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Nebraska: State Resource Guide

Digital Collections

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Nebraska, 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 Nebraska are provided for most of the collections listed below.

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection

The collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Alan Lomax Collection

The Alan Lomax Collection includes ethnographic field documentation, materials from Lomax's various projects, and cross-cultural research created and collected by Alan Lomax and others on traditional song, music, dance, and body movement from around the world.

Selected highlight from this collection:

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960) of Chicago presented his outstanding collection of Lincolniana to the Library of Congress in 1953. 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 that include the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The collection contains three items pertaining to Nebraska.

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

For most of the nineteenth century Americans learned the latest songs from printed song sheets. Not to be confused with sheet music, song sheets are single printed sheets, usually six by eight inches, with lyrics but no music.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940

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 more than 300 titles for Nebraska.

American Notes: Travels in America, 1750 to 1920

This collection 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.

Selected highlight from this collection:

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

The 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. Search the full text using the term Nebraska for items relating to the state.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Code of Federal Regulations

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. Search the collection on Nebraska to find more than eight items pertaining to the state.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920

This collection documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage. Search the bibliographic records using the search term Nebraska to locate items related to the state, including an item related to Arbor Day, which originated in Nebraska in 1872.

Federal Theatre Project, 1935 to 1939

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.  Selected administrative documents from the project are also available. Browse the collection by location to locate three items for Nebraska.

Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800 to 1922

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 four pieces of sheet music for Nebraska.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820 to 1860

The collection consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885

This collection consists of more than 62,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the nineteenth century.

Selected highlight from this collection:

National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection

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.

Selected highlight from this collection:

National American Woman Suffrage Association Records

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

The collection contains, among other materials, posters, playbills, songsheets, notices, invitations, proclamations, petitions, timetables, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, ballots, tickets, menus, and business cards. The collection contains eight items pertaining to Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929

The materials in this digital collection highlight on the one hand business concerns, such as advertising, marketing, merchandising, and industrialization; and on the other popular notions about responsible consumerism, thriftiness, and efficiency in the home. The collection also focuses on President Coolidge's idea of government and on Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover's standardization initiatives. Lastly, the materials document groups that did not participate fully in the emergent consumer economy, notably farmers, both white and black, and immigrants.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Selected Datasets

This page provides general information related to datasets in the Library of Congress' collection and also provides access to items that are available online. The Library strives to make acquired datasets as broadly accessible to users as possible; however, there are instances in which an acquired dataset will be unavailable to users or will require a user to visit the Library for access.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Selected Digitized Books

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. The collection contains more than forty digitized books for Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918 to 1919

This collection presents the complete seventy-one-week run of the World War I edition of the newspaper The Stars and Stripes. Published in France by the United States Army from February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, the eight-page weekly featured news, poetry, cartoons and sports coverage, with a staff that included journalists Alexander Woollcott, Harold Wallace Ross and Grantland Rice. Written by and for the American soldiers at the war front, the paper offers a unique perspective from which to examine the wartime experience. Search the collection using the search term Nebraska to find several articles concerning the state.

United States Reports (Official opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court)

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 selection of highlights from this collection includes:

World War I Sheet Music

The sheet music collection represents the intersection of this rich output of popular song and the consciousness of a nation at war that was itself emerging, as a major world power. The collection contains more than thirty pieces of sheet music for Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

World War II Rumor Project

The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI). The OWI was established by an Executive order on June 13, 1942, for the purpose of achieving a coordinated governmental war information program. The information program was designed to promote an informed and intelligent understanding of the status and progress of the war effort, war policies, activities, and aims of the United States government.

Selected highlight from this collection:

The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of Nebraska. Selected images of Nebraska are provided for each collection listed below. Search on terms such as or names of cities, towns, and sites, etc. to locate additional images.

Architecture, Design & Engineering Drawings

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Bain Collection

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 collection contains five images of Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Baseball Cards

This collection presents 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. The collection contains five baseball cards for the Omaha Team.

Brady-Handy Collection

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 majority of the Brady-Handy negatives are of Civil War and post-Civil War portraits, with a small collection of Washington views. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten items for Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Daguerreotypes

There are approximately 700 daguerreotypes in the Prints & Photographs Division. The majority of the images are portraits, but the collection does include a few early architectural views, outdoor scenes, and copies of works of art.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Detroit Publishing Company

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 four photographs of Nebraska.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

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 1,300 black-and-white photographs of Nebraska.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Color Photographs

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 seven color photographs of Nebraska.

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection

The Gottscho-Schleisner 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. The collection contains more than 100 photographs of the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive

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 twenty photographs of Nebraska.

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

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 location to locate more than 100 items for Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

National Photo Company Collection

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Panoramic Photographs

This collection contains approximately 4,000 images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. The collection contains more than thirty images of Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

PH Filing Series Photographs

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. Browse the collection by location to locate three photographs for Nebraska.

Posters: WPA Posters

This collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of the New Deal. This includes the following poster for soil conservation encouraging viewers to write the director of the Prairie States Forestry Project in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1862-1912

This collection integrates two collections from the holdings of the Nebraska State Historical Society. Approximately 3,000 glass plate negatives crafted by Solomon D. Butcher record the process of settlement in Nebraska between 1886 and 1912.

Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978 to 1996

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Stereograph Cards

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 fifteen stereographs for Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party

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.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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.

Cities and Towns

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. The collection contains eight maps of Nebraska.

Civil War Maps

This presentation contains approximately 2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Military Battles and Campaigns

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 two maps for Nebraska.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Panoramic Maps

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. Browse the collection by location to locate seven maps of Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Sanborn Maps

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 Nebraska.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Transportation and Communication

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 ten maps of Nebraska.

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.

American English Dialect Recordings: The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America

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 500 items for Nebraska.

National Jukebox

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. Search the collection on Nebraska to find five sound recordings on the state.

Omaha Indian Music

Omaha Indian Music features traditional Omaha music from the 1890s and 1980s. The multi format ethnographic field collection contains 44 wax cylinder recordings collected between 1895 and 1897, 323 songs and speeches from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow, and 25 songs and speeches from the 1985 Hethu'shka Society concert at the Library of Congress.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes: