February 7, 2011 The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections Highlights Civil War Collections for Sesquicentennial

Information about historical documents from across the country regarding the outbreak of the Civil War—with links to the home historical societies and repositories of the materials—has been placed online by the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC). The presentation, “NUCMC and the Documentary Heritage of the American Civil War,” can be viewed at www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/civilwar/. The online presentation is the first of a five-year, five-part program highlighting Civil War collections for the sesquicentennial. The current online information focuses on the election of Abraham Lincoln, the secession crisis, the outbreak of hostilities, mobilizing for war and foreign public opinion. NUCMC is a cooperative cataloging program operated by the Library of Congress. The mission of the NUCMC program is to provide and promote bibliographic access to the nation’s documentary heritage. This mission is realized by NUCMC’s production of cataloging describing archival and manuscript collections held by eligible repositories located throughout the United States and its territories. Future updates to “NUCMC and the Documentary Heritage of the American Civil War” will include personal narratives of members of the Union and Confederate armed forces (2012); the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and the African American experience from slavery to the end of the Civil War (2013); the home front, women in the war, the role of charitable organizations, economic aspects of the war and patriotic societies (2014); and the sesquicentennial of the death of Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction, Confederate exiles and the rise of veterans’ organizations (2015). “With this timely commemoration of the Civil War, NUCMC succeeds in showcasing its work and demonstrating the wealth of materials in previously ‘hidden collections’ that we are interested in exposing, not just at the Library of Congress but at our colleague institutions nationally,” said Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum. To enhance the Library of Congress observance of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, NUCMC seeks the assistance of eligible repositories in identifying and describing archival collections relating to the conflict. Eligible repositories must be located in the United States or its territories, must regularly admit researchers, and must lack the capability of entering their own archival cataloging into the bibliographic database managed by OCLC, the world’s largest library cooperative. For more information about NUCMC program participation, please visit www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/. NUCMC can also be contacted via e-mail nucmc@loc.gov or by phone at (202) 707-7954 or at the Library of Congress, Cooperative and Instructional Programs Division, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540-4230. The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds nearly 147 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may also be accessed via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myLOC.gov.