Message-Id: <199802131923.MAA62244@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 14:27:57 +0000 From: Tamara Swora <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: New Collection from the LC National Digital Library To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress(This announcement is being widely posted)
The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program and the Manuscript Division announce the online publication of the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress on the American Memory Collections homepage:
(http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html).
This first release includes forty-one letterbooks (about 8,000) pages from among 65,000 items to be published online within the next two years. Included in the collection as a whole are correspondence, letterbooks, commonplace books, diaries, journals, financial account books, military records, reports, and notes, accumulated by Washington from 1741 through 1799. The Library of Congress Manuscript Division holds 85-90% of extant Washington documents.
Washington's life as a Virginia county surveyor, as colonel of the militia during the French and Indian Was, his election as a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, and his command of the American Army during the Revolution, and two presidential administrations are well documented. Because of the breadth of Washington's activities, his papers are a rich source for almost every aspect of colonial and early American history, social and cultural, as well as political.
The Washington Papers was digitized from the Library of Congress microfilm of the collection. Documents are presented online as GIF images and also as 200 dpi grayscale JPEG images. Transcriptions, provided for most documents, are from copyright available published editions of the Washington Papers. Reference aids include a selected bibliography, time line or chronology with links to relevant documents, educational essays about the George Washington Papers, and technical information on the digitization of the collection and transcriptions.
Project Coordinators Martha Anderson Laura Graham (mailto:lgrah@loc.gov) National Digital Library Program Library of Congress