American Memory: Technical summary
Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years
Ninety-two manuscript and pictorial documents selected from the papers of
leaders from all branches of American government, military officers and
diplomats, reformers and political activists, artists and writers, and
scientists and inventors which illustrate the country's evolution and
humanize larger events from the fifteenth century to the mid- twentieth
- Source collection
Special selections from the holdings of the Manuscript Division known as
the Core Collection.
- Technical features
- Images only. Mixed source characteristics--handwritten,
typescripts, odd-sized documents, some color. Bibliographic records linked
via z39.50 to source collection catalog record in MUMS.
- Original material formats
- Mixed manuscripts (handwritten, typescript) and pictorial items.
- Number of original items
- Status of collection
- Available online as of November 1997.
- Public access:
The Library will identify the owners of rights associated with items in
See notes on rights and
restrictions provided by the Library to users of this collection.
Aids to intellectual access
- Type & granularity
Database with title, enriched legend, uncontrolled subject terms, source
collection catalog record link and link to page turning image-set database.
Each database record describes a single item.
Sample bibliographic display in American Memory.
Records used to derive menu-style lists by
chronology and subject.
- Linking to digital reproductions
- Database record and menus contain identifier
used in "directory name" for each metaobject representing an item.
Numbering system and page-turning
dataset in place to sequence and present images.
Filename indicates preview image; filename extension differentiate types.
Total file-space for digital reproductions:
Image for page-turning
||Filename extension ".jpg"
||Filename extension ".gif"
||Filename ends "t.gif"
||24 bit (color)
8 bit (grayscale)
|8 bit (grayscale)
||8 bit (grayscale)
||8 bit (grayscale)
Library of Congress contribution to Digital Libraries Initiative - Phase II