Press Release:
(soon to be included at:  http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/ )

COLLABORATIVE WEB SITE CHRONICLES EARLY DUTCH
EXPLORATION AND SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AMERICA

The Dutch presence in America from Henry Hudson's voyage of
1609 to the sale of New Amsterdam to the British in 1664 and
the Dutch influence in America are the subjects of a new Web
site developed by the Library of Congress in cooperation
with the National Library of the Netherlands. The site is
the first stage of an ongoing project, The Atlantic World:
America and the Netherlands, being carried out under a
cooperative agreement signed by the two institutions earlier
this year. The site will be available at URL
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/awkbhtml/awkbhome.html
from November 17, 2003. A companion site at the National
Library of the Netherlands is available at
http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl and is part of the
National Library's Memory of the Netherlands project.

The Atlantic World is bilingual, in English and Dutch, and
is intended for use in schools and libraries and by the
general public in both countries and around the world. It
includes more than 70 items totaling some 11,737 images
from the collections of the Library of Congress, the
National Library of the Netherlands, and six other Dutch
institutions that are cooperating with the National Library
on the project: the National Archives, the Municipal
Archives of Amsterdam, the Plantage Library of the
University of Amsterdam, and the National Maritime Museum.
Among the items digitized for the project are a letter
describing the purchase of Manhattan from the Native
Americans in 1626, an etching of the Mohawk Sychnecta,
early land grants and patents from Dutch settlers, 17th
century maps, and an early description of the Dutch colony
on the eve of its transfer to the British.

The Atlantic World is part of the Library's Global Gateway
initiative of digital library collaborations with leading
libraries and cultural institutions from around the world.
Other Global Gateway projects are underway or planned with
libraries in Russia, Brazil, Spain, Japan, France, and Egypt.

The Library of Congress, founded April 24, 1800, is the
nation's oldest federal cultural institution. It preserves
a collection of 115 million items -- more than two-thirds of
which are in media other than books. These include the
largest map and film and television collections in the world.
In addition to its primary mission of serving the research
needs of the U.S. Congress, the Library serves all Americans
through its popular Web site (www.loc.gov) and its 22 reading
rooms on Capitol Hill.