First World War: The War to End All Wars

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Image, World War I U.S. propaganda poster, c. 1917, First World War
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The stated purpose of this website is to provide an overview of World War I. This it does effectively through hundreds of essays, 3,100 encyclopedic entries, 618 biographies, 318 resources on the war's major diplomatic and military events, and a timeline. Primary documents include over 100 diaries and firsthand accounts of soldiers and politicians, 3,900 photographs, 651 propaganda posters, and 155 audio files of songs and speeches. Documents include treaties, reports, correspondence, memoirs, speeches, dispatches, and accounts of battles and sieges.

The site also provides 95 essays on literary figures who wrote about the war. While admittedly a work-in-progress, the site offers much material on the leaders who engaged their countries in war and on the experiences of ordinary soldiers who fought the battles.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online

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This interactive case study explores the 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard and the construction of two late 20th-century historical studies based on the diary: historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book A Midwife's Tale and Laurie Kahn-Leavitt's PBS film by the same name.

The site provides facsimile and transcribed full-text versions of the 1,400-page diary. An archive offers images of more than 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. Also included are five maps, present-day images of Augusta and Hallowell, ME, and a timeline tracing Maine's history, the history of science and medicine, and a history of Ballard and Hallowell. The site offers suggestions on using primary sources to conduct research, including essays on reading 18th-century writing and probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. A bibliography offers nearly 150 scholarly works and nearly 50 websites.

California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California, 1849-1900

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Image, Miner and Pack Burro, unidentified publication, California as I Saw It
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The 190 works presented on this site—approximately 40,000 written pages and more than 3,000 illustrations—provide eyewitness accounts covering California history from the Gold Rush through the end of the 19th century. Most authors represented are white, educated, male Americans, including reporters detailing Gold Rush incidents and visitors from the 1880s attracted to a highly-publicized romantic vision of California life.

The narratives, in the form of diaries, descriptions, guidebooks, and subsequent reminiscences, portray encounters with those living in California as well as the impact of mining, ranching, and agriculture. Additional topics include urban development, the growth of cities, and California's unique place in American culture. A special presentation recounts early California history, and a discussion of the collection's strengths and weaknesses provides useful context for the first-person accounts.

Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

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Image, Hal-hal-tlos-tsot or "Lawyer," Gustav Sohon, 1855, Kate and Sue McBeth
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Presenting full-text letters and diaries, this website focuses on the lives and careers of Kate and Sue McBeth, missionaries and teachers among the Nez Perce Indians during the last quarter of the 19th century. Government documents and images pertaining to the tribe's history accompany these materials. Sue McBeth established a successful theological seminary for Nez Perce men, collected and organized a Nez Perce/English dictionary, and wrote journal articles. Kate McBeth provided literacy education for Nez Perce women, taught Euro-American domestic skills, and directed a Sabbath school and mission society.

Divided into five sections, materials include more than 150 letters, a diary, a journal, five treaties, more than 70 commission and agency reports and legislative actions, excerpts from a history of the Nez Perce, and 19 biographies. Six maps and approximately 100 images, including 13 illustrations depicting the 1855 Walla Walla Treaty negotiations, are also available.

Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

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Image, Page from the journals, Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition
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This well-designed site presents the Nebraska edition of the Lewis and Clark journals, edited by Gary E. Moulton. The site provides the complete text of all the journals from the 1803–1806 expedition, as well as introductions, prefaces, and sources. The material is searchable by keyword and phrase.

There are 29 scholarly essays about the expedition. An image gallery offers 124 images of pages from the journals, 95 images of people and places, and 50 images of plants and animals encountered on the expedition. The maps section includes 12 explanatory maps and nine images of maps from the journals. Additionally, there are 27 audio excerpts of journal readings and eight video interviews with the editor of the project. The website stands as an outstanding resource for researching the history of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920

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Image, "Fighting the Mob in Indiana," 1892, North American Slave Narratives
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Offering 230 full-text documents, this collection presents the written lives of American slaves, including all known published slave narratives and many published biographies of slaves. Materials include autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in a range of formats, such as broadsides, pamphlets, and books.

In addition, biographies of fugitive and formal slaves and fictionalized slave narratives are included. The collection includes well-known authors, such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, as well as many authors less commonly known. Documents are available in HTML and SGML/TEI file formats and are accessible through alphabetical and chronological listings. Users can also view images of the covers, spines, title pages, and versos of title pages. Documents have been indexed by subject, but searches return materials in additional collections. An introductory essay by Professor William Andrews is available.

Digital Library of Georgia

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Postcard, 270 Peachtree Building, Historic Postcard Coll., Digital Library of Ga
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Bringing together a wealth of material from libraries, archives, and museums, this website examines the history and culture of the state of Georgia. Legal materials include more than 17,000 state government documents from 1994 to the present, updated daily, and a complete set of Acts and Resolutions from 1799 to 1995. "Southeastern Native American Documents" provides approximately 2,000 letters, legal documents, military orders, financial papers, and archaeological images from 1730–1842. Materials from the Civil War era include a soldier's diary and two collections of letters.

The site provides a collection of 80 full-text, word-searchable versions of books from the early 19th century to the 1920s and three historic newspapers. There are approximately 2,500 political cartoons from 1946-1982; Jimmy Carter's diaries; photographs of African Americans from Augusta during the late 19th century; and 1,500 architectural and landscape photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s.