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New Jersey: State Resource Guide

Digital Collections

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to New Jersey, 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 New Jersey 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. Search the collection on New Jersey to locate more than 250 items pertaining to New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection

This collection presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost 100 years from the early 19th through the early 20th centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. The collection includes five items pertaining to New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

This 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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten items for New Jersey.

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

This 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. Browse the collection by location to locate five song sheets for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920

A collection of over 200 hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress published from about 1490 to 1929. Many of the manuals also provide historical information on theatrical dance.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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:

The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920

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. Search the collection on New Jersey to find eight items pertaining to New Jersey.

Andrew Jackson Papers

The Andrew Jackson Papers is one of twenty-three presidential collections in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The Jackson archival collection contains more than 26,000 items dating from 1767 to 1874. Included are memoranda, journals, speeches, military records, land deeds, and miscellaneous printed matter, as well as correspondence reflecting Jackson's personal life and career as a politician, military officer, president, slave holder and property owner.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Blackwell Family Papers

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600 to 1925

The fourth in a series of local history collections presented by the National Digital Library Program as part of American Memory, joining "California As I Saw It", Pioneering the Upper Midwest, and Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age. Together, these online collections make up a virtual local history bookshelf. Like the other local history collections, The Capital and the Bay comprises first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs in an attempt to capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century. Works published after that time generally pose copyright challenges that prevented their inclusion.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Carrie Chapman Catt Papers

The papers of suffragist, political strategist, and pacifist Carrie Lane Chapman Catt (1859-1947) span the years 1848-1950, with the bulk of the material dating from 1890 to 1920. The collection consists of approximately 9,500 items (11,851 images), most of which were digitized from 18 microfilm reels. Included are diaries, correspondence, speeches and articles, subject files, and miscellaneous items, including photographs and printed matter. The collection reflects Catt's steadfast dedication to two major ideals--the rights of women, particularly the right to vote, and world peace.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Civil War Sheet Music Collection

This collection 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. Recurring themes in this collection include emancipation (represented by sundry polkas and quicksteps), constitutional reconstruction, reconciling the nation, and of course, songs heralding the Union or the Confederacy. The collection is limited to music about the war and therefore does not include every piece of sheet music published during the war. Browse the collection by location to locate three pieces of sheet music for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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.

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, through books, pamphlets, government documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and motion picture footage drawn from the collections of the Library of Congress. Search the collection by full text to locate more than 100 items pertaining to New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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 more than twenty items for New Jersey.

Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

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 freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. The online collection, containing approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), spans the years 1841-1964, with the bulk of the material dating from 1862 to 1865. Many of Douglass's earlier writings were destroyed when his house in Rochester, New York, burned in 1872. The collection contains seven items pertaining to New Jersey.

George Washington Papers

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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 bulk was published in many different cities in the United States, but some of the items bear European imprints. Most of the music is written for voice and piano; a significant minority is instrumental. The collection contains thirteen items for New Jersey.

James Madison Papers, 1723 to 1859

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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Martha Graham at the Library of Congress

The Martha Graham Collection is comprised of materials that document the career of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham and traces the history of the development of her company and school. The Collection contains over 350,000 items and includes a significant assembly of manuscript music scores, scrapbooks, photographs, clippings, choreographic notebooks, publicity and production materials, correspondence, programs, and business papers. Browse the collection by location to locate two items for New Jersey.

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

Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection contains more than 150 pieces of sheet music for New Jersey.

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. 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.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Olmsted Associates Records

The digitized portion of the Olmsted Associates Records consist of approximately 149,000 items (366,518 images), scanned from 532 reels of microfilm reproducing the two largest series in the collection, the Letterbooks, 1884-1899, and Job Files, 1863-1971, which document the work of the Brookline, Massachusetts, landscape architectural firm and its widespread projects and commissions undertaken for private and public clients in the United States and Canada.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Piracy Trials

The Law Library of Congress has digitized its collection of pre-1923 piracy trials. This historical collection of piracy trials is critical for understanding how the various nations of the world handled piracy issues before the year 1900.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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. 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 250 items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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

This collection assembles a broad array of Library of Congress source materials documenting the prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass-consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. Many new technologies and the new concept of scientific management in the work place had evolved during the first two decades of the century. In the 1920s these combined with an ability to produce and distribute goods on a mass scale amid widespread electrification of plants, factories, and households. These conditions led to a stabilization of the post-World War I economy that brought prosperity to many sectors.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Rare Book Selections

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. The Division's collection of nearly 5,700 incunabula (fifteenth-century imprints) is the largest such grouping in the Western Hemisphere. Our Americana collections include more than 16,000 imprints from 1640 to 1800, including the Columbus letter of 1493. Browse the collection by location to locate four items for New Jersey.

Rosa Parks Papers

The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. The collection contains five items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Selected Digitized Books

This collection is made up of digital versions of books from the Library of Congress General Collections on a wide range of subjects. Most of the books in this collection were published in the United States before 1923 and are in English, but there are some materials in foreign languages, were published in other countries, or by federal agencies. The collection features thousands of works of fiction published in the United States between 1800 and 1922, including books intended for children, young adults, and other specific audiences. The collection will grow over time.The collection contains more than ten digitized books for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860

This collection consists of 105 library books and manuscripts, totalling approximately 8,700 pages drawn principally from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, with a few from the General Collections.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Thomas Jefferson Papers, 1606 to 1827

The papers of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), diplomat, architect, scientist, and third president of the United States, held in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, consist of approximately 25,000 items, making it the largest collection of original Jefferson documents in the world.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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

United States Reports is a series of bound case reporters that are the official reports of decisions for the United States Supreme Court. A citation to a United States Supreme Court decisions includes three elements that are needed to retrieve a case.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Walt Whitman Papers in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection

The papers of poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection consist of approximately 28,000 items spanning from 1763 to 1985. The bulk of the items date from the 1840s through Whitman's death in 1892, and into the twentieth century. The collection of correspondence, literary manuscripts, books, proofs, and associated items represent periods of Whitman's life from his early time living in New York, middle-age in Washington, D.C., and the last phase of his life in Camden, New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Woodrow Wilson Papers

The papers of Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), scholar, president of Princeton University, governor of New Jersey, and president of the United States (1913-1921), consist of approximately 280,000 documents, comprising approximately 620,000 images, most of which were digitized from 540 reels of previously produced microfilm.

World Digital Library

This collection contains cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections. The original World Digital Library site (preserved in LC's Web Archives here) and all descriptive metadata were translated from English and made available in six additional languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten items for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

World War I Sheet Music

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. America's entry into the war came at a time when popular songwriting and the music publishing industry, centered in New York's Tin Pan Alley, was at its height and a new musical form known as "jazz" was emerging. 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 120 items for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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:

Yiddish American Popular Sheet Music

The Library's collection of Yiddish American sheet music is an unusual one for the Library of Congress. It began, not with a donation or purchase of materials which were then cataloged, but with a catalog. Lawrence Marwick, after retiring from his position as head of the Library's Hebraic Section in 1980, set out to compile a list of American Yiddish plays and music which had been submitted to the Library of Congress for copyright, recording information on some 5,000 index cards. Browse the collection by location to locate five pieces of sheet music for New Jersey.

The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of New Jersey. Selected images of New Jersey 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. American architects and architectural firms created most of the images. The collection contains more than seventy drawings for New Jersey.

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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than five photographs for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Baseball Cards

This collection presents 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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 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). Handy became an independent photographer and over the years owned studios in partnership with Samuel Chester and with Chester and Brady.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Cabinet of American Illustration

This collection contains more than four thousand original drawings by American book, magazine, and newspaper illustrators, made primarily between 1880 and 1910. The collection includes illustrations for magazines, novels, and children's books; cartoons; cover designs; and sketches for posters. More than two hundred artists are represented, including Charles Dana Gibson, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Oliver Herford, and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Browse the collection by location to locate eight drawings for New Jersey.

Cartoon Drawings

The collection 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 four drawings for New Jersey.

Cartoon Drawings: Herblock Collection

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 bulk of the 14,000 original ink and graphite drawings in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division date from 1946 through 2001, when Herblock worked for the Washington Post. Approximately 1,300 drawings represent his earlier work for the Chicago Daily News and the Newspaper Enterprise Association. The collection contains more than ten drawings for New Jersey.

Cartoon Prints, American

This assemblage of more than 500 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.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Civil War

Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings. The Prints & Photographs Division holds thousands of images relating to the Civil War, found in many different collections. This category allows research across those collections.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Dayton C. Miller Collection

The collection contains nearly 1,700 flutes and other wind instruments, statuary, iconography, books, music, trade catalogs, tutors, patents, and other materials mostly related to the flute. It includes both Western and nonwestern examples of flutes from around the world, with at least 460 European and American instrument makers represented. Items in the collection date from the 16th to the 20th century. Browse the collection by location to locate four items for New Jersey.

Detroit Publishing Company

This collection includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. Subjects strongly represented in the collection include city and town views, including streets and architecture; parks and gardens; recreation; and industrial and work scenes. The collection contains more than 500 items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Drawings (Documentary)

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. The collection contains more than thirty drawings for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Drawings (Master)

Some 4,700 drawings created by American artist, illustrator, printmaker, and writer Joseph Pennell (1857-1926) are preserved in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Such a large body of work from the period known as America's golden age of illustration offers researchers many opportunities to gain new insights into that era, the life of an artist, and the role of both traditional and then-new drawing media. Browse the collection by location to locate three drawings for New Jersey.

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. The collection contains more than 1,900 images of New Jersey during the 1930s.

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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten color photographs of New Jersey.

Fine Prints

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. Browse the collection by location to locate three prints for New Jersey.

Gottscho-Schleisner Collection

The collection of more than 45,000 items (negatives, transparencies and prints) came to the Library of Congress in the early 1980s. The online collection provides access to 29,000 negatives and color transparencies. These were copied during a special preservation project in 1991-1993. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 2,300 items for New Jersey.

Groups of Images (LOTs)

This collection contains more than 13,000 groups of photographs, prints, drawings, and other visual material offer access to 1.5 million items dating primarily from the 1800s through the present. The groups, called "LOTs," gather images related to one another by provenance, creator, subject, or format into manageable sets. Examples include the component parts of the NAACP archives, photo projects by Milton Rogovin, LOTs relating to Native Americans, and sets of stereographs by particular publishers. The collection contains more than thirty images for New Jersey.

Harris & Ewing Collection

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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than thirty photographic negatives for New Jersey.

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive

This collection contains 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 850 photographs for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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 are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Since 2000, documentation from the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) has been added to the holdings. The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes, including examples as diverse as the Pueblo of Acoma, houses, windmills, one-room schools, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 1,600 items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Horydczak Collection

The Theodor Horydczak Collection (about 14,350 photographs online) documents the architecture and social life of the Washington metropolitan area in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, including exteriors and interiors of commercial, residential, and government buildings, as well as street scenes and views of neighborhoods. A number of Washington events and activities, such as the 1932 Bonus Army encampment, the 1933 World Series, and World War II preparedness campaigns, are also depicted. [View a sampling] Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten photographs for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Johnston (Frances Benjamin) Collection

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 also includes photographs collected by Johnston, including images of family and friends and works by other women photographers. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten photographs for New Jersey.

Look 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. The collection contains three photographs pertaining to New Jersey.

National Child Labor Committee Collection

Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924. The NCLC photos are useful for the study of labor, reform movements, children, working class families, education, public health, urban and rural housing conditions, industrial and agricultural sites, and other aspects of urban and rural life in America in the early twentieth century. The collections more than 150 photographs for New Jersey.

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. Many of the Library's photographic prints that have a special aesthetic, technical, or historic importance are preserved in this series, which emphasizes access by the photographers's names and the type of photographic process. The Library acquired the prints from many sources, which generally appear in the catalog records. New works continue to be added to the series. Browse the collection by location to locate four photographic prints for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Photochrom Prints

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. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten photographs for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Popular Graphic Arts

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 ninety historical prints for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Posters: Artist Posters

The online Artist Posters consist of a small but growing proportion of the more than 85,000 posters in the Artist Poster filing series. This series highlights the work of poster artists, both identified and anonymous. It includes posters from the nineteenth century to the present day. Browse the collection by location to locate nine artist posters for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Posters: Performing Arts Posters

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. Browse the collection by location to locate three posters for New Jersey.

Posters: World War I Posters

This collection makes available online approximately 1,900 posters created between 1914 and 1920. Most relate directly to the war, but some German posters date from the post-war period and illustrate events such as the rise of Bolshevism and Communism, the 1919 General Assembly election and various plebiscites. The collection contains five posters for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Posters: WPA Posters

This collection consists of 907 posters produced from 1936 to 1943 by various branches of the WPA. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, with the strongest representation from California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Browse the collection by location to locate three posters for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Posters: Yanker Poster Collection

The Yanker Poster Collection includes more than 3,000 political, propaganda, and social issue posters and handbills, dating 1927-1980. Most posters are from the United States, but over 55 other countries and the United Nations are also represented. The collection contains five posters for New Jersey.

Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978 to 1996

Contains 181 segments from recorded interviews with quiltmakers and 410 graphic images (prints, positive transparencies, and negatives) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection (AFC 1982/00) and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection (AFC 1997/011). The images of the quilts convey the range of contemporary quiltmaking styles in the United States, while the recorded interview segments provide information on the quiltmakers and their work within the context of their lives and region and a more in-depth portrait of quiltmaking in daily life.

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 200 stereographs for New Jersey.

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. The collection contains more than fifteen photographs for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting

This collection presents 470 interview excerpts and 3882 photographs from the Working in Paterson Folklife Project of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The four-month study of occupational culture in Paterson, New Jersey, was conducted in 1994. The documentary materials presented in this online collection explore how Paterson's industrial heritage expresses itself in Paterson: in its work sites, work processes, and memories of workers. Included are interpretive essays exploring such topics as work in the African American community, local foodways, the ethnography of a single work place (Watson Machine International), business life along a single street in Paterson (21st Avenue), and narratives told by retired workers.

A selection of articles and essays from this collection includes:

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 more than eighty maps for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

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 more than 100 maps for New Jersey.

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. The collection contains more than forty maps for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Rochambeau Map Collection

This collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795. Browse the collection by location to locate five maps for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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 800 maps for New Jersey.

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 more than ten maps for New Jersey.

Selected highlight from this collection:

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 New Jersey.

America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894 to 1915

Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of motion pictures.

Selected highlight from this collection:

Civil Rights History Project

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies

This site features 341 motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and other related materials, such as photographs and original magazine articles. Cylinder sound recordings will be added to this site in the near future. In addition, histories are given of Edison's involvement with motion pictures and sound recordings, as well as a special page focusing on the life of the great inventor. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898 to 1906

This collection contains forty-five films of New York dating from 1898 to 1906 from the Paper Print Collection of the Library of Congress. Of these, twenty-five were made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, while the remaining twenty are Edison Company productions. Browse the collection by location to locate six films for New Jersey.

National Screening Room

The National Screening Room showcases the riches of the Library's vast moving image collection, designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, accessible to the viewers worldwide. The majority of titles in the National Screening Room are freely available as both 5 mb MP4 and ProRes 422 MOV/Quicktime downloads. The collection contains more than ten titles for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures

This presentation features 68 motion pictures, produced between 1898 and 1901, of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. war in which the motion picture camera played a role. Browse the collection by location to locate eight motion pictures for New Jersey.

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.

Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project

The Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America Project was conducted in 1982 by the American Folklife Center to survey selected religious and secular ethnic community-based schools conducted, at least in part, in a language other than English to document the continued ethnolinguistic and cultural diversity of the United States. The collection consists of field notes, interviews, curriculum materials, sound recordings, photographs, and one videorecording resulting from a survey conducted by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress in 1982 which documented 23 ethnic schools in the United States. Browse the collection by location to locate more than twenty items for New Jersey.

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 site also includes biographies, essays and curated content, interactive maps, a timeline and teaching resources offering context and expert analysis to the source material. Browse the collection by location to locate more than 340 items for New Jersey.

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

Pinelands Folklife Project

The Pinelands Folklife Project collection represents the culmination of a three-year effort to identify and record the cultural traditions in and around the Pinelands National Reserve in the Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey in the mid-1980s. The collection comprises ethnographic documentation which examines the relationship between the local culture and the surrounding environment. It contains the administrative records, planning documents, and published materials related to the management of the field project.

September 11, 2001, Documentary Project

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.

Selected highlight from this collection: