Documenting America
Dateline: 08/14/98
Franklin D. Roosevelt must have known that the years of his Presidency should, for better or worse, never be forgotten by the American people. At his direction, countless photographs documenting America, Americans, and American life were taken by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI).
By the year 2000, the Library of Congress hopes to complete a massive project of digitizing and placing online 164,000 historic photographs, 92,000 of which will be from the FSA-OWI collection titled "America From the Great Depression to World War II."
A project of the Library's Prints and Photographs Division, the FSA-OWI collection current includes 45,000 Black & White, and 1,600 Color photographs in .JPG format.
While many of the images have never before been displayed, others have become famous. Here are two you may recognize:
Migrant Mother - by
Dorothea
Lange
(Library of Congress)
Father
and Sons in Dust Storm - by
Arthur
Rothstein
(Library of Congress)
The FSA-OWI collection also includes dozens of images by well known photographers like Gordon Parks and Walker Evans.
Most of the early photographs from the FSA depict the Great Depression and
its effects on America's farms, towns, cities and
people.
To Los Angeles
General Store, Moundville, Alabama
Miner's Housing, Birmingham, Alabama
Barns
Mule Trading in Kentucky
The more recent photographs from the OWI emphasize America's men, women,
and machines of World War
II.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
United Nations - Fight for Freedom
Here's Our Mission
Sunset Over a Flying Fortress - Langley Field, VA
This collection is just a part of the Library's amazing five-year National Digital Library Program due for completion in 2000. Already, we can sample from over 500,000 items online so far including photographs, prints and drawings, textual documents, motion pictures, and maps.
Folks, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, among information and research oriented Web sites, The Library of Congress is flat out The Best. It's even better than mine, but I'm workin' on it.
Thanks for visiting!
Reference & Research
Links to additional Web resources related to, or referenced in this article.
Grollier
Online - The American Presidency
Information on President
Franklin
D. Roosevelt including his depression-busting
New
Deal polices.
Learning
Page of the Library of Congress
Great resources and classroom activities for educators and students.
National
Digital Library Competition
A Library of Congress competition to to enable the creation of digital
information collections.
Employment
Opportunities at the Library of Congress (gopher menu)
Hey, this stinking link won't work!
All the web links in this feature worked the day I uploaded this page. Promise.
But, since I do not usually go back and verify links in feature articles,
some links, like even good bologna, will go bad with time. So, if you find
a link in this feature that won't work, and you really, really want to find
it, just email me, and
I'll try to find the new link for you. Thanks for your understanding.
Federal Job Openings and Resources
40,000 people will get U.S. Government jobs this year. Want to be one of them?
Index
to U.S. Government Web Space
Links to over 250 agencies, bureaus, commissions and offices in all three
branches of government.
