Over 50,000 pages of biographies, chronologies, sheet music,
images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies chronicling
the history and culture of the African American experience
through music. It covers blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights
songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and
other genres.
Over 16,000 tracks recorded between the 1890s and the 1970s
by African American musical artists and ensembles. It includes
jazz, blues, sacred music, folk music, and other genres, and
features liner notes from the historical albums where available.
American magazines and journals from 1741, including over
1,100 periodicals ranging from America's first scientific journal,
Medical Repository, to popular magazines like Vanity Fair and
Ladies' Home Journal.
Recordings of American music, including bluegrass, dance
music, folk ballads, and shape note singing, as well as works
by American composers writing in the European classical tradition,
and recordings of pre-1960s American popular music. There
are also playlists of songs associated with or written about
historical events, such as the Civil War or the Women’s
Suffrage Movement.
Maps the location of archives around the
world, and connects to the online holdings records of many
archives' primary source material - historical documents, personal
papers, family histories, and more.
Digital library of art images and descriptive information
as well as the software tools to enable use of the collections.
Initial content of 300,000 images covering art, architecture
and archeology.