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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to Wisconsin, 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 tor Wisconsin are provided for most of the collections listed below.
The complete Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. The collection is organized into three "General Correspondence" series which include incoming and outgoing correspondence and enclosures, drafts of speeches, and notes and printed material.
The 800 + titles in the collection include sermons on racial pride and political activism; annual reports of charitable, educational, and political organizations; and college catalogs and graduation orations from the Hampton Institute, Morgan College, and Wilberforce University. Also included are biographies, slave narratives, speeches by members of Congress, legal documents, poetry, playbills, dramas, and librettos.
The 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.
This collection of life histories consists of approximately 2,900 documents, compiled and transcribed by more than 300 writers from 24 states, working on the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal jobs program that was part of the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936 to 1940. This collection contains 118 life histories from the state of Wisconsin.
Consists of more than 2,200 books and serials spanning the period 1550 to the present, with most published between 1840 and 1970. Illustrations are the featured aspect of these works, and many of the volumes contain original visual materials such as engravings, woodcuts, lithographs, fine photogravures, and photographic prints.
his collection contains the records of the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the United States Congress from 1774 to 1875, including journals, debates, bills, and laws.
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.
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.
The papers of nineteenth-century African American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who escaped from slavery and then risked his freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher, consist of approximately 7,400 items (38,000 images), most of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm.
The papers of author, educator, political philosopher, and public intellectual Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) constitute a large and diverse collection (25,000 items; 82,597 images) reflecting a complex career. The collection spans the years 1898 to 1977, with the bulk of the material beginning in 1948, three years before Arendt's naturalization as an American citizen.
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.
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.
This collection portrays the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division.
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 forty items for Wisconsin.
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929 assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition.
Datasets are increasingly a key digital resource used in a wide range of fields. The Library of Congress selects, preserves, and provides enduring access to datasets with the goal of cultivating a broad collection that encompasses all the areas covered by Library of Congress Collection Policy Statements. For more information on priorities for collecting datasets, see the Supplementary Guidelines for Datasets. Additional datasets acquired by the Library for the permanent collection will be made available here on a regular basis.
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 180 digitized books for Wisconsin.
This collection contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States.
The United States Code-- is a compilation of federal statutory law arranged by subject by the House Office of Law Revision Council. Each title in the United States Code corresponds to a subject.
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.
The papers of William Howard Taft (1857-1930), twenty-seventh president of the United States and tenth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, consist of approximately 676,000 documents (785,977 images), which have been digitized from 658 reels of previously reproduced microfilm.
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.
The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of Wisconsin. Selected images of Wisconsin 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. The collection contains more than ten drawings for Wisconsin.
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 two photographs for Wisconsin.
This collection consists of 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914, including seventeen cards from Milwaukee.
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.
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 collection to locate three items for Wisconsin.
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. The collection contains four drawings for Wisconsin.
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.
Explore the faces, places and events of the U.S. Civil War through photographs, prints and drawings.
Provides access to about 7,000 different views and portraits made during the American Civil War (1861-1865) and its immediate aftermath.
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.
This collection of photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company Collection includes more than 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, including more than two hundred photographs taken in Wisconsin.
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 1,000 images from Wisconsin.
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 Wisconsin.
The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945. Most of the images are photographs, including 270 cartes de visite.
The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection is comprised of over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures. The collection contains more than one hundred photographs from Wisconsin.
The online presentation of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive features photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States, including more than eight hundred photographs from Wisconsin.
The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies, including thousands of records from the state of Wisconsin. Search by location name of browse the collection by geographic location to locate more than seven hundred items for Wisconsin.
Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) was one of the first American women to achieve prominence as a photographer. Trained at the Académie Julian in Paris, she studied photography upon her return to Washington, D.C., in the mid-1880s and opened a professional studio circa 1890.
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.
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 collection contains more than ten photographs for Wisconsin.
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.
This contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits, including over seventy images from Wisconsin.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate four images for Wisconsin.
About 15,000 historical prints (ca. 1700-1900) created to document geographic locations or popular subjects and sometimes used for advertising and educational purposes. The collection contains ten historical prints for Wisconsin.
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 Wisconsin.
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. The collection contains six images for Wisconsin.
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 stereographs for Wisconsin.
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 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.
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 sixty maps for Wisconsin.
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 sixty maps for Wisconsin.
This collection contains 623 maps chosen from more than 3,000 railroad maps and about 2,000 regional, state, and county maps, and other maps which show "internal improvements" of the past century. Included in the collection are ten maps from Wisconsin.
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 970 maps for Wisconsin.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten maps for Wisconsin.
The Library's sheet music collection include popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.
This presentation features 147 items of sheet music that reference baseball from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.
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 collection contains more than five pieces of sheet music for Wisconsin.
This sheet music collection consists of approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to 1920. Browse the collection by location to locate more than ten pieces of sheet music for Wisconsin.
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 190 items for Wisconsin.
Consists of over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. The collection contains more than ten pieces of sheet music for Wisconsin.
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. Browse the collection by location to locate more than sixty pieces of sheet music for Wisconsin.
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.
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.
This collection presents approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.
The Alan Lomax collection of Michigan and Wisconsin recordings (AFC 1939/007) documents Irish, Italian, Finnish, Serbian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, Croatian, French Canadian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Swedish songs and stories, as well as occupational folklife among loggers and lake sailors in Michigan and Wisconsin. Lomax's itinerary took him from Detroit through the Saginaw River valley to the northern counties of the Lower Peninsula, including Beaver Island. Crossing the Straits of Mackinac, he collected across the Upper Peninsula to the far northern Calumet area and then along the Lake Superior coast to easternmost Wisconsin.
The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents more than 1,300 items with more than 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern's contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items. Browse the collection by location to locate ten items for Wisconsin.
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.
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge.
The Occupational Folklife Project (OFP) began in 2010 as a multi-year project by the American Folklife Center (AFC) to document the culture of contemporary American workers during an era of economic and social transition. To date, fieldworkers across the United States have recorded more than 1300 audio and audiovisual oral history interviews with workers in scores of trades, industries, crafts, and professions. The collection contains more than sixty audio recordings and one manuscript item for Wisconsin.
This collection 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. It includes four interviews conducted in Wisconsin.
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 Wisconsin.
The Library of Congress hosts public events featuring authors, world leaders, entertainers, scholars and sports legends. We have been recording Library events for decades and are making those recordings available in this collection.
