One of the Internet's most profound effects, at least for librarians and researchers, is that it makes available to many individuals information and materials that were previously accessible to just a few. An excellent example of the wider array of resources now within easy reach is the Library of Congress's American Memory Collections . Collections from other libraries are also part of the program. Currently, American Memory has more than 90 collections, most of them quite extensive. This donation, consisting of 20,000 ads being given over a period of years, is the largest donation of corporate advertising in the library's history.
Users can also search multiple collections by keyword and type of material.
Some of these categories, most notably topic and place, are quite broad, but more specificity may be added in the future, along with the ability to combine searches from different categories. Another feature, The Learning Page, offers resources and activities for students and teachers. There is greater curricular emphasis on primary source materials, and many reference publishers are responding by including more of these materials in their publications. But no printed work can match the richness available in the American Memory Collections. For people who work with or just love music, and for people who work with or just love great graphic design, this dual resource contains the first printed collection of site design to concentrate exclusively on Web sites created for the music industry.