Telecommunications giant AT&T has given the Library of Congress a $3.5 million grant to help the public institution digitize historical documents and make them available online.

The AT&T grant completes the Library of Congress' five-year, $60 million campaign to fund its National Digital Library effort.

The $60-million effort will allow the Library of Congress to digitize 5 million items from various collections, put them online and provide related educational material.

The AT&T grant was the largest corporate gift made during the campaign. It will specifically fund the digitizing of both the Alexander Graham Bell Family Collection and the Samuel Morse Collection. Bell founded AT&T.

The ultimate goal of the National Digital Library is to make available online more than 70 million non-book items, including letters of the first 23 U.S. Presidents, drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, Matthew Brady's Civil War photographs, and more.

These items previously were only available to scholars who visited the Library of Congress.