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The Library established the American Memory program in the 1990s to digitize the Library’s Americana collections. Since then, the division's digitized material has been integrated into the Library's digital collection platform. Its contents stretch across many divisions of the Library. Among the most significant collections online are the Manuscript Division’s holdings of presidential papers. Thus far, many collections have been digitized and are available in the online collection, including the papers of several presidents, selected interviews from the WPA Slave Narrative Project, the papers of several women's suffrage leaders, and many others.
Each collection page contains time lines, bibliographies, and essays that help to provide context for the papers. Portions of these collections are also accompanied by transcriptions.
The World Digital Library is a joint project of UNESCO, the Library of Congress, and other libraries and cultural institutions from around the world. Digital content relating to American history from Manuscript Division holdings have been included in the World Digital Library. See, for example, the journal of Joseph Ingraham (1762-1800), a sea captain who in 1790-1792 sailed from Boston to China by way of Cape Horn, the Marquesas, Hawaii, and Nootka Sound in the ship Hope.
