- Band Music from the Civil War Era
This collection makes available examples of a brilliant style of brass band music that flourished in the 1850s in the United States and remained popular through the nineteenth century. Bands of this kind served in the armies of both the North and the South during the Civil War. The collection includes both printed and manuscript music (mostly in the form of "part books" for individual instruments) and features over 700 musical compositions, as well as 8 full-score modern editions and 19 recorded examples of brass band music in performance.
- Baseball Cards, 1887-1914
This collection presents 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. The cards show such legendary figures as Ty Cobb stealing third base for Detroit, Tris Speaker batting for Boston, and pitcher Cy Young posing formally in his Cleveland uniform. Other notable players include Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, King Kelly, and Christy Mathewson.
- Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916
This collection consists of twenty-six films of San Francisco from before and after the Great Earthquake and Fire. Seventeen of the films depict San Francisco and its environs before the 1906 disaster. Seven films describe the great earthquake and fire. The two later films include a 1915 travelogue that shows scenes of the rebuilt city and a tour of the Panama Pacific Exposition and a 1916 propaganda film.
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
The collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.
- Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982
This collection presents 41 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings that tell the story of life and work on the Ninety-Six Ranch and of its cowboys, known in the region as buckaroos. An archive of 2,400 still photographs portrays the people, sites, and traditions on other ranches and in the larger community of Paradise Valley, home to persons of Anglo-American, Italian, German, Basque, Swiss, Northern Paiute Indian, and Chinese heritage. Motion pictures produced from 1945 to 1965 by Leslie Stewart, owner of the Ninety-Six Ranch, are also included. Background texts provide historical and cultural context for this distinctive Northern Nevada ranching community.
- Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey, 1933-Present
The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and the Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS) collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies. As of March 1998, America's built environment has been recorded through surveys containing more than 363,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 35,000 historic structures and sites dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.
- By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
A selection of 38 pictures including portraits of many individuals, photographs of suffrage parades, picketing suffragists, and an anti-suffrage display, as well as cartoons commenting on the movement. Selected from the holdings of the Prints and Photographs Division and the Manuscript Division.
- By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
Materials (manuscripts, books, photographs, and ephemera) that tell the story of Jackie Robinson and the history of baseball in general. Also included is a sampler of 34 images related to early baseball (1860s-1920s) from various files and collections in the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
- By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present
A collection of 156 portraits of presidents and first ladies from those items in the Prints and Photographs Division's file of popular demand images. The selected images include at least one likeness of each of the forty-one presidents and most of the first ladies.
- By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
The collection consists of 908 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of the New Deal. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts.
