This guide provides access to resources documenting culture in the state of Kansas at the Library of Congress.

The project consists of sound recordings, video recordings, photographs, manuscripts, sheet music, printed ephemera, artifacts, administrative records, and ethnographers' field notes. A Kansas Trouble Quilt is highlighted.

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 900 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions. Interviews representing Kansas are included.

The Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center collects, preserves, and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war. Kansas related items are highlighted.

Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find American newspapers published between 1690-present. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. A list of Kansas digitized newspapers is also available.

The New York Journal Collection consists of The Journal (1896-01-01 to 1896-07-18) and subsequent titles, New York Journal (1896-07-16 to 1897-04-01) and New York Journal and Advertiser (1897-04-02 to 1899-12-31) . In 1895, William Randolph Hearst purchased the paper to compete with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. The New York Journal is an example of "Yellow Journalism," where the newspapers competed for readers through bold headlines, illustrations, and activist journalism. Kansas is represented throughout the collection.

This online collection is drawn from three primary sources: The War of the Nations: Portfolio in Rotogravure Etchings, a volume published by the New York Times shortly after the armistice that compiled selected images from their "Mid-Week Pictorial" supplements of 1914-19; Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Times for 1914-19; and Sunday rotogravure sections from the New York Tribune for 1916-19. Kansas is represented throughout the collection.

The Guide to Law Online, prepared by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division, is an annotated guide to sources of information on government and law available online. It includes selected links to useful and reliable sites for Kansas legal information.

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. Search the collections for Kansas related items.

This site provides the names and highlighted resources from current and former state Kansas Poet Laureates.

The Library of Congress has rich documents and artifacts from every state, the U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.

Examine the interplay between national, state, local, and personal history. Students produce a digital collection of primary sources from their family or local community based on the Digital Collections.

Students explore the local history of the community in which they live through written and spoken stories; through landmarks such as buildings, parks, restaurants, or businesses; and through traditions such as food, festivals and other events of the community or of individual families.

Students create their town’s history for coming generations and place themselves on the map in a literal as well as figurative sense, by producing portions of an updated version of an early twentieth century panoramic map from the Digital Collections.

Kansas entered the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861

U.S. congressman, senator, and presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas was born on April 23, 1813. He sponsored the highly controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act which removed from Congress the authority to exclude slavery from a territory, effectively repealing the congressional compromise achieved with the Missouri Compromise.

Playwright William M. Inge was born in Independence, Kansas on May 3, 1913. Inge wrote several hit plays including Come Back, Little Sheba, Bus Stop, and Picnic, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.

Franklin Pierce, fourteenth president of the United States, was born on November 23, 1804. As president (1853-57), Pierce opposed antislavery legislation in the interests of promoting sectional harmony and economic prosperity but his accomplishments were overshadowed by his support for the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which replaced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 with permission for each new state to decide on the basis of popular sovereignty whether or not it would allow slavery. One result was the outbreak of violent conflict in the territory that came to be known as “Bleeding Kansas.”

Gordon Parks, a contemporary of William Inge was on November 30, 1912 in Kansas. Parks began taking photographs during the Great Depression and was earning his living as a self-taught fashion photographer by 1940. A fellowship allowed him to come to Washington, D.C., in 1942 and work for the Farm Security Administration. Working through the medium of photography, Parks went on to become one of America’s finest social commentators. His autobiography, A Choice of Weapons (New York: Harper & Row), was published in 1966.

Arriving in Kansas in the 1890s, Carrie Nation became active in mainstream temperance organizations. On December 27, 1900, Carrie Nation brought her campaign against alcohol to Wichita, Kansas, when she smashed up the bar at the elegant Carey Hotel. . The failure of Kansas authorities to enforce the ban on alcohol initially rallied some support for Nation’s attacks. However, her extreme methods and unladylike behavior ultimately distanced Nation from state and national temperance societies.