On the Web: American Memory from the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress’ American Memory site is has multiple collections of historic American maps, photographs, audio, video and documents. It takes some time wading through the collections, but if you’re into nostalgia or specific American artists, inventors, and visionaries, you’ll likely find something of interest. A good amount of the print (photographs, posters and maps) can be ordered as reproductions at, what it seems, just the cost of the materials.
Baseball Cards 1887-1914
I’m not an avid baseball fan, but I still find this to be one of the most interesting collections that I viewed at the American Memory site. The card designs themselves are of interest to me. For actual baseball fans, the historic cards from the likes of Ty Cobb and Cy Young will likely be of more interest.
Reproductions of the cards can be ordered from the Library of Congress’ Photo duplication service or from authorized third party vendors.
America from the Great Depression to World War II
Photographs from the FSA-OWI 1935-1945
This collection has both color and black-and-white digitized negatives-over 160,000 that can be browsed online. They are all a result of the FSA photographers shooting throughout the United States during the Great Depression.
Almost all of this work is in the public domain, and almost all of the images can be ordered as prints from the Prints and Photographs Division (as with the baseball cards above). When you order prints, you can specify the size of the image as well as the quality of the photographic paper. Photographers of note include Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Russell Lee.
Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz
Although it is comprised of photographs, this collection isn’t from the Prints and Photographs Division-it’s from the Music Division. The collection contains over 1600 photographs taken by photographer William P. Gottlieb between 1938 and 1948.
Notable musicians you can find images of include Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and more.
There is also an option on the site called “In His Own Words: Photos and Commentary by William Gottlieb” where audio commentary by Gottlieb is paired up with imagery from the collection.
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There’s a lot more on the site beyond these few collections, including a variety of maps, and blueprints from the Wright brothers.
Tags: American History, FSA, Library of Congress, On the Web, Photography, Public Domain, Visual DesignYou may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
