Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’s digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates.
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund
Spanning the years 1915-1968, with most dating from 1940 to 1960, these records document the work and procedures of the organization as it combated racial discrimination in the nation’s courts, establishing in the process a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. The organization’s records cover a host of topics, including segregation in schools, on buses, and in public facilities, discrimination in housing and property ownership, voting rights, police brutality, racial violence, and countless other infringements of civil rights.
Law Library Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books to 1600
This initial release presents the first 23 items in a collection of more than 90 manuscript books about law dating from before 1600 AD and representing a variety of languages and jurisdictions. The dates of their production range from the early 13th century to the end of the 16th century, and the texts contained in them represent more than fifteen hundred years of legal tradition from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages. They pertain to jurisdictions covering the Mediterranean basin, Western Europe, and the British Isles, and they cover legal systems including Roman law, canon law, feudal law, and the customary law of the European kingdoms as well as those kingdoms’ statutes.
Benajah Jay Antrim Journals
The journals of Benajah Jay Antrim (1819-1903), a chemist, photographer, mathematical instrument maker, and artist are now available on loc.gov. They are comprised of three volumes of handwritten diary entries, two complementary volumes of pencil or pen-and-ink drawings, and watercolor images of his February – April 1849 journey from Philadelphia, PA, to San Francisco, CA, through Mexico.
Additionally, over 1,700 new Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available from Slovakia, ranging from 2020-2023, and 50 new recordings were added to the PALABRA Archive. Read more about this exciting PALABRA release on the Library’s 4 Corners of the World blog: Fifty New Recordings from the PALABRA Archive Now Available.
New music and maps datasets
A new dataset was created from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division’s “Show Music on Record” database. And there are now 11 different versions of the OpenStreetMap global data layers, covering 2014 to 2024. Want to learn more about accessing and using datasets from the Library? Check out this helpful resource: Datasets at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide.
Chronicling America now extends back to 1736!
The Library of Congress regularly receives digitized newspaper content from award recipients (contributors) in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Content is delivered in the form of batches, where each batch can contain one or more issues, from one or more newspapers. Recently loaded batches can be discovered on the Chronicling America Research Guide. More details about the batch can be discovered by clicking on the batch name link!
Thanks to a recent batch from the Library of Virginia containing the Virginia Gazette, Chronicling America now goes back to September 3, 1736, extending Chronicling America another 20 years! This newspaper was published using the Julian calendar, which was still being used in England and its colonies until 1752. You will notice that the first two weeks in September 1752 appear to be missing, though there are no missing issues from that month. This is because the Julian calendar dropped 11 days in that year to align with the more accurate Gregorian calendar. We still use the Gregorian calendar today.
Other titles that we recently added include:
- El Tucsonense, one of the most influential and longest running Spanish-language newspapers from Tucson, AZ
- Danbury Times, an early 19th century title from Danbury, CT
- Genius of Universal Emancipation, an antislavery newspaper from Hennepin, IL
- The Courier-Journal, a long-running newspaper from Louisville, KY, which was digitized in color
- Le Journal du Madawaska, a French-Canadian newspaper from Van Buren, ME
- Toledo, the second Hungarian-language in Chronicling America from Toledo, OH
- Der Izraeliṭ, a Yiddish-language newspaper from Providence, RI
- Southern Christian Advocate, a Methodist Episcopal newspaper from Charleston, SC
- The Milwaukee Leader, a Socialist party newspaper from Milwaukee, WI (below!)
What’s new onsite via Stacks?
New items are added every week into stacks.loc.gov – the Library’s primary onsite platform for accessing restricted digital content. To learn more about Stacks, check out this video from our team: Access the Digital Stacks On-Site at the Library of Congress!
Recent highlights from Stacks include new St. Marks poetry recordings from the Rare Book Division, content from the Pandemic Folk Architecture collection from American Folklife Center, and select titles from the Japanese Censorship collection from the Asian Division. Other highlights from Stacks include Pickleball fundamentals / USA Pickleball, Translating for museums, galleries and heritage sites, Art law: a concise guide for artists, curators, and museum professionals, and Peace by design.
And some seasonal additions to Stacks include Can you escape a haunted castle?: an interactive paranormal adventure, Our favorite Halloween recipes, Spooky haunted house: DIY cobwebs, coffins, and more, Great MLB World Series championships, The World Series: baseball’s fall classic.
Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.
Updates from the Web Archives
Two web archive collections have been described and made more discoverable to users. The Local History and Genealogy Web Archive includes websites for local genealogical and historical societies in the United States, as well as ethnic-specific content for researchers interested in genealogy related to particular groups. And the Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan Government Web Archive includes a broad overview of national and regional politics, economics, social conditions, and the state of religious freedom in the titular countries of Central Asia (below).
