Library of Congress: Eyes of the Nation lets users explore a selection of ca. 3,000 images of important documents, letters, manuscripts, and photos from the library’s special collections. After an introduction by James Billington, Librarian of Congress, one can take a virtual tour of the library’s special collections of rare books, geography and maps, and prints and photographs. Lest one think that this CD contains the full text of those books, there are only 13 images of a representative sample of that collection in this tour. Likewise, the CD could not hope to cover fully the 112 million images or the 4.25 million maps housed in those special collections divisions.
In addition to the tour, the main screen offers various avenues to pursue the disc’s content. These include: Eyes of the Nation, American Experience, Exhibits by the Library of Congress, and Gateways to American Memory as well as buttons to connect to the home pages of the Library of Congress and the History Channel, one of the co‐producers. The Eyes of the Nation button provides a chronological approach to the disc’s contents, divided into seven eras. One can select an era to view the related images or elect to read a historical overview by Alan Brinkley. Both approaches display thumbnails of the images which readers can enlarge to view along with the commentary. For even better viewing, they can display the image at full‐screen resolution. Readers can zoom in on many images, particularly maps, to view even greater detail.
Each image displays the title, author, date, and Library of Congress call number at the bottom. Each has a commentary; and many also have a text overview which readers can opt to display or hide. When viewing an image, the Optional View button displays related images as do the highlighted links in the text and commentaries. When a film icon appears, a video clip is available. When a musical note appears, as on the screen for selecting an era, one can hear a musical selection just by moving the cursor over the note icon; but there is no identifying information accompanying the selection.
The American Experience provides a thematic approach to the disc, covering: The African‐American Experience and Civil Rights, the American Woman, Arts,Architecture, Democracy & Government, Entertainment, Exploration & Settlement, Industrialization & Urbanization, the Native‐American Experience, Science and Technology, Transportation, and War. Exhibits by the Library of Congress covers five topics: Creating the Capitol in Washington, DC; The American Pictorialists: Making Photography Art; Rosie the Riveter; A Royal Misunderstanding: British Satirical Images of the American Revolution; and Savage Glee:Satirical Cartoons in the Gilded Age. Each has a narrated slide show as an introduction. One can bypass the introduction and go right to the images, as in Eyes of the Nation, and view the narrative text as desired.
The Gateways to American Memory operate much the same way as the exhibits. Here, one can explore: America’s first look at the camera: daguerreotypes, a bird’s eye view of America, Documenting America: FSA photography, and Picturing America: the Detroit Publishing Company which covers an extensive collection of postcards documenting America from the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Readers can print textual commentaries in their entirety or highlight and copy selections to the notepad. While students cannot copy images into word processors to include in reports, they can save the links (image numbers) in “my portfolio”. They can then import all or selected images from the portfolio into “my slideshow”. An index option allows browsing the collection by author or title; but it is not very successful at locating words in the title as it searches for a match on the first word only. A search option works better for this purpose; but it only searches words in the author and title fields, not the commentaries. It allows single word and phrase searching but no Boolean or proximity operators. Nor do the images have analytics. While one can retrieve an image of The Honeymooners or the Desi‐Lucy Love Story, one cannot retrieve the pictures by searching for the individuals depicted, such as Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, or Lucille Ball.
Finally, a “journey log” maintains a search history along with icons for easy identification. Along with the navigation buttons, there is a map icon which shows how the disc is laid out and subdivided for easy navigation. Prior to exiting, in addition to being able to view the credits and acknowledgements, one can get information about the Library’s photoduplication services or additional resources. This last option identifies six Web sites for the study of American history.
Library of Congress: Eyes of the Nation is a well‐crafted product. Despite its wealth of information, it only scratches the surface of the immense treasures housed in the library’s special collections. Clicking on the button to enter the library’s Web site will offer access to hundreds of thousands more images as well as the library’s book catalog. This hybrid title runs on both Macintosh and Windows platforms. By the time of publication, a DVD version should also be available. This is a resource that will satisfy many purposes. The possibilities are limited only by one’s imagination.
