Thought this might be of interest to the preservation community:
 
Mike Polk
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   December 18, 1997
>
> Washington, DC. . . The National Archives and Records Administration
> (NARA) has made available on its web site its entire collection of
> Civil War-era photographs taken by the famed photographer Mathew Brady
> and his associates.  The 6,176 photographs, originating as glass plate
> negatives, include portraits of well-known Union and Confederate
> commanders of the war, Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet officers,
> senators, congressmen, and other noted personalities of the day.  They
> also document the existence of ordinary soldiers, recording daily life
> in camp, troops on the move, battlefield scenes, naval vessels,
> railroads, supply dumps, and hospitals.
>
> Purchased by the War Department in 1874-75, and accessioned by the
> National Archives in 1940, the images represent a Brady-coordinated
> effort, unprecedented in scope and creative self-promotion, to record
> history-making American personages, locales, and events in what was
> then the relatively new medium of photography.  Especially with regard
> to the views taken in the field, the photographs by Brady, Alexander
> Gardner, Timothy O*Sullivan, David Knox, and others reveal the
> technical limitations of the medium at mid-century, photographers*
> strategies for overcoming those limitations, and a reality that
> emerges, amid the posing and framing, in often unexpected ways. These
> are images, so rich in detail and so evocative of time, place, and
> human consciousness that have informed and intrigued viewers from the
> 1860's to the 1990's.
>
> The ability to get ready access to NARA*s entire collection of Brady
> photographs, and to be able to compare those images with similar ones
> in other collections, will greatly assist scholars and other
> researchers interested in the visual documentation of the Civil War.
>
> The Brady material is part of NARA*s third installment of digitized
> images of some of its most significant documents.  As part of NARA*s
> Electronic Access Project, this third monthly release totals 5,507
> items from the Cartographic and Architectural Branch and the Still
> Pictures Branch located at the National Archives at College Park; the
> Textual Reference Division located at the National Archives Building in
> Washington, DC; the Northeast Region located in New York City; the
> Franklin D. Roosevelt Library located in Hyde Park, NY; and the Dwight
> D. Eisenhower Library located in Abilene, KS.
>
>
> More than 300,000 descriptions and 20,000 digitized documents are
> currently in NAIL (NARA ARCHIVAL INFORMATION LOCATOR) at
> http://www.nara.gov/nara/nail.html.  By mid-1999, approximately 120,000
> items will be digitized and available electronically.  The Electronic
> Access Project will enable anyone, anywhere, with a computer connected
> to the Internet to search descriptions of NARA's nationwide holdings
> and view digital copies of many important documents.  The project is
> funded by the U.S. Congress with the support of Senator Bob Kerrey of
> Nebraska.
>
> Other highlights of the recently added materials include:
>
> *       1,320 additional photographs documenting American environmental
> issues of the 1970's;
> *       62 watercolor drawings by James W. Alden of the northwest boundary
> between the Rocky Mountains and Point Roberts;
> *       25 documents relating to the Spanish-American War;
> *       More than 1,000 photographs of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and
the
> Roosevelt Administration;
> *       11 documents from the 1873 Susan B. Anthony suffrage criminal case
file;
> *       29 documents from the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage case
file;
> *       Aerial photographs of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp;
> *       Documents from the Eisenhower Administration including Eisenhower's
> D-Day statement to the Allied Expeditionary Force, a letter from Jackie
> Robinson, and a memorandum authorizing Francis Gary Powers* last U-2
> flight over the Soviet Union.
>
>         *   *   *   *
> For additional PRESS information, please contact the National Archives
> and Records Administration Public Affairs staff at (301) 713-6000.
> Visit the National Archives and Records Administration Home Page on the
> World Wide Web at http://www.nara.gov.
>