N.Y. library hangs gallery of images online

Can't get to the New York Public Library to view 16th-century maps of North America or Russian Civil War posters from the early 1900s?

No problem. They'll come to you via your computer.

On Thursday, the library launched its NYPL Digital Gallery, which offers 275,000 images online, from Civil War photographs to renowned manuscripts to early American maps. People can download the images for free, providing they are for personal use.

"By opening the doors of our acclaimed collections to users over the Internet, we are plunging fully into an exciting new era of library service," Paul LeClerc, the library's president, said in a statement.

The library, which hopes to increase the number of images to 500,000 items in the next several months, offers prints, manuscripts, photographs, maps, postcards, cigarette cards, menus, posters and other materials.

These include menus from the mid-1800s to early 1900s, Japanese prints and images of ablution fountains in Egypt.

While the library offers a treasure trove of items for free download, dial-up users may want to line up a few multitasking projects to keep them occupied while accessing the image-laden site.