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 Previous: The K7RA Solar Update |  Next: Tenth Annual Spectrum Defense Appeal Under Way |
By Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor
July 1, 2005
This week, visit the Web site of the largest library in the world and see what we find that is Amateur Radio.
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 130 million items on approximately 530 miles of bookshelves. The collections include more than 29 million books and other printed materials, 2.7 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4.8 million maps, and 58 million manuscripts.
The Library's mission is to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations. Radio is part of that collection and exploring the Library of Congress Web site uncovers interesting radio reading.
For example, click on the Library Catalogs link and when the Online Catalog page appears, click on the Basic Search link. When the Basic Search page appears, type "amateur radio" in the Search Text field and select Keyword in the Search Type scrolling box, then click on the Begin Search button. The search engine will retrieve more records than it can display, so it only displays the first 10,000 records.
Try a Guided Search to narrow your search and obtain a shorter list of records. For example, using Guided Search to search the combination of the phrases "packet radio" and "amateur radio" returned a more manageable 11 records.
 Along with other radio-related data, the papers of Samuel F. B. Morse are available online at the Library of Congress Web site. |
If the "Electronic Resource Available" icon appears in the right-most column of a record, it indicates the presence of a URL link in the bibliographic record. Click on the Electronic Resource Available icon and the Web site displays the record including the URL link. For example, the bibliographic record for The ARRL Antenna Compendium has a link to "Supplementary software and data".
And there's more. From the Library's home page, click on the American Memory link and when the American Memory page appears, click on the Technology, Industry link in the Browse Collections by Topic menu. Thirteen Technology, Industry collections are available including the papers of Samuel F. B. Morse. Click the Morse, Samuel F. B. ~ Papers ~ 1793-1919 link to access the collection. There you can view, among other things, the paper tape recording of the historic message transmitted by Morse ("What hath God wrought?") from the US Capitol in Washington.
And there's still more. Explore this huge library and believe me, you will find it.
Thank you Carl Zelich, AA4MI, for suggesting this week's Web site.
Until next week, keep on surfin'.
Editor' note: Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU, is fond of
libraries with eclectic collections like the Library of Congress. To discuss
eclectic collections, and just about anything else, e-mail Stan.
| Previous: The K7RA Solar Update | Next: Tenth Annual Spectrum Defense Appeal Under Way |
