Standard HD44780 LCDs are useful for creating standalone projects.

• 16 characters wide, 2 rows
• White text on blue background
• Connection port is 0.1" pitch, single row for easy breadboarding and wiring
• Pins are documented on the back of the LCD to assist in wiring it up
• Single LED backlight included can be dimmed easily with a resistor or PWM and uses much less power than LCD with EL (electroluminescent) backlights
• Can be fully controlled with only 6 digital lines! (Any analog/digital pins can be used)
• Built in character set supports English/Japanese text, see the HD44780 datasheet for the full character set
• Up to 8 extra characters can be created for custom glyphs or 'foreign' language support
• Comes with necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header

For more information, check out our detailed step-by-step Arduino+LCD tutorial

We have a datasheet that has pin-locations and more  plus a HD44780 datasheet with the detailed commands for control