WHEN 鈥淧rofessor鈥� Thaddeus S. Lowe climbed into his hydrogen balloon to spy
on Confederate troops in the American Civil War, he could never have imagined
that more than 130 years later he would be spied on himself 鈥� in digital form
and from halfway across the world.
Lowe鈥檚 balloon, seen here ascending from a Union camp during the battle of
Fair Oaks in 1862, is one of Mathew Brady鈥檚 famous Civil War photographs in
the US Library of Congress collection. From a vantage point above the trees,
the Yankee鈥檚 鈥渃hief aeronaut鈥� sketched the activities of the enemy
soldiers.
The image of the intrepid professor is one of 210 000 pictures, sounds and
text files that the library is making available on the Internet. By the end of
the decade, library staff hope to add up to five million more entries to the
National Digital Library opened this month.
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The American public will be able to study the digital images through
Internet connections at local libraries, says James Billington, the Librarian
of Congress. He predicts that the digital library will prove especially
attractive to schoolchildren, who could download a political cartoon or image
of a Thomas Jefferson manuscript for inclusion in school essays or projects.
鈥淚t鈥檚 going to develop the active mind,鈥� says Billington.
The project still has several hurdles to leap. One is the need to obtain
rights to include material which is still covered by copyright. So far the
project has had to be restricted to material such as historic films and
photographs whose copyrights have expired.
Another problem is cost. Turning a single page of plain text into digital
form costs between $2 and $6. 鈥淲e are confident, however, that
technology will advance sufficiently rapidly to lower these costs to tolerable
levels,鈥� says Billington.
The library鈥檚 digital collection can be found on the Internet鈥檚 World Wide
Web at http://lcweb.loc.gov.