Branch of a shrub with needle-like foliage and small pink blossoms

The Americana collection of Marian Sadtler Carson (1905-2004) spans the years 1656-1995 with the bulk of the material dating from 1700 to 1876. The collection includes more than 10,000 historical letters and manuscripts, broadsides, photographs, prints and drawings, books and pamphlets, maps, and printed ephemera from the colonial era through the 1876 centennial of the United States. It is believed to be the most extensive existing private collection of early Americana. The collection includes such important and diverse historical treasures as unpublished papers of Revolutionary War figures and the Continental Congress; letters of several American presidents, including Thomas Jefferson; a manuscript account of the departure of the first Pony Express rider from St. Joseph, Mo.; and what may be the earliest photograph of a human face. Many of the rare books and pamphlets in the collection pertain to the early Congresses of the United States, augmenting the Library's unparalleled collection of political pamphlets and imprints. The Carson Collection adds to the Library's holdings the first presidential campaign biography, John Beckley's Address to the people of the United States with an Epitome and vindication of the Public Life and Character of Thomas Jefferson, published in Philadelphia in 1800. The book was written to counter numerous attacks against Jefferson's character, which appeared in newspapers and pamphlets during the bitter election campaign. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division shares custodial responsibility for the collection with the Library's Geography and Map Division, Music Division, Prints and Photographs Division, and the Manuscript Division.

This large AI-assisted collection comprises about 60,000 images of botanical drawings and illustrations. It spans from the 14th to 19th century. As of today, we estimate the total number of botanical illustrations in our archive as 200,000 and growing. The "golden age" of botanical illustration is generally considered to be the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when there was a great deal of interest in botany and a proliferation of botanical illustrations being produced. During this period, many of the great botanical illustrators of the time, such as Maria Sybilla Merian, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, and John James Audubon, were active and produced some of the most iconic and influential botanical illustrations of all time. In addition to being used for scientific purposes, botanical illustrations were also highly prized for their beauty and were often used to decorate homes and other public spaces. Many of the most famous botanical illustrations from this period are still admired and collected today for their beauty and historical significance. All large Picryl collections were made possible with the development of neural image recognition. We made our best to reduce false-positive image recognition to under 5%.