Databases & Digital Libraries and Archives

Index of Library of Congress Research Guides Research guides to the Library's collections, as well as subject guides prepared by Library of Congress staff, are listed below. More online guides covering other Library of Congress collections are available via the

The processed records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund consist of approximately 80,000 items of which about 80% (210,299 images) have been digitized thus far. Spanning the years 1915-1968, with most dating from 1940 to 1960, these records document the work and procedures of the organization as it combated racial discrimination in the nation’s courts, establishing in the process a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. The organization’s records cover a host of topics, including segregation in schools, on buses, and in public facilities; discrimination in housing and property ownership; voting rights; police brutality; racial violence; and countless other infringements of civil rights.

The Women's Art Library began as an artists' initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogues and books as well as a magazine from the early 1980s to 2002.

The I-Portal contains full-text electronic resources including articles, e-books, theses, government publications, videos, oral histories, reports, and digitized archival documents and photographs. As of 2022, the I-Portal had over 71,000 records and new content is added on a continuing basis.

The Moving Image and Sound Branch of the National Archives doesn’t just hold motion pictures.  It’s also home to over 300,000 sound recordings, including those from the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court began recording its proceedings in 1955, but the court’s opinions were not recorded until the 1980s.  The recordings are organized chronologically.  Since cases are often argued over multiple days, cases can be split up between different recordings. Some newly digitized landmark cases include: Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 required states to Read More

HathiTrust was founded in 2008 as a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries now preserving 18+ million digitized items in the HathiTrust Digital Library. We offer reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. and international copyright law, text and data mining tools for the entire corpus, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.

We here at Open Culture heartily endorse the practice of viewing art, whether in a physical museum, in the pages of a book, or online. For some, however, it tends to have one serious shortcoming: all the colors are already filled in.

Explore the Archive About the Archive Explore the Archive About the Archive Bear Witness. The United States holds nearly two million people in its prisons and jails —

The Academic Libraries Video Trust is a service facilitating the preservation of audiovisual (“AV”) works in the collections of member libraries. The principal activity of ALVT is to provide a clearinghouse or repository of digital versions of selected AV works, generally works currently available only in the obsolete VHS format. The service is built on opportunities allowed to libraries and archives for the preservation and replacement of works in their collections, pursuant to Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act. Video Trust offers this service in order to encourage the preservation and appreciation of the educational films, motion pictures, documentaries, and other works that are increasingly out of reach because of the obsolete technology.

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The COVID-19 crisis is hurting us all, but it’s not hurting us all equally. News links on the impact of COVID-19 on Black, Indigenous and People of Color and other racialized communities. Regularly updated.

Lexis Plus now has a specialized resource page that gathers resources (both free curated resources from the open web and proprietary Lexis resources) on racial and social justice. This guide is ava…

U.S. Congress legislation, Congressional Record debates, Members of Congress, legislative process educational resources presented by the Library of Congress

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

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Arizona LGBTQ Storytelling Project was the first identified LGBTQ archives in the state of Arizona. As an oral history digital archival project, the Storytelling Project engaged the principles of s…

This database version of Rich Leiter's National Survey of State Laws provides an overall view of some of the most sought-after and controversial legal topics in the United States. Overview of NSSL

pCreated in 2020 by Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, this project gathers a sampling of work by 47 contemporary Native poets from across the nation to show that Native people and poets have vital and unequivocal roots in the United States. The project features an interactive Story Map and a newly developed audio collection./p

Digitizing Hidden Special Collections & Archives Amplifying Unheard Voices Program Evaluation Released Authors Jesse A. Johnston and Ricardo L. Punzalan summarize findings from their 2021-2022 study. Publication Homepage Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Amplifying Unheard Voices is a grant competition administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for digitizing rare and Read More

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks on International Human Rights Day in Geneva, Switzerland on December 6, 2011. [Go to http://video.state.gov for more video and text transcript.]

Personal Voices from the Library of Congress Compelling Stories & Fascinating Facts