The Library of Congress is now offering an online feature presentation celebrating the presidential inauguration. The presentation, "Inaugurations in American Memory," is available at //memory.loc.gov/learn/features/inaug/section1.html. The presentation highlights photographs, films and oral histories of past presidential inaugurations as found in the more than 500,000 historical primary sources available from the Library of Congress over the World Wide Web (http://www.loc .gov/).
Feature presentations are a regularly updated offering on the Library's Learning Page, a World Wide Web initiative specially designed for teachers, students and lifelong learners. It is accessible at //memory.loc.gov/learn.
"Inaugurations in American Memory" is part of a larger body of material, including presidential papers, images of presidents and first ladies, and a presentation called "Elections," compiled by the Library as part of a cooperative World Wide Web site created by Washington cultural institutions.
The cooperative Web site, "Celebrating Democracy," was jointly developed by the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
"Celebrating Democracy" features online presentations of presidential memorabilia, photographs and documents from past inaugurations and inaugural balls as well as up-to-the-minute photographs of the 1997 inaugural festivities. The goal of the Web site is to encourage teachers, students and lifelong learners to connect current events with American history by tapping into the vast resources now available online from the Library of Congress and other Washington cultural institutions.
The National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress aims to make millions of items of Americana from the Library's collections freely available on the Internet. Collections currently available include Civil War photographs; documents relating to slavery, the civil rights movement and women's suffrage; early motion pictures; and sound recordings of political leaders.
