The Library of Congress (LOC) – also known as “the book palace of the American people” – is well known for its exhaustive collection of books, having grown from an original collection of 6,487 books to currently housing more than 16 million books. However, the LOC houses much more than books, with a collection of over 168 million items – from a 19th century glass flute to a lock of Thomas Jefferson’s hair – it is the largest library in the world. In fact, the LOC holds several of the world’s largest collections, including the largest collection of cartographic materials (5.6 million items), comic books (more than 140,000 items representing more than 12,000 titles), law library (over 2.9 million volumes) and the most comprehensive collection of American music (over 22 million items, including 8.2 million pieces of sheet music). While some of these resources are currently unavailable – though the LOC’s online catalog allows the entire archive to still be searched – with their closure due to coronavirus, now is a great time to explore the LOC’s extensive digitized collection. In this blog, we’ll highlight several interesting resources offered by the LOC online, including their extensive film, sound recording and map collections.
The best way to access the LOC’s online resources is through their homepage, www.loc.gov, which includes a search bar in the upper right corner, including a dropdown menu that allows users to select different type of media (i.e. Audio, Films, Books, Maps, Newspapers, Periodicals) to search. Once a search term is entered, the results will default to resources that are “available online” and will allow users to further filter the results by a variety of indices including format, date, location, subject and contributor. For instance, a search of “Oakland” show 10,930 available items online – though a look at the filters shows that nearly 8,000 of those results were from periodicals and newspapers, with 637 photos, prints or drawings. By filtering to only photos users can navigate to some captivating snapshots of Oakland history, including Lake Merritt around 1900, a view of 1920’s downtown Oakland (14th St., looking west to the San Francisco Bay) and an Oakland real estate office in 1940 (when a 3 bedroom home could be purchased for $4,395!).
The New York Times recently highlighted the LOC’s archive of over 7,000 videos, which includes videos ranging from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show parade down Fifth Avenue in 1902 to the 1936 cartoon “Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor” made by one-time Disney competitor Fleischer Studios. Users can stream Edward O. Bland’s “The Cry of Jazz” a 1959 political film about jazz “that has bad acting, searing documentary imagery and terrific music (from Sun Ra, among others)”, as well as watch Frank Sinatra berating a gang of thugs chasing a Jewish boy in the 1945 film “The House I Live In” (the writer of the film, Albert Maltz, was eventually blacklisted in Hollywood by Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee). In addition to the film archive listed on their site, the library maintains a YouTube profile that includes several different playlists, including selections from the National Film Registry, vaudeville entertainment recordings and early films of New York (1898 to 1906).
The LOC’s National Jukebox project offers an extensive archive of over 10,000 early American sound recordings that were originally issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment – including Victor Talking Machine Company, Columbia and OKeh – which granted the LOC a free license to stream the acoustical recordings. The archive can be searched or browsed by artist, genre or the day the recording was made (find a recording from your birthday!)
The LOC has “the largest collection of fire-insurance maps of cities and towns in the United States, providing unparalleled coverage of the growth of urban America from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries.” The historic Sanborn fire insurance maps were originally used by insurance companies to assess fire risk, hazards and escape routes. The maps are searchable by city, state and building type -see if you can find your home by following the dropdown menus on this page.
The LOC hosts various exhibitions, including one with colorized photographs of early 20th century Russia before the fall of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917 and another exploring comic book art over 120 years.
If you need historical research, there is no better place to start than the LOC.