Rare books and special collections at the Library of Congress

Sometimes we spend so much time with names, dates and places we forget the history part of family history. An extensive online history collection of books, maps, manuscripts and other digitized print material is available through the Library of Congress, Rare Book & Special Collections Reading Room. The online collections include the following:

• The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection
  Illustrated manuscripts and printed books
• The Jay I. Kislak Collection
  Cultures and history of the Americas
• Other Digitized Print Materials
  Digitized rare and special materials
• American Memory Collections; From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division
  Selected materials on American history and culture.
• Global Gateway Collections Multilingual resources on world cultures.
  • The Lewis Carroll Scrapbook containing newspaper clippings, photographs, and manuscript materials, collected between 1855-72
  • The Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake comprises important primary and secondary materials accumulated about Drake’s voyage
  • Sir Francis Drake, a Pictorial Biography [by] Hans P. Kraus
  • Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson. Compiled with Annotations by E. Millicent Sowerb
  • Illuminating the Word; The St. John's Bible
    This exhibition is devoted to a single work of art, an illuminated, handwritten Bible commissioned by Saint John's University and Abbey in Minnesota.
  • Exploring the Early Americas; The Jay I. Kislak Collection
    Features selections from the more than 3,000 rare maps, documents, paintings, prints, and artifacts that make up the Jay I. Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress.

These are extremely interesting materials and could be useful for historical background to your own family research.