Embracing 12 digitized collections, five exhibits, and six student projects, this website contains a wealth of primary documents. Collections include two websites related to advertising—Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850–1920 and Ad*Access—in addition to a collection of health-related ads from 1911 to 1958 in Medicine and Madison Avenue.

George Percival Scriven: An American in Bohol, The Philippines, 1899–1901 presents a firsthand account by a U.S. officer of life during the occupation. Civil War Women offers correspondence and a diary relating to three American women of diverse backgrounds. African-American Women presents letters by three slaves and a memoir by the daughter of slaves. The Emma Spaulding Bryant Letters presents 10 revealing letters written in 1873 by Mrs. Bryant to her husband concerning medical and private matters.

Historic American Sheet Music includes more than 3,000 pieces published between 1850 and 1920. Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement offers more than 40 documents from 1969 to 1974. William Gedney Photographs and Writings provides close to 5,000 prints, work prints, and contact sheets from the 1950s to the 1980s. Urban Landscapes present more than 1,000 images depicting urban areas.

These 11 exhibits address the history of California and San Francisco. Topics include the Gold Rush of 1849; earthquakes of 1906 and 1989; the history of the city's fire department; construction of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges; and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. These exhibits provide timelines and links to more than 200 primary documents and images, including newspaper articles, diary entries, oral histories, photographs, political cartoons, and engravings. Two exhibits are hyperlinked chronologies pertaining to San Francisco during World War II and the rock music scene in the city from 1965 to 1969.

Documents can be accessed according to subject, with more than 25 documents listed on the Chinese-American community, fairs and expositions, and labor issues. The site also contains more than 150 biographies of prominent San Franciscans.

This expansive archive of American history and culture features more than nine million items dating from 1490 to the present. Currently this site includes material from 120 collections, some from libraries and archives around the world.

Strengths include the early republic, with documents and papers on the Continental Congress, U.S. Congress, early Virginia religious petitions, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; the Civil War, including Abraham Lincoln's papers and Mathew Brady photographs; and exploration and settlement of the West. Collections offer papers of inventors, such as Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the Wright Brothers; and composers, such as Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.

The site also features New Deal-era documentation projects, such as Farm Security Administration photographs, Federal Writers' Project life histories, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and the Library's own "Man on the Street" interviews following the Pearl Harbor attack. Entertainment history is amply represented with collections on the American Variety Stage, Federal Theatre Project, early cinema, and early sound recordings. African American history, ethnic history, women's history, folk music, sheet music, maps, and photography also are well documented.

Digitized images from materials not included in specific American Memory sites may be searched using the Library's Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, where users can browse images by topic or search the Library's holdings.