In the largest corporate grant for the project to date, AT&T has donated $3.5 million to the Library of Congress's National Digital Library program. The February 10 gift completes LC's efforts to raise $45 million in private money for the project, which digitizes collections relating to American history and makes them available online through the library's American Memory Web site.
The AT&T grant will go towards digitization of the Alexander Graham Bell Family Collection and the Samuel Morse Collection, which include such items as Bell's sketches for the first telephone, his laboratory notebooks, and his personal journals, as well as the first telegraph tape and personal letters from the Morse Collection.
Thanking AT&T for its support, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said, “We believe that the National Digital Library is an initiative both Alexander Graham Bell and Samuel Morse would applaud, given their interest in technology to facilitate the exchange of information across great distances.”
Posted February 15. 1999.