[PADG:1093] LC National Digital Library Program announces release of Presidential Inaugurations collection

[Tamara Swora-Gober <tswo@xxxxxxx>]

This announcement is being widely posted.

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The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program at the American
Memory Web site, announces the release of an online collection of
selected materials to celebrate the inaugurations of the presidents of
the United States.  -I Do Solemnly Swear . . .-: Presidential
Inaugurations, consists of approximately four hundred items from each of
sixty-two inaugurations, from George Washington in 1789 to William
Jefferson Clinton in 1997, and will include items relating to the
sixty-third inauguration of 2001, all at:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pihome.html

A key objective of this online presentation is to make accessible to the
public, before the inauguration of the next president, many of the
treasures and other important primary-source materials held by the
Library of Congress as well as by other institutions. The collection has
been organized chronologically by presidential inauguration and an
effort has been made to offer a balanced number of items for each
inaugural event.  It is produced by the National Digital Library Program
and contains material primarily from legislative and executive branch
agencies with additional items from other collection sources. 

Presidential inaugurations in the United States represent the transfer
of power from the people to a new or re-elected president and are marked
with all the gravity and solemnity appropriate to such a momentous
occasion. The ceremonies surrounding the investiture of a president take
place regardless of weather conditions and are accompanied by grand or
modest celebrations as warranted by circumstances--the specter of war,
ill health of a president, or a president?s wishes.

This collection includes selections from diaries and letters of
presidents and of those who witnessed inaugurations, handwritten drafts
of inaugural addresses, broadsides, inaugural tickets and programs,
prints, photographs, and sheet music. The selections are drawn from the
Presidential Papers in the Manuscript Division, as well as from the
collections of the Prints and Photographs Division, Rare Book and
Special Collections Division, Music Division, and the General
Collections of the Library of Congress. Additional original material has
been included from the photography collections of the Architect of the
Capitol and the United States Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms.
Links are provided to images or documents in the online collections of
the Presidential Libraries (administered by the National Archives and
Records Administration--NARA) and the White House. It is expected that
numerous related inaugural Web sites will link to this Library of
Congress site, among them those of the Smithsonian Institution, the
Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and the Franklin
D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York. Some items in this
presentation?from records of early sessions of Congress to early films
of Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt?are already online in
American Memory. An important component is a collaboration with the
Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, which permits the site to offer
online presentations of the inaugural addresses from Presidents
Washington to Bush with associated searchable text transcriptions.

Special presentations and noteworthy Web sites related to this
collection include:

 The essay ?Presidential Inaugurations?Words and Images? offers examples
of contemporaneous pairings in which a recounting of an inaugural event
in a diary or letter corresponds to an image of the same event.

 ?Bibles and Scripture Passages used by Presidents in taking the Oath of
Office,? ?Presidential Oaths of Office,? and ?Inaugurals of Presidents
of the United States: Some Precedents and Notable Events??three
reference lists compiled by the Office of the Curator in the Architect
of the Capitol?present historical facts such as the dates and locations
of each presidential inauguration and the chief justices or other
officials who presided. They also provide details about inaugural
?firsts? such as the shortest and longest inaugural addresses (George
Washington, 1793; William Henry Harrison, 1841); the first vice
president to assume the presidency at the death of a president (Tyler,
1841); the first inaugural to be covered by telegraph (Polk, 1845); or
the first time an automobile was used in an inauguration (Harding, 1921).

 A link to the Web site of the Joint Congressional Committee on
Inaugural Ceremonies (Senate Committee on Rules and Administration)
provides a history of the committee and its role in organizing the
inaugural ceremonies. This site will feature a live broadcast of the
presidential inauguration of 2001.

Digital Capture

Manuscript materials
All manuscript documents from the Library of Congress Manuscript
Division were scanned by the Library of Congress Information Technology
Services Digital Scan Center using a PowerPhase One FX satellite digital
camera. Almost all newly scanned documents were scanned at a resolution
of 300 dpi 24-bit color. A few items were scanned at 300 dpi 8-bit
grayscale. The lens used was a Rodenstock Rodagon 135-mm and a
Rodenstock 105-mm APO lens. A Linhof book cradle, modified by TTI, Inc.
in New Jersey, was used for all bound and oversized material. In
addition, a special cradle to scan hinged manuscripts in bound volumes
was built by a book conservator from the Library of Congress
Conservation Division. 

Photographic materials 
About eighty-five original prints and photographs from the Prints and
Photographs Division were scanned by the ITS Digital Scan Center at a
400 dpi custom resolution 24-bit color or, in cases of black and white
images, they were scanned at 400 dpi 8-bit grayscale. 

Perhaps another fifty digital reproductions in this presentation were
produced from existing copy negatives and transparencies in the Prints
and Photographs Division. These film copies were produced to facilitate
future reproduction requests and were utilized for scanning in this
project in order to reduce handling of the original collection
materials. 

Most of the copy negatives and transparencies were digitized to
approximately 4000 pixels in the long dimension by JJT, Inc. of Austin,
Texas using a MARCII digital camera. A small number of images digitized
for other electronic reference purposes in the early 1990s are also
reproduced here. These images range from 1500 to 3000 pixels in length. 

All of the digital image sets include a thumbnail image, a 640-pixel
JPEG-compressed service image, and an uncompressed archival image. A
larger JPEG service image (1024 pixels) is available for uncompressed
images greater than 4000 pixels in length. 

Conservation Review and Treatment of Originals

The section Building the Digital Collection at this site, includes an
extensive discussion of the role of conservation in the evaluation and
scanning of the original manuscript materials.  It includes an overview
of the prescan review of original materials to determine appropriate
handling and positioning for scanning, and and example of conservation
notes for one item.

I Do Solemnly Swear . . .-: Presidential Inaugurations
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pihome.html

Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll@xxxxxxx