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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Colorado, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photographs, sheet music, and sound recordings. Provided below is a link to the home page for each relevant digital collection along with selected highlights.
Written materials in the Library's digital collections include books, government documents, manuscripts, and sheet music. Examples of written materials related to Colorado are provided for most of the collections listed below.
The papers of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), lawyer, representative from Illinois, and sixteenth president of the United States, contain approximately 40,550 documents dating from 1774 to 1948, although most of the collection spans from the 1850s through Lincoln's presidency (1861-1865).
The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents more than 1,300 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. Browse the collection by location to locate two items for Colorado.
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.
This collection consists of a linked set of published congressional records of the United States of America from the Continental Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875.
The Code of Federal Regulations (C.F.R.) is "the codification of the general and permanent rules by the department and agencies of the Federal Government." This is a historical collection of the Code of Federal Regulations dating from 1938 - 1995. To access the Code of Regulations from 1996 - present, please visit the Government Publishing Office site, GovInfo. The collection contains more than 150 items for Colorado.
The collection consists of field recordings, photographs, drawings, and field notes that document aspects of local history, traditional ranch life, vernacular architecture and other forms of material culture in the lower Blue River Valley in Summit and Grand Counties, Colorado.
The Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries is a searchable index of newspapers published in the United States since 1690. This directory can help identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them. For a detailed overview of the Directory, search tips, and FAQs, please consult the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries: A Guide for Researchers. Browse the collection by state/province to locate newspaper titles for Colorado.
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. This practice ended with the copyright act of 1870 which consolidated in the Library of Congress all copyright registration and deposit activity, and ordered the transfer of all extant records for the pre-1870 period to the Library of Congress.
This collection 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. Search the collection by full text on Colorado to locate more than 400 items.
The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm.
The papers of author, educator, political philosopher, and public intellectual Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) constitute a large and diverse collection (25,000 items; 82,597 images) reflecting a complex career.
The Motion Picture Copyright Descriptions Collection consists of forms, abstracts, plot summaries, dialogue and continuity scripts, press kits, publicity and other material, submitted for the purpose of enabling descriptive cataloging for motion pictures registered with the United States Copyright Office under classes L and M from 1912-1977, and under class PA thereafter.
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 records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) span the years from 1839 to 1961 but are most numerous for the period 1890 to 1930. The collection consists of approximately 26,700 items (52,078 images), most of which were digitized from 73 microfilm reels. These records reflect NAWSA's multifaceted history, including the activities of precursor organizations involved in the abolition and women's rights movements, state and federal campaigns for women's suffrage, the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and international women's suffrage organizing.
The Law Library of Congress has digitized a collection of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) decisions, orders, and petitions. NTSB conducts independent accident investigations and decides pilots' and mariners' certification appeals. The documents included in this collection are selected documents, not included in the Library's bound collection of NTSB decisions and not previously available online. The years of the decisions span from 1973-1982, with the majority falling between 1977 and 1981. Other decisions can be found on the NTSB's Document Management System. Browse the collection by subject to locate more than ten items for Colorado.
The Law Library of Congress collection contains a variety of Native American legal materials. The Law Library holds most of the laws and constitutions from the early 19th century produced by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole who were forced to leave the Southeast for the Indian Territory after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Some of these documents are in the vernacular languages of the tribes. This collection includes 19th century items and those constitutions and charters drafted after the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act.
The digitized portion of the Olmsted Associates Records consist of approximately 149,000 items (366,518 images), scanned from 532 reels of microfilm reproducing the two largest series in the collection, the Letterbooks, 1884-1899, and Job Files, 1863-1971, which document the work of the Brookline, Massachusetts, landscape architectural firm and its widespread projects and commissions undertaken for private and public clients in the United States and Canada. The collection contains more ten items pertaining to Colorado.
This is a growing collection of contemporary open access e-books. The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. Most of the books in this collection were published in English, but there are some titles in other languages. All of the books in this collection were published under open access licenses and may be read online or downloaded as a PDF or as an EPUB.
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 collection with 10,172 available online. The material dates from the seventeenth century to the present day and covers innumerable topics.
The collections housed in The Rare Book and Special Collections Division amount to nearly 800,000 books, encompassing nearly all eras and subjects maintained in well over 100 separate collections. All of these collections offer scholarly documentation about the western and American traditions of life and learning.
Datasets are increasingly a key digital resource used in a wide range of fields. The Library of Congress selects, preserves, and provides enduring access to datasets with the goal of cultivating a broad collection that encompasses all the areas covered by Library of Congress Collection Policy Statements. For more information on priorities for collecting datasets, see the Supplementary Guidelines for Datasets. Additional datasets acquired by the Library for the permanent collection will be made available here on a regular basis.
This is a growing collection of selected books and other materials from the Library of Congress General Collections that can be made openly available. Most of the materials in this collection were published in the United States and are in English. The collection features thousands of works of fiction, including books intended for children, young adults, and other audiences. There are also some materials in foreign languages that were published in other countries. The materials in this collection can be read online or downloaded. The collection contains more than 140 digitized books pertaining to Colorado.
Sheet Music of the Musical Theater is a collection of more than 16,000 pieces of sheet music published between 1880 and 1922.
The United States Code-- is a compilation of federal statutory law arranged by subject by the House Office of Law Revision Council. Each title in the United States Code corresponds to a subject.
The Library of Congress's collection of telephone directories represents the following states and localities: 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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ninety telephone directories for Colorado.
The United States Reports is a series of bound case reporters that are the official reports of decisions for the Supreme Court of the United States.
The papers of poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection consist of approximately 28,000 items spanning from 1763 to 1985. The bulk of the items date from the 1840s through Whitman's death in 1892, and into the twentieth century. The collection of correspondence, literary manuscripts, books, proofs, and associated items represent periods of Whitman's life from his early time living in New York, middle-age in Washington, D.C., and the last phase of his life in Camden, New Jersey.
Women's Suffrage in Sheet Music includes over 200 pieces of sheet music spanning the years 1838-1923, over half of which highlight women's emerging voices and suffrage efforts; the collection includes published rally songs and songsters written and compiled by notable composers and suffragists, as well as music manuscripts submitted for copyright deposit by everyday citizens.
This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections.
From 1914 through 1920 the Library of Congress acquired over 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States' active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period. The collection contains more than forty pieces of sheet music for Colorado.
The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI).
The Library's holdings of Yiddish American popular songs include the Irene Heskes Collection of Yiddish American sheet music (drawn from the archives of the Hebrew Publishing Company during her New York project in 1980) as well as copyright deposits already in the custody of the Library and materials drawn from other sources and gleaned from other Library collections, primarily in the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division and the Music Division.
The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of Colorado. Selected images of Colorado are provided for each collection listed below. Search on terms such as or names of cities, towns, and sites, etc. to locate additional images.
The Architecture, Design, and Engineering category covers about 40,000 drawings (described in more than 3,900 catalog records), spanning 1600 to 1989, with most dating between 1880 and 1940. The collection contains three drawings of Colorado.
The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations.
The Benjamin K. Edwards Collection includes 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. Distributed in cigarette packs, these cards were the forerunners of modern sports trading cards. They portray such legendary figures of the game as Ty Cobb stealing third base for Detroit, Tris Speaker batting for Boston, and pitcher Cy Young posing in his Cleveland uniform. The collection contains five baseball cards for the Denver Team.
In 1954 the Library of Congress purchased from Alice H. Cox and Mary H. Evans, the daughters of Levin C. Handy approximately 10,000 original, duplicate, and copy negatives.
Offers more than 9,000 original drawings for editorial cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips spanning the late 1700s to the present, primarily from 1880 to 1980. The cartoons cover people and events throughout the world, but most of the images were intended for publication in American newspapers and magazines. The collection contains two drawings for Colorado and one drawing for Denver.
Herbert L. Block (1909-2001), known to the world as Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. The bulk of the 14,000 original ink and graphite drawings in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division date from 1946 through 2001, when Herblock worked for the Washington Post. Browse the collection by location to locate two drawings for Colorado.
Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings. The collection contains four items for Colorado.
Provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath. The collection contains four images for Colorado.
Includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. Subjects strongly represented in the collection include city and town views, including streets and architecture; parks and gardens; recreation; and industrial and work scenes. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 120 items for Colorado.
The Documentary Drawings category includes more than 3,000 drawings made between 1750 and 1970. Eye-witness sketches made during the U.S. Civil War are the most frequently used images. Also included are topographical views, bank note vignettes, portraits, and courtroom sketches. The collection contains more than five drawings for Colorado.
The photographs of the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 1,900 photographs of Colorado.
Photographers working for the U.S. government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 made approximately 1,600 color photographs that depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The pictures focus on rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working. The collection contains more than forty photographs of Colorado.
About 85,000 prints created as art works, ca. 1450-present (most dating between 1800 and the present). Prints by American printmakers and artists (e.g., Paul Revere, Mary Cassatt, Jim Dine, Joseph Pennell) predominate, but creators in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Albrecht Dürer and Marc Chagall). Subjects vary widely, for example, portraits, religious themes, historical events, and street scenes.
More than 13,000 groups of photographs, prints, drawings, and other visual material offer access to 1.5 million items dating primarily from the 1800s through the present. The groups, called "LOTs" gather images related to one another by provenance, creator, subject, or format into manageable sets. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty groups of images for Colorado.
The Harris & Ewing, Inc. Collection of photographic negatives includes glass and film negatives taken by Harris & Ewing, Inc., which provide excellent coverage of Washington people, events, and architecture, during the period 1905-1945. Harris & Ewing, Inc., gave its collection of negatives to the Library in 1955. The Library retained about 50,000 news photographs and 20,000 studio portraits of notable people.
Photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white. Extensive coverage of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building was added in 2007. The archive is expected to grow to more than 100,000 photographs covering all of the United States.The collection contains more than 4,500 photographs of Colorado.
This online presentation of the HABS/HAER/HALS collections includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, written history pages, and supplemental materials. Since the National Park Service's HABS, HAER and HALS programs create new documentation each year, documentation will continue to be added to the online collections. The collection contains more than 900 items for Colorado.
Images in the collection span the period, 1850-1949, but the majority date between 1897 and 1927. Among the photographs from Johnston's early career are her coverage of American world's fairs; coal mining; the White House; openings of Congress; Admiral Dewey; and Progressive era educational efforts, including a survey of Washington, D.C., schools and such minority educational institutions as the Hampton Institute and the Tuskegee Institute. The collection also includes photographs collected by Johnston, including images of family and friends and works by other women photographers. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten images of Colorado.
The collection contains more than 6,000 special portrait photographs, called ambrotypes and tintypes, and small card photos called cartes de visite represent both Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Tom Liljenquist and his sons Jason, Brandon, and Christian built this collection in memory of President Abraham Lincoln and the estimated 620,000-850,000 Union and Confederate servicemen who died in the American Civil War. For many, these photographs are the last known record we have of who they were and what they looked like.
The Look Magazine Photograph Collection is a vast photographic archive created to illustrate Look Magazine and related publications produced by companies founded by Gardner Cowles. The cataloged portion of the collection totals some four million published and unpublished images made by photographers working for Look, most dating 1952-1971. Browse the collection by location to locate more than five images for Colorado.
Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The NCLC photos are useful for the study of labor, reform movements, children, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century. The collection contains more than ninety images for Colorado.
This collection documents virtually all aspects of Washington, D.C., life. During the administrations of Presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, the National Photo Company supplied photographs of current news events in Washington, D.C., as a daily service to its subscribers. It also prepared sets of pictures on popular subjects and undertook special photographic assignments for local businesses and government agencies. The images date between ca. 1850 and 1945; the bulk of the images were created between 1909 and 1932. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty images of Colorado.
Contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. The images date from 1851 to 1991 and depict scenes in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. More than twenty foreign countries and a few U.S. territories are also represented. These panoramas average between twenty-eight inches and six feet in length, with an average width of ten inches. Browse the collection by location to locate more than seventy photographs for Colorado.
Contains almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. The collection contains more than eighty prints for Colorado.
About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations or popular subjects and sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. Most are by American printmakers (e.g., Baillie, Currier & Ives, Sachse & Co.), but publishers in many other countries are also represented (e.g., Antonio Vanegas Arroyo). Subjects vary widely, from city and harbor views, street scenes, and manufacturing plants to genre scenes, historical events, religious iconography and portraits. The collection contains nine historical prints for Colorado.
The online Artist Posters consist of a small but growing proportion of the more than 85,000 posters in the Artist Poster filing series. This series highlights the work of poster artists, both identified and anonymous. It includes posters from the nineteenth century to the present day from the United States and other countries. The collection contains two posters for Colorado.
The Yanker Poster Collection includes more than 3,000 political, propaganda, and social issue posters and handbills, dating 1927-1980. Most posters are from the United States, but over 55 other countries and the United Nations are also represented. Browse the collection by location to locate two posters for Colorado.
Contains 181 segments from recorded interviews with quiltmakers and 410 graphic images (prints, positive transparencies, and negatives) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1982/00) and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection (AFC 1997/011).
Stereographs consist of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 500 stereographs for Colorado.
This collection includes 448 digitized photographs selected from approximately 2,650 print photographs in the Records of the National Woman's Party, a collection of more than 438,000 items, housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The images span from 1875 to 1938 but largely were created in the years between 1913 and 1922. The images depict the tactics used by the militant wing of the suffrage movement in the United States - including picketing, petitioning, pageants, parades and demonstrations, hunger strikes and imprisonment---as well as individual portraits of organization leaders and members. Browse the collection by location to locate more than fifteen images for Colorado.
The Library of Congress has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5.5 million maps, 80,000 atlases, 6,000 reference works, over 500 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats, including over 19,000 CDs/DVDs.
This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty maps of Colorado.
This category documents the discovery and exploration with both manuscripts and published maps. Many of these maps reflect the European Age of Discoveries, dating from the late 15th century to the 17th century when Europeans were concerned primarily with determining the outline of the continents as they explored and mapped the coastal areas and the major waterways.
The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. The collection contains more than twenty maps for Colorado.
Contains 623 maps chosen from more than 3,000 railroad maps and about 2,000 regional, state, and county maps, and other maps which show "internal improvements" of the past century.
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 500 maps for Colorado.
These maps document the development and status of transportation and communication systems on the national, state, and local level. Transportation maps can depict canal and river systems, cycling routes , railway lines and systems, roads and road networks, and traffic patterns. Communication maps illustrate the location and distribution of telegraph routes, telephone systems and radio coverage. The collection contains four maps of Colorado.
The Library oversees one of the largest collections of motion pictures in the world. Acquired primarily through copyright deposit, exchange, gift and purchase, the collection spans the entire history of the cinema. The following moving image collections contain materials related to Colorado.
Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures. Highlights include films of the United States Postal Service from 1903, cattle breeding, fire fighters, ice manufacturing, logging, calisthenic and gymnastic exercises in schools, amusement parks, boxing, expositions, football, parades, swimming, and other sporting events.
The Library of Congress hosts public events featuring authors, world leaders, entertainers, scholars and sports legends. We have been recording Library events for decades and are making those recordings available in this collection.
This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles.
The Library of Congress holds the nation's largest public collection of sound recordings (music and spoken word) and radio broadcasts, some 3 million recordings in all.
After the Day of Infamy: "Man-on-the-Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.
The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. Browse the collection by location to locate twenty recordings for Colorado.
Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection is an online presentation of an ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. Browse the collection by location to locate more than fifty items for Colorado.
The Songs of America presentation allows you to explore American history as documented in the work of some of our country's greatest composers, poets, scholars, and performers. From popular and traditional songs, to poetic art songs and sacred music, the relationship of song to historical events from the nation's founding to the present is highlighted through more than 80,000 online items. The user can listen to digitized recordings, watch performances of artists interpreting and commenting on American song, and view sheet music, manuscripts, and historic copyright submissions online. The collection contains more than forty digitized audio recordings for Colorado.
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.
The Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) began in 2010 as a multi-year project by the American Folklife Center (AFC) to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers across the United States have recorded more than 1300 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions. The completed interviews have been incorporated into the American Folklife Center archive at the Library of Congress.
The September 11, 2001 Documentary Project captures the reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. Patriotism and unity mixed with sadness, anger, and insecurity are common themes expressed in this online presentation of almost 200 audio and video interviews, 45 graphic items, and 21 written narratives. Browse the collection by location to locate eight audio recordings for Colorado.
