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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Maine, 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 Maine are provided for most of the collections listed below.
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consist of approximately 20,000 documents which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material.
Begun by Mr. Stern in the 1920s, the collection documents the life of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) both through writings by and about Lincoln as well as a large body of publications concerning the issues of the times including slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and related topics.
This collection consist of correspondence, scientific notebooks, journals, blueprints, articles, and photographs documenting Bell's invention of the telephone and his involvement in the first telephone company, his family life, his interest in the education of the deaf, and his aeronautical and other scientific research.
Contains 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s.
A collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at 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. Browse the collection by location to locate two items for Maine.
The seventy-six works presented here are limited to a period beginning shortly after the Civil War and ending at 1922. The music selected reflects the diversity of choral music in the collections written during the later nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and includes accompanied music, a cappella, sacred and secular music, and works for mixed choirs, for women's and men's ensembles, and for children's choruses.
These life histories were written by staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-40. The collection contains twenty-nine titles for Maine.
Comprises 253 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.
This collection illustrates the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings, 143 photographs, and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini.
This presentation features 147 items of sheet music that reference baseball from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.
The Blackwell Family Papers span the years 1759-1960, with the bulk of the material dating from 1845 to 1890. Consisting of approximately 29,000 items (58,002 images), most of which were digitized from 76 reels of microfilm, the collection predominantly represents two generations of the Blackwell family and twenty individual family members. Nearly two centuries of the family's daily lives are documented in correspondence, diaries, speeches, and other papers, exemplifying the family's long commitment to social reform movements, such as abolition; women's rights, including the right to equal education; women's suffrage; and temperance.
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 Civil War Sheet Music Collection at the Library of Congress consists of over 2500 pieces culled from the Library's collections. This collection is unique in that it offers a contemporary perspective from both sides of the conflict, unfiltered by generations of historical interpretation
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 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. Browse the collection by location to locate two items for Maine.
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.
This online presentation includes items selected from the Federal Theatre Project Collection at the Library of Congress. Featured here are stage and costume designs, photographs, posters, playbills, programs, and playscripts, including productions of Macbeth and The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus as staged by Orson Welles, and Power, a topical drama of the period. The collection contains four items for Maine.
The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher.
The papers of farmer, writer, reformer, landscape architect, urban and suburban planner, and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) consist of approximately 24,000 items (roughly 47,300 images), most of which were digitized from 60 reels of previously produced microfilm.
The papers of army officer and first U.S. president George Washington (1732-1799) held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress constitute the largest collection of original Washington papers in the world. They consist of approximately 77,000 items accumulated by Washington between 1745 and 1799, including correspondence, diaries, and financial and military records.
This sheet music collection consists of approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to 1920 [view finding aid for the collection]. The collection contains two pieces of sheet music for Maine.
James Madison (1751-1836) is one of 23 presidents whose papers are held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Madison Papers consist of approximately 12,000 items, spanning the period 1723-1859, captured in some 37,714 digital images. They document the life of the man who came to be known as the "Father of the Constitution" through correspondence, personal notes, drafts of letters and legislation, an autobiography, legal and financial documents, and his notes on the 1787 federal Constitutional Convention.
Consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. The collection contains more than forty pieces of sheet music for Maine.
This collection consists of over 62,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the nineteenth century. The collection contains more than eighty pieces of sheet music for Maine.
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.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ninety items for Maine.
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.
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 for Maine.
The complete Thomas Jefferson Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 27,000 documents ranging in date from 1606 to 1827. Correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of documents make up two-thirds of the Papers.
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. A citation to a U. S. Supreme Court decision includes several elements that are needed to retrieve the case.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty pieces of sheet music for Maine.
The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI).
The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of Maine. Selected images of Maine 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 designs are primarily for sites and structures in the U.S. (especially Washington, D.C.), as well as Europe and Mexico. American architects and architectural firms created most of the images. Building types range from the United States Capitol and the Library of Congress to private residences and hamburger restaurants. The collection contains more than five drawings for Maine.
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. The L.C. Handy Studio had been located at 494 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington, DC. Levin C. Handy (1855?-1932) was apprenticed at the age of twelve to his uncle, famed Civil War photographer Mathew B. Brady (1823?-1896). The collection contains more than twenty images for Maine.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate two drawings for Maine.
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. His long chronicle of major social and political events began to appear in newspapers in 1929, and he continued to document domestic and international events for 72 years. The collection contains three cartoon drawings for Maine.
This assemblage of more than 800 prints made in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encompasses several forms of political art. Most of the prints are from the division's PC/US series, which consists of individually cataloged political cartoons and caricatures. Browse the collection by location to locate five cartoon prints for Maine.
Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings.
The Library's daguerreotype collection consists of more than 725 photographs dating from 1839 to 1864. Portrait daguerreotypes produced by the Mathew Brady studio make up the major portion of the collection.
This collection of photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. The collection contains more than 350 images of Maine.
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. A large group of Russian drawings show areas of China in the 1800s. The collection contains four drawings for Maine.
The images in the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection are among the most famous documentary photographs ever produced. Created by a group of U.S. government photographers, the images show Americans in every part of the nation. The collection contains more than 1,500 images of Maine.
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 collection contains more than thirty images of Maine.
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. Search the collection on Maine to locate three images pertaining to Maine.
The "electronic collection" contains approximately 16,000 of Genthe's black and white negatives, transparencies, lantern slides, and color autochromes. Its production was part of an initiative by Congress that enables the Library to preserve its fragile negative collections. Some of Genthe's photographic prints and other items have been grouped by subject matter into "LOTs" [view LOT records for Genthe photographic prints]. The rest of Genthe's photographic prints are currently unprocessed. Arrangements to view unprocessed prints are made under the Access to Unprocessed Materials policy.
This collection is comprised of over 29,000 photographs primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States. Search the collection to locate images of Maine.
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. Browse the collection by locate to locate four images of Maine.
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. The collection contains more than 500 photographs of Maine.
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies. Browse the collection by locate to locate more than 350 items for Maine.
Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was one of the first American women to achieve prominence as a photographer. 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 contains more than five images of Maine.
More than 5,000 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). The portraits often show weapons, hats, canteens, musical instruments, painted backdrops, and other details that enhance the research value of the collection.
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. With its coverage of U.S. and international lifestyles, celebrities, and events, the collection offers insight into the magazine's photojournalistic documentation of aspects of society and culture--particularly American society and culture--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Browse the collection by location to locate four photographs for Maine.
The collection consists of more than 5,100 photographic prints and 355 glass negatives, given to the Library of Congress, along with the NCLC records, in 1954 by Mrs. Gertrude Folks Zimand, acting for the NCLC in her capacity as chief executive. The collection contains more than seventy items of Maine.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than five photographs of Maine.
The collection contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. The collection contains more than twenty images of Maine.
Covers more than 2,500 original, individually cataloged photographic prints and more than 100 portfolios containing sets of prints created between the 1840s and the present. The collection contains more than five prints for Maine.
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.
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 more than historical prints for Maine.
Contains approximately 2,100 posters in the online Performing Arts Posters category represent the entire contents of three collections: the Magic Poster Collection, the Minstrel Poster Collection, and the Theatrical Poster Collection. The collection contains more than five posters of Maine.
This collection represents a wide range of quiltmaking techniques, from highly traditional to innovative. The quilts pictured exhibit excellent design and technical skill in a variety of styles and materials.
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. The collection contains more than sixty stereograph cards for Maine.
This collection consists of 1,395 photographs taken by American photographer Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964) between 1932 and 1964. The bulk of the collection consists of portrait photographs of celebrities, including many figures from the Harlem Renaissance. The collection contains more than twenty images of Maine.
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 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.
The collection represents an important historical record of the mapping of North America and the Caribbean. The collection contains more than twenty maps for Maine.
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 thirty maps for Maine.
This category contains maps showing campaigns of major military conflicts including troop movements, defensive structures and groundworks, roads to and from sites of military engagements, campsites, and local buildings, topography and vegetation. Some of the maps are manuscripts drawn on the field of battle, while others are engraved including some that have manuscript annotations reflecting the history of the battle or campaign. Browse this category by location to locate more than twenty maps for Maine.
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 Maine.
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 Maine.
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 six maps for Maine.
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 Maine.
Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of motion pictures.
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.
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 collection contains more than 170 items pertaining to Maine.
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.
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 five audio interviews for Maine.