About Digital Collections 

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library is the intellectual center and chief repository of information related to the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Through the staff and collections, we advance knowledge of colonial British America, the American Revolution, the early United States, American decorative and folk art, the history of the restoration of Virginia’s 18th-century capital of Williamsburg, and the corporate history of the Foundation. We advance the mission of the Foundation by developing and supporting educational experiences for 21st-century audiences, as well as research opportunities for staff, scholars, and the public. The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library is the research hub of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.  Together the collections and community of “The Rock” advance knowledge of early America set within the context of the larger Atlantic world, the 20^th-century origins and ongoing story of Colonial Williamsburg, and the American decorative arts and folk art movements. 

The library houses five main collections: The Reference and Circulating Collections, Corporate Archives, Media Collections, Special Collections, and the Visual Resources Collection.  Whether you are a historian, student, a museum professional, an independent scholar, an artist, an interpreter, or simply interested in learning more about history, we welcome you to use the growing collection of resources at the Rock. 

Digital Collections, the library’s Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, is the central repository for digitized and born-digital assets from the library’s holdings.  With a focus on supporting research and public engagement, this platform encourages users to virtually experience, explore, and access digitized materials that reflect the diversity of the library’s wide range of historical and cultural resources.  

While users can search for assets across the entirety of the site, Digital Collections features curated content in “tiles” on the home page that appear beneath the slider bar.  These tiles highlight important groups of objects, topics, or themes that are frequently referenced by our user community.  High quality digital assets provide detailed reproductions of newspapers, rare books, manuscripts, photographs, reports, moving images, and audio recordings to enhance the user experience.

The first two tiles contain The Virginia Gazette and Colonial Williamsburg research reports.  The Virginia Gazette was the official newspaper of Virginia, printed in Williamsburg from 1736 until 1780. The research reports provide deep documentation of the social, archaeological, and architectural history of Williamsburg and reflect the evolution of scholarship over many decades.  These resources are the first groups of assets migrated to Digital Collections from existing, but outdated, legacy databases.  The migration, supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Program, is the first step in the centralization and presentation of our digitized library collections.  We encourage our users to check back often to view new additions to the site as we continue to grow and evolve this initiative. 

The Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator Program supports leadership development and technological infrastructure investment that builds audiences, increases fundraising, drives revenue, delivers dynamic programming, and helps develop best practices to share across a network of non-profit cultural intuitions.  We are grateful for their support.