The Main Reading Room works with partners across the Library to digitize General collections materials, helping all Library users gain access to unique collection items. We regularly digitize select items from its collections of high research value.
Research Center Main Reading Room
Digital Collections
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CollectionAmerican Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920 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. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources entitled Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, published between 1904 and 1907 after diligent compilation by the distinguished historian and secretary of…- Contributor: Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
- Date: 2003
Collection Items: View 257 Items
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CollectionThe Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands This online collection contains digitized items from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands/De Atlantische Wereld: Amerika en Nederland digital library project, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.Collection Items: View 82 Items
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CollectionCalifornia as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 The collection covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. It captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who had preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often-turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely…Collection Items: View 206 Items
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CollectionCapital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1600-1925 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…- Contributor: Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - Library of Congress. Rare Book and Special Collections Division
- Date: 2000
Collection Items: View 143 Items
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CollectionChildren's Book Selections This special collection presents children’s books selected from the General and Rare Book Collections at the Library of Congress. The collection includes classic works that are still read by children today, and lesser-known treasures drawn from the Library’s extensive collection of historically significant children’s books. The books in this collection were published in the United States and England before 1924, are no longer under…Collection Items: View 68 Items
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CollectionEarly Baseball Publications This collection provides full-text digitized access to early baseball publications from the vast collections of the Library of Congress. The publications include a large selection of annual baseball guides, including numerous volumes of Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide. Also included are rule books, record books, scorekeeping guides, books on how to hit and play different positions, and more. Additional baseball materials available at the…Collection Items: View 126 Items
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CollectionFrance in America This online collection presents digitized items from the Library of Congress collection originally made available as the France in America digital library project, a part of the Global Gateways initiative. Conceived in partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, France in America /France en Amérique was launched as a bilingual digital library made available by the Library of Congress. It explored the history of…Collection Items: View 651 Items
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CollectionMeeting of Frontiers Meeting of Frontiers is a project, originally funded by the United States Congress, devoted to the theme of the exploration and settlement of the American West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.Collection Items: View 19,661 Items
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CollectionOpen Access Books This is a growing collection of contemporary open access e-books. The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. Most of the books in this collection were published in English, but there are some titles in other languages. All of the books in this collection were published under either an open access license…Collection Items: View 7,629 Items
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CollectionParallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier This online collection contains books, maps, prints and photographs, manuscripts, and other documents from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier/Historias Paralelas: España, Estados Unidos, y la Frontera Americana, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.Collection Items: View 389 Items
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CollectionPioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 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's 138 volumes depict the land and its resources; the conflicts between settlers and…- Contributor: Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - Library of Congress. Rare Book and Special Collections Division
- Date: 1998
Collection Items: View 340 Items
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CollectionSelected Digitized Books 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…Collection Items: View 156,608 Items
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CollectionThe Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939 comprises a historic selection of Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide and the Official Indoor Base Ball Guide. The collection reproduces 35 of the guides, which were published by the Spalding Athletic Company in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide was perhaps the premier publication of its day for the game of baseball. It…Collection Items: View 39 Items
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CollectionU.S. Telephone Directory Collection The Library of Congress's collection of telephone directories represents the following states and localities: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the city of Chicago. The dates of the directories span most of the 20th century. The Library's United States telephone directory collection consists of 8,327 digitized reels of microfilm; of these,…- Date: 1906
Collection Items: View 3,513 Items
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CollectionThe United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures This online collection contains digitized items from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as The United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures/Brasil e Estados Unidos: Expandindo Fronteiras, Comparando Culturas, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.Collection Items: View 81 Items
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CollectionWorld 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,…Collection Items: View 19,407 Items