Before, if you wanted to see — for example — Alexander Hamilton's letters to his wife, you had to travel to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and even then, you'd have to view them on microfilm. Now, Julie Miller, the library's curator of early American manuscripts, says the collection has been digitized. "The web site is meant to open these up to a much broader public," and given the increased interest in Hamilton, the timing is no accident.

The Russian Culture Ministry on Monday filed a lawsuit against the US Library of Congress over seven books belonging to the so-called Schneerson Library, a group of Jewish texts that are the subject of a long-running ownership battle between Russia and the United States.