American Memory is a large-scale project of the Library of Congress to make available multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. Over 100 historical collections are now available through this site, including over seven million digitized items (e.g., maps, pamphlets, sheet music, photographs, broadsides, films, sound recordings, notebooks, periodicals and manuscripts). Among the many notable collections in American Memory is Working Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting.
In 2005, Stanford University professor Clayborne Carson, lifelong civil rights activist, established the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Twenty years earlier, Coretta Scott King asked Carson to direct a project preserving and editing her husband's papers; this is one of the major initiatives of the institute. Its other main concern is to further King's civil rights work of hope and reconciliation. The section of the site on King Resources is among the best on the site, containing selected audio-visual material, photo galleries, sermons, speeches, timelines and chronologies, and other resources for students and scholar.
The Library of Congress has an online exhibit of 70 items regarding the history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and their ultimate goal is to have over 150 items online here. There are several ways for visitors to learn about the history of the NAACP from this website. The slideshow on the homepage has half a dozen or so slides that comprise the themes of the exhibit, such as "The New Negro Movement", "The Civil Rights Era", and a "Renewal of the Struggle". Clicking on "Learn more" of any of the brief descriptions that accompany the photos in the slideshow will take visitors to an expanded explanation, as well as give them the opportunity to see all the items for that theme. With a video introduction by actor Laurence Fishburne, the "Interactive Timeline" highlights events and people that influenced the founding of the NAACP in 1909. Upon entering the timeline, visitors will see a map of milestones, which they can click on for a description of the event, and to see the impact of the event on a map below the map of milestones. [Internet Scout Project]
Electronic Resources Librarian
Reference and Information Services Office, Room 107g
David and Lorraine Cheng Library
William Paterson University
300 Pompton Road
Wayne, NJ 07470
