What’s New Online at the Library of Congress: December 2024

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.

Historical Media Publications Collection

The Historical Media Publications Collection is now available on loc.gov! This collection features over 4,400 items across a variety of publications showcasing the history of early motion picture, radio, and other broadcasting industries and trades published in the early twentieth century. Read more about the background of this collection on loc.gov.

1914 illustration of a man and woman against an orange background, with "Reel Life" behind them. The woman is looking one direction, the man looking directly at her. The man is gesturing upwards. — Cover image of *Reel Life*, February 28, 1914. View the original item on loc.gov.

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft Papers in the Henry Rowe Schoocraft Papers

Around 4,600 pages of digitized papers from the Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers collection are now online at the Library of Congress. This newly digitized portion primarily features Schoolcraft’s wife, the Ojibwe poet and translator Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Bamewawagezhikaquay). She is the the first Native American woman poet to receive major literary recognition in the United States and co-produced the magazine, The Literary Voyager (Muzzeniegun), with her husband in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in winter of 1826-1827 – featured below.

Handwritten page of The Muzzinyegun, or Literary Voyager. — Image 3 of *The Muzzinyegun, or Literary Voyager*, No. 2, December 1826. View the original item on loc.gov.

C. Hart Merriam Papers- Indian Vocabularies Series

Over 21,000 new pages from naturalist, mammalogist, ornithologist, and ethnographer C. Hart Merriam are now available online on loc.gov. This digitized section of his papers relates to his efforts to collect vocabularies of California Indians and other Native American language families from Indigenous knowledge bearers between circa 1902 and 1936. Having trained and worked extensively as a naturalist, Merriam turned to Native American ethnography as a primary focus in the twentieth century. To learn more about this collection (and the Schoolcraft collection from above!) check out this blog post from historian Barbara Bair – New from the Manuscript Division: Two Recently Digitized Collections Offer Native American Content.

Hand drawn and hand colored map of southern california. — Map showing the Shoshonean divisions in Southern California, drawn by Hart. View the original item on loc.gov.

AIDS Memorial Quilt Records

This online collection presents digitized images of the AIDS Memorial Quilt panel maker files housed in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The panel maker files contain more than 150,000 mementos and ephemera submitted by Quilt panel makers to the NAMES Project and the National AIDS Memorial, which memorializes victims of HIV/AIDS. This digital collection presents the manuscript and still image panel maker records for Quilt panels that are more than 25 years old.

In this collection, a typical panel file contains a letter written by a panel’s maker. These moving and heartfelt letters often include memories and descriptions of the AIDS victim memorialized on the panel, or explain the maker’s motivations. The files also often contain obituaries, news clippings, and funeral service prayer cards. Files sometimes contain photos of the memorialized or photos of the Quilt panel being crafted. Read more about this collection and its history on the Library’s Timeless blog – The AIDS Quilt: Digitized at the Library.

Color photograph of the AIDS quilt on the National Mall. The US capitol building is in the background. Foreground features visitors walking among the quilt. — AIDS Quilt Block 0240, image 17. View the original item on loc.gov.

Arabic Language Rare Materials Collection

This initial release of the Library’s Arabic Language Rare Materials Collection covers a very wide range of topics & formats, including religious works from different religions and religious sects, as well as works of history, grammar, literature, and science. Digitization of this collection is ongoing – stay tuned for more! In the meantime, read more about what’s in the collection on loc.gov.

Hand drawn map of the world with Arabic place names. — Sirāj al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʻUmar Ibn al-Wardī. Map of the world in Kharīdat al-ʻajāyib wa-tuḥfat al-gharāyib. 1500. View the original item on loc.gov.

In addition to the exciting new collections above, we also have a few collection updates to share. Over 4,000 Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available from Romania and the Ida V. Clarke Collection of over 580 Silent Film Cue Sheets has been added to Silent Film Scores and Arrangements.

Check out these new datasets!

The United States Elections, Web Archives Data Package has been published to data.labs.loc.gov. It is an updated version of the 2022 dataset of index files for the United States Elections Web Archive, supplemented with additional metadata and documentation explaining the contents of the dataset and how it was created. An updated Python notebook demonstrates methods to use the data package to analyze text from US election candidate websites.

And the By the People crowdsourced transcription program published the full-text dataset for the Theater for the People: Federal Theatre Project playbills transcription campaign on loc.gov. All 7,700 crowdsourced transcriptions from the campaign are available for download in a single file and we encourage you to experiment with them! Check out this blog post from our colleague, Madeline Goebel, to learn more about how to use the 24 By the People datasets: A New Resource to Explore Library of Congress Transcription Datasets.

71,000 new crowdsourced transcriptions

Since our last edition, the By the People crowdsourced transcription program returned over 71,000 transcriptions back to their digital collections on loc.gov. These transcriptions come from the Yours truly, Frederick Douglass, Clara Barton: “Angel of the Battlefield”, American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) Letters in the Progressive Era, and “Mr. President: What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?”: Woodrow Wilson’s File 89 campaigns. Click on the following links to go directly to their collections in loc.gov, now powered By the People.

TRANSCRIPT:You enumerate our anchors of hope and courage:"In the first place, we have the standards of liberty and equal opportunity. In the second place we have this standard that the people are entitled to a government which represents them -- (Applause)-- and in the third place they are entitled to government by that government which is in the common interest and not in the interest of special privilege." You reminded us that Virginia led a great nation and helped to create a great nation in a new age. To you, therefore, as the exponent of democracy, the head of our nation and a Virginian, the women of Virginia confidently appeal. We are the descendants of those men who helped to erect this government: We are demanding to exercise the "indubtiable, inalienable and indefeasible right" of altering and 56881 Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov. — *By the People* volunteers transcribed this 1913 letter from Elizabeth Dabney Langhorne Lewis to Woodrow Wilson. As the Founder of the Equal Suffrage Club of Lynchburg, VA, she implores the President “to exercise the ‘indubitable, inalienable and indefeasible right’ of altering and reforming our constitution” and extend the right to vote to all women. View the full letter and transcription on loc.gov.

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 CD-ROMs and Disks, new poetry readings from the PALABRA Archive, and new maps. Some selected new titles include: Sports journalism: an introduction to reporting and writing, Presidential leadership: politics and policy making, What you never knew about LeBron James, Party food art, Can airplanes ski?: questions and answers about flying vehicles. And some seasonal additions to Stacks include The illustrated history of the snowman, Winter hiking and camping, The Berenstain Bears’ Christmas tree, Christmas and Hanukkah origami, Miracle moments in hockey, Let’s Celebrate New Year’s Day.

Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.