Meeting of Frontiers

The US Library of Congress, under a special Congressional appropriation, is constructing a digital library, “Meeting of Frontiers,” to highlight the parallel experiences of the United States and Russia in exploring, developing and settling their frontiers and the meeting of those frontiers in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. As part of this project, William Brumfield journeyed east across Siberia, photographing and chronicling the lives and towns of Russians living there. This article is the first of six that will appear in Russian Life in 2000, leading readers on an historical journey from the Urals, across Siberia to the shores of Lake Baikal.

The digital library is on the website: frontiers.loc.gov. It includes more than 2,500 items from the Library’s rare book, manuscript, map, film and sound recording collections that tell the stories of the explorers, fur traders, missionaries, exiles, gold miners and adventurers that peopled both frontiers and their interactions with the native peoples of Siberia and the American West.

The site is completely bilingual, in English and Russian, and is intended for use in U.S. and Russian schools and libraries and by the general public in both countries. Much of the material on the site has never been published or is extremely rare. This project was developed in 1999 at the Library by a team of Library staff and American and Russian consultants. It will be expanded in the future with materials from the Library’s own collections, and from other U.S. institutions, and from partner institutions in Russia1999. Additional support for development of the project in Russia is being provided by the Open Society Institute of Russia.