Images of the Civil War

Tom Liljenquist, 58, a McLean jeweler, last year began giving the Library of Congress almost 700 Civil War-era ambrotypes and tintypes that he and his three sons had amassed over the past 15 years.

"This is an amazing gift of Civil War material," said Carol M. Johnson, curator of photography in the library's prints and photographs division, "a landmark gift."

The library plans to exhibit the collection in April, with the 150th anniversary of the start of the war, but already has digitized most of the pictures and put them online.

Liljenquist said his family donated the images to make them available to posterity free of restrictions. And when "they digitize the photos," he said, "that photograph will look exactly that way 20,000 years from now."

l Recapturing and archiving the Civil War. C1