Several online collections from the Library of Congress are now available as part of the American Memory collections. The new collections and collection "previews" are:
"California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900." Offers 190 books documenting the Gold Rush and the decades of early statehood that followed through individual narratives about travel to and life in California.
"California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the '30s." A multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes sound recordings, still photos, drawings and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California.
"The New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939." Playscripts, production materials, photographs, and administrative records selected from the output of a New Deal WPA arts project. Additional materials to be added to this online collection.
"Inventing Entertainment: Turn-of-the-Century Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings from the Thomas A. Edison Companies." This is a preview of a collection of early films and recordings from the company formed by the man who invented the phonograph.
The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress will offer on the Internet millions of items from the Library's collections by the year 2000, the bicentenary of the Library. Already available are tens of thousands of photographs, including those by Mathew Brady of the Civil War; documents relating to slavery, the civil rights movement and women's suffrage; early motion pictures, including those from Thomas Edison's studio; and sound recordings of prominent Americans.
In 1996-1997, several publications, including Time, USA Today, and Family PC, named the Library's Web site as one of the best. Time called American Memory "a treasure trove of memorabilia."
