About our Digital Collections

The FDR Library and Museum has an ongoing digitization program aimed at making its vast collections of historical documents, photographs, sound recordings, film, and artifacts accessible to the widest possible audience. 

Museum Artifacts

Documents, Photographs, Sound & Film

National Archives Catalog

Museum Collections

The digital artifact collection provides free and open public access to records and photographs of select artifacts from the Museum’s collection.

This resource is a key part of the FDR Library and Museum’s digitization program. Work is ongoing and more records and images of artifacts are added regularly. Please check back periodically for new entries.     

Archival Collections

FRANKLIN

FRANKLIN is a virtual research room and digital repository that provides free and open access to the digitized collections of the Roosevelt Library—to everyone, anywhere in the world.

FRANKLIN connects you to more than 800,000 pages of archival documents, 2,500 historical photographs, and hundreds of archival finding aids and collection descriptions. Now, many of the most important historic materials of the twentieth century -- primary source documentation of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s experiences leading the nation through the Great Depression and World War II -- are online for anyone to access.  

Online users can now search, browse, and open whole folders of archival documents, just as they could during an in-person research visit to the Archives. Because FRANKLIN is a key part of our ongoing digitization program, we look forward to posting many more digital collections to this database over the coming years.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Day by Day

This is an interactive chronology showing Franklin Roosevelt’s daily schedules as President.  With Day by Day you can search for information about FDR's activities from March 1933 to April 1945. You can also follow along the timeline to find historical documents and photographs related to a particular month in history. These schedules, documents, and photographs come from the Archives of the FDR Library.

Photographs

The FDR Library posts thousands of online images from its large collection of still photographs, both to the FRANKLIN database and to the Flickr photosharing website. Check out our digitized photographs page for more information. 

Audio & Film

The Speeches and Other Utterances of Franklin D. Roosevelt collection includes material recorded between 1920 and 1945. This collection has been fully digitized and users can stream and/or download the recordings from this page: Recorded Speeches and Utterances of FDR

The motion picture collection consists of films presented by President Roosevelt, his estate, Eleanor Roosevelt, other members of the Roosevelt family and various individuals and organizations. The collection includes newsreel footage, films produced by government agencies, commercial motion pictures, television documentaries and amateur films. A portion of the collection has been digitized and is available here: FDR Library Motion Pictures on YouTube

National Archives Catalog

Resources and records from across the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), including the FDR Library and all 13 Presidential Libraries, are available online through the National Archives Catalog. NARA provides many options for online research support at Research Our Records,  including reference guides, online exhibits, and a digital community space for researchers called History Hub.