online collection of approximately 6,500 items from the Samuel F. B. Morse Papers in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress includes correspondence, diaries, printed matter, maps, drawings and miscellany. These document Morse's invention of the electromagnetic telegraph, his participation in the development of telegraph systems in the United States and abroad, his career as a painter, his family life, his travels, and his interest in early photography, religion, and the nativist movement. Digital materials date from 1793 to 1919, but most are from 1807 to 1872.
Samuel J. Gibson Diary and Correspondence
The papers of Union soldier Samuel J. Gibson (1833-1878) consist of a diary kept by Gibson in 1864 while serving with Company B, 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, and a letter to his wife while held as a prisoner at Camp Sumter in Georgia, the Confederate prisoner of war camp commonly known as Andersonville Prison. The diary documents the capture of the Federal garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina, in April 1864, and Gibson’s experiences as a prisoner of war at Andersonville, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina. Gibson records war news and rumors received by the prisoners, the state of his physical and emotional health, the deaths of fellow prisoners, and the importance of his diary in maintaining a sense of time.
This collection is made up of digital versions of books from the Library of Congress General Collections on a wide range of subjects. Most of the books in this collection were published in the United States before 1923 and are in English, but there are some materials in foreign languages, were published in other countries, or by federal agencies. The collection features thousands of works of fiction published in the United States between 1800 and 1922, including books intended for children, young adults, and other specific audiences. The collection will grow over time.
Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts from the Library of Congress Law Library, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, and General Collections. The documents comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance. Most of the items date from the nineteenth century and include materials associated with the Dred Scott case and the abolitionist activities of John Brown, John Quincy Adams, and William Lloyd Garrison. Eighteenth-century cases include Somerset v. Stewart, decided in England a few years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which "underscored the great tension created by slavery in Anglo-American law." (Finkelman, p. 6) Some of the items presented here, such as the report of the trial of Castner Hanway in 1851, are the only primary source on their subjects.
U.S. Telephone Directory Collection
This online collection includes scans of more than half of the Library of Congress's collection of telephone directories on microfilm, which represent Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the city of Chicago. The dates of the directories span most of the 20th century.
This online presentation is a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. This selection of items includes 371 audio titles, 23 graphic images, a sampling of the dust jackets, and all the print material in the collection. The full collection is housed in the American Folklife Center.
