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With a gift from Ameritech in 1996, the Library of Congress sponsored
a three-year competition ending in 1999 to enable public, research, and
academic libraries, museums, historical societies, and archival institutions
(except federal institutions) to create digital collections of primary
resources.  These digital collections complement and enhance the
collections of the National Digital Library Program at the Library of
Congress.  They will be part of a distributed collection of converted
ibrary materials and digital originals to which many American institutions
will contribute. The most recent additions to the American Memory
collections are The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820,
Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869, and
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934.

The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820 is drawn
from the holdings of the University of Chicago Library and the
Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky.  Among the
sources included are books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets,
scientific publications, broadsides, letters, journals, legal documents,
ledgers and other financial records, maps, physical artifacts, and
pictorial images.  It incorporates roughly 15,000 pages.  The collection
documents the travels of the first Europeans to enter the trans-
Appalachian West, the maps tracing their explorations, their
relations with Native Americans, and their theories about the region's
mounds and other ancient earthworks. Naturalists and other scientists
describe Western bird life and bones of prehistoric animals.  Books
and letters document the new settlers' migration and acquisition of
land, navigation down the Ohio River, planting of crops, and trade
in tobacco, horses, and whiskey. Leaders from Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison to Isaac Shelby, William Henry Harrison, Aaron
Burr, and James Wilkinson comment on politics and regional
conspiracies.  Documents also reveal the lives of trans-Appalachian
African Americans, nearly all of them slaves; the position of women;
and the roles of churches, schools, and other institutions. This
collection can be found at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/icuhtml/>.

Trails to Utah and the Pacific: Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869
  incorporates 49 diaries, in 59 volumes, of pioneers trekking westward
across America to Utah, Montana, and the Pacific between 1847 and
the meeting of the rails in 1869. The diarists and their stories are the
central focus and the important voices in this collection, which also
includes 43 maps, 82 photographs and illustrations, and 7 published
guides for immigrants.  Forty-five men and four women wrote of their
experiences while traveling along the Mormon, California, Montana
or Oregon trails.  Twenty-three writers (21 men and 2 women) were
travelers along the Mormon Trail, while 19 men and one woman were
chroniclers of the California Trail.  Three men wrote about their
travels to Oregon. John C. Anderson traveled with his brother-in-law
and a cook by "ambulance" to Montana and returned by boat to
the east, while Kate Dunlap traveled with her husband and children
to settle permanently in Bannock City, Montana. Benjamin Ross
Cauthorn, along with his parents and brothers, thought their
destination was the 1860s gold rush territory of Montana, only to
discover, upon reaching Montana, that it was late in the gold game
and so they pushed on to Oregon.  Stories of persistence and pain,
birth and death, God and gold, trail dust and debris, learning, love,
and laughter, and even trail tedium can be found in these original
"on the trail" accounts. The collection tells the stories of Mormon
pioneer families and others who were part of the national westering
movement, sharing trail experiences common to hundreds of
  thousands of westward migrants.

The source materials for this collection are housed at Brigham
Young University, the University of Utah, Utah State University,
the Church Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, the Utah State Historical Society, the University of Nevada,
Reno, the Churchill County Museum in Fallon, Nevada, and Idaho
State University. This collection can be found online at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/upbhtml/>.

Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934
includes a rich diversity of unique or rare materials: personal
correspondence, essays, typescripts, reports and memos; photographs,
maps and postcards; and publications from individuals and the
government.  Major topics and issues illustrated include the
establishment of the Everglades National Park; the growth of the
modern conservation movement and its institutions, including the
National Audubon Society; the evolving role of women on the
political stage; the treatment of Native Americans; rights of individual
citizens or private corporations vs. the public interest; and
accountability of government as trustees of public resources, whether
for the purposes of development, reclamation, or environmental
protection. The materials in this online compilation are drawn from
sixteen physical collections housed in the archives and special
collections of the University of Miami, Florida International University
and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida.  These collections
are normally available only by appointment at the holding library
in Miami.  "Reclaiming the Everglades" now makes these valuable
materials freely accessible to users worldwide.  This collection
can be found online at
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/fmuhtml/>.

Additional information on the LC/Ameritech competition can be
found at <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award/>. Please direct
any questions to <http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-memory.html>.