Arts and Humanities Information
from Federal Government Sources
|| Reference Shelf || Galleries
|| History || Literature,
Film || National Museums || Photography
|| the South
|| Spring Hill College ||
Digitized collections of primary source material
Reference Shelf
American Memory Project
http://lcweb.loc.gov
American Memory Project Arranged by Topic
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/finder.html#abcd
National Endowment for the Humanities
http://www.neh.gov
Our Documents [Facsimiles and Transcripts of the 100 Most
Influential Documents in United States History]
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
Smithsonian Institution
http://www.si.edu/
Smithsonian Magazine
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian/home.shtml
Search the Smithsonian Institutions Catalogs and Collections
http://www.siris.si.edu/
Search for Specific Works of American Art in the National Museum of American Art
http://nmaa-ryder.si.edu/study/inventorypref.html
Photography
Daguerreotype Photographs
The Library of Congress' daguerreotype collection consists of approximately 600
photographs dating from 1839 to 1862.
Panoramic Photograph Collection
The Panoramic Photograph Collection contains approximately four thousand images
featuring
American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These panoramas offer an overview of
the
nation, its enterprises and its interests, with a focus on the start of the twentieth
century when the
panoramic photo format was at the height of its popularity. Subject strengths include:
agricultural life;
beauty contests; disasters; engineering work such as bridges, canals and dams; fairs and
expositions;
military and naval activities, especially during World War I; the oil industry; schools
and college
campuses, sports, and transportation. The images date from 1851 to 1991 and depict scenes
in all
fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Presidential Portraits
The Library of Congress has extensive resources for the study of the United
States presidents and
first ladies. Frequent requests for presidential portraits inspired Prints and Photographs
Division staff
to compile this ready reference aid of formal and informal pictures in the division's
custody. The
selected images include at least one likeness of each of the forty-one presidents and most
of the first
ladies.
Touring the United States at
the Turn of the Century
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 includes the work of a number of
photographers, one of
whom was the well known photographer William Henry Jackson. A small group within the
larger collection includes about 900 Mammoth Plate Photographs taken by William Henry
Jackson along several railroad lines in the United States and Mexico in the 1880s and
1890s. The group also includes views of California, Wyoming and the Canadian Rockies.
Literature, Film and Writers
Ex-Slave Narrative Collection
http://lcweb.loc.gov/spcoll/072.html
The interviewing of former slaves was begun in the Ohio River Valley by the
Federal Emergency
Relief Administration in 1934 and was extended to other areas between 1936 and 1938 by the
WPA
Federal Writers' Project (FWP) under the direction of John A. Lomax. Federal field workers
met with
informants who had been slaves in households and plantations of varying sizes and had been
trained in
many slave occupations.
African American Perspectives
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html
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,
with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. Among the authors
represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin
W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love.
Edward Albee
Portrait
of Albee
Hannah
Arendt Papers
The papers contain correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book manuscripts, transcripts of Adolf Eichmann's trial proceedings, notes, and printed matter pertaining to Arendt's writings and academic career.
Truman Capote
Portrait
of Capote
Willa Cather
Portrait
of Cather
Countee Cullen
Portrait
of Cullen
William Faulkner
Portrait of Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Portrait
of Fitzgerald
Langston Hughes
Portrait
of Hughes
William Somerset Maugham
Portrait
of Maugham
Henry Miller
Portrait
of Miller
Eugene O'Neill
Portrait
of O'Neill
Walt Whitman
http://lcweb.loc.gov/spcoll/079.html
The Feinberg-Whitman Collection, purchased by the Library over the last decade
with the assistance
of anonymous benefactors, probably is the largest and most important group of materials
relating to
American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) ever assembled.
Early Editions of Walt Whitman
http://lcweb.loc.gov/spcoll/261.html
Copies of every publication cited in A Concise Bibliography of the Works of Walt
Whitman, With a Supplement of Fifty Books About Whitman (New York and Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1922. 106 p. The collection contains nearly one hundred copies of Leaves of
Grass, included both issues of the first edition published in Brooklyn in 1855; an
autographed copy of the exceedingly rare Memoranda During the War (Camden, N.J.: 1875-76);
and one of the five known copies (the Library received a second copy through copyright
deposit) of Letters Written by Walt Whitman to his Mother from 1866 to 1872 (New York and
London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902), a work which was edited by Thomas B. Harned, Whitman's
close friend and an executor of his literary estate.
Recovered Notebooks of Walt Whitman
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/wwhome.html
This collection offers access to the four Walt Whitman Notebooks and a
cardboard butterfly that
disappeared from the Library of Congress in 1942. They were returned on February 24, 1995.
American Films 1913-1948 from the United Artists Collection
http://lcweb.loc.gov/spcoll/246.html
The earliest surviving preprint material for approximately three thousand motion
pictures from the pre-1949 film library of Warner Brothers pictures. The collection
contains fifty silent features (1913-30), 750 sound features (1927-48), 1,800 sound shorts
(1926-48), and 400 cartoons, among them Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. While consisting
largely of Warner Brothers releases, the collection includes nearly two hundred sound
features released by Monogram Pictures Corporation and a number of Popeye cartoons
produced by Fleischer Studios. Most motion pictures exist in the original black-and-white
or Technicolor camera negatives.
History
Core Documents of American History from the
Revolutionary period to present. In addition to document, this section includes
political speeches, women's suffrage, Federal Writer's Project, etc.
Words and Deeds in American
History - Main Page
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/mcchtml/corhome.html
Approximately ninety representative documents spanning from the fifteenth
century to the
mid-twentieth century. Included are the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, members
of
Congress, Supreme Court justices, military officers and diplomats, reformers and political
activists,
artists and writers, scientists and inventors, and other prominent Americans whose lives
reflect our
country's evolution.
Words and Deeds in American History by 25 Year Increments
Pre-1775
1775-1799
1800-1824
1825-1849
1850-1874
1875-1899
1900-1924
1925-1949
1950-present
Today in American History
On April 1, 1997, the Library of Congress began offering Today in History, a
presentation of
historic facts highlighted by items from the American Memory collections.
Search for Events in American
History for a Specific Date
The Library of Congress has made the archives of Today in History searchable by
date.
Documents from the Continental
Congress and Constitutional Convention
The Continental Congress Broadside Collection (253 titles) and the
Constitutional Convention Broadside Collection (21 titles) contain 274 documents relating
to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items
include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee
reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence.
Our Documents [Facsimiles and Transcripts of the 100 Most
Influential Documents in United States History]
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
American Life Histories from
the Federal Writer's Project
These life histories were written by the staff of the Folklore Project of the
Federal Writers' Project
for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The
Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300
writers
from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts
and
revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The
histories describe
the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores,
medical
needs, diet and miscellaneous observations.
Speeches of American Political Leaders
The Nation's Forum Collection consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of
speeches by American
leaders at the turn of the century. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding
the First
World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G.
Harding,
James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and
John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes.
Women's Suffrage in the United
States
The NAWSA Collection consists of 167 books, pamphlets and other artifacts
documenting the
suffrage campaign. They are a subset of the Library's larger collection donated by Carrie
Chapman
Catt, longtime president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in November
of
1938. The collection includes works from the libraries of other members and officers of
the
organization including: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Alice Stone
Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Mary A. Livermore.
Women's Suffrage in the United
States - Pictures
A selection of 38 pictures includes portraits of many individuals who have been
frequently requested from the holdings of the Prints and Photographs Division and the
Manuscript Division. Also featured are photographs of suffrage parades, picketing
suffragists, and an anti-suffrage display, as well as cartoons commenting on the
movement--all evoking the visible and visual way in which the debate over women's suffrage
was carried out.
Library of Congress Resources Related to the South
American Special Collections: Library of Congress