Public Library Expanding Its Online Offerings.

Letters written by George Washington, Henry David Thoreau's pencil-drawn map of Walden Pond and Mark Twain's manuscript of ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' are among the items from the New York Public Library's American collections that will soon be digitized and made available to the public online, the library announced on Thursday. The library, aided by a $500,000 grant from the Polonsky Foundation, has already begun digitizing the Thomas Addis Emmet Collection, which covers the early years of the United States and includes a copy of the Declaration of Independence written in Thomas Jefferson's hand and manuscript minutes of the Annapolis Convention, the 1786 meeting at which delegates unanimously called for a constitutional convention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]