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El Salvador: Hispanic Reading Room Country Guide

Digital Collections and Services

The Library of Congress has over 20 centers that provide research space and guidance for users to interact with collection items based on subject or format. The Hispanic Reading Room curates materials from 61 countries and/or regions in 26 different languages and in varying formats such as books, maps, photographs, manuscripts, and digital objects. The Hispanic Reading Room staff provides access to materials from the General Collections and helps point researchers to relevant items in other reading rooms. Selected digitized primary source materials from the Library’s collections are highlighted below along with links for further exploration.

Eruption of volcano, San Salvador. c1917. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Prints, Photographs, Visual Materials

The Library's Prints and Photographs Division is the repository for a rich collection of prints, photographs, and other visual materials on and about El Salvador from significant artists and photographers. Many of these items have been digitized and are available to researchers online. Many other visual materials are available to researchers in the Library's Prints and Photographs Reading Room.

Law, Legal Materials

The Law Library of Congress includes a vast collection on foreign legal materials, such as Constitutions, Codes, Session laws, Commentaries and indexes to laws, rules and regulations, Judicial court decisions and reports, and Legal bibliographies.

Access to legal materials related to El Salvador are provided by the Law Library, including:

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers: General Correspondence, circa 1890-1947; El Salvador, Confraternidad de Señoras de la República de El Salvador. Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

Manuscripts, Archival Materials

The Manuscript Division holds papers and archival materials. These records include primary sources from cultural figures, authors, and politicians, to name a few. You can browse collections related to El Salvador in the Manuscript Division or search through Finding Aids to locate specific items through a keyword search. Try "letters from San Salvador" to find primary source materials.

Most manuscript materials are housed in the Manuscript Division, but other divisions of the Library also have manuscript collections. Some manuscript collections have been digitized, but a larger number are described by online finding aids or by records in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.

El Salvador. [Washington] : The Agency, [1980] Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.

Cartographic Materials

The Library's Geography and Map Division has custody of the largest and most comprehensive cartographic collection in the world with collections numbering over 5 million maps, 100,000 atlases, 8,000 reference works, over 5000 globes and globe gores, 3,000 raised relief models, over 130,000 microfiche/film, and a large number of cartographic materials in other formats. Many of these materials have been digitized and are available online. Materials that have not been digitized are available from the Geography and Map Reading Room.