American Memory: Technical summary
URL for collection:
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html
Collection Overview
- Description
-
Documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and
ratification of the Constitution, including extracts of the journals of
Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and
early printed versions
of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
The Continental Congress broadsides trace the evolution of congressional
measures at specific stages of consideration, and differ significantly
from the modified resolutions finally adopted by Congress. Some items
contain manuscript annotations not recorded elsewhere that offer insight
into the delicate process of creating consensus. Not every major topic
considered by Congress is represented by this collection; the bulk of the
pieces date from 1781 to 1788. The Constitutional Convention broadsides
date from 1786 to 1789, and include documents relating to the
Constitutional Convention of 1787, extracts of proceedings of state
assemblies and conventions relating to the ratification of the
Constitution, and several essays on ratification. Most broadsides are
one page in length, others range from 1 to 28 pages.
- Source collection
-
The Continental Congress Broadside Collection and the
Constitutional
Convention Broadside Collection are both parts of a larger
collection of
broadsides or printed ephemera held by the Rare Book and Special
Collections Division.
LCCNs
90-898267 and
90-898266
[Links to catalog records (z39.50 query)
will
not work when main cataloging system is not available.]
- Technical features
-
Searchable text for short length documents written by different authors.
Image set includes variant instances of the same printed document (often
with handwritten emendations) and some segment and closeup views.
Bitonal images scanned from microfilm.
- Original material formats
-
- Printed matter (documents), English language.
- Number of original items
- 274 (Continental Congress Broadside Collection, 253 titles;
Constitutional Convention Broadside Collection, 21 titles)
- Status of collection
- Available online.
- Public access:
- The Library is not aware of any U.S. copyright or any other
restrictions for the documents in this collection. See notes on rights and
restrictions provided by the Library to users of this collection.
Aids to intellectual access
- Type & granularity
- MARC bibliographic records. Each bib. record describes a single item.
Sample
bibliographic display in American Memory.
- Linking to digital reproductions
- Bibliographic record contains identifier
used in as leading string for filenames for component files of metaobject
representing document. Filenames for page-images include feature codes for
copy number, segments, etc.
Item may consist of several copies, each of which has been imaged (some
with segments). All items except one (in German) are also reproduced by
searchable text.
Groups of documents with same leading characters
in identifier are stored in same directory
[Sample directory
for documents c01 through c20].
Numbering system in place to link searchable text to cover and
illustration images.
Digital reproductions
Total file-space for digital reproductions:
123 Mbytes
| Printed
Matter
(documents) |
Archival text file |
Page-images |
| Marker |
Filename extension
".sgm" |
Filename extension ".tif" |
| Formats |
SGML |
TIFF Group IV |
| DTD |
American Memory
(TEI conformant) |
n/a |
| Tonal
resolution |
n/a |
1 bit |
Spatial
resolution
(approx) |
n/a |
300 dpi |
| Quantity
(approx) |
273 |
690 pages |
| File size |
3-66 Kbytes |
80-300 Kbytes |
| Sample |
Sample SGML
document |
Sample
page-image
and segments:
Upper left
Upper right
Lower left
Lower right
|
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