National Postal Museum

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Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as "The Post and the Press" and "Moving West" which explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the "Mail by Rail," visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including "Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits; and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled "Rarities Vault" and "Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of "Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed.

There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from EnRoute, the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.

United States Early Radio History

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This website contains articles and extracts about early radio and related technologies in the United States from 1897-1927. It is organized chronologically and divided into 24 sections. Each section is a long-form essay, containing numerous hyperlinks to reproductions or transcriptions of original primary documents, including documents relating to the efforts to provide entertainment and news over the telephone in the first decades of the 20th century. Essays vary in length, most 1,000 - 2,000 words, and many are original essays by the site's creator. The first section offers an overview of the individuals, activities, and technical advances that characterize the early 20th century. The subsequent sections include essays entitled "The Electric Telegraph" and "Radio at Sea." The latter argues that navigation was the first major use of radio and it helped to reduce the isolation of ships and save lives. There are also essays about the early development of the radio industry and the radio during World War I. "Early Government Regulations, 1903-1946" contains 18 documents covering early international and national control of radio and the final section on U.S. radio history covers such topics as "Washington D.C. AM Station History" and "Mystique of the Three-Letter Callsigns" about U.S. radio and television station call letters.

The site is a fascinating place for those interested in the early history and development of the radio and its subsequent effects on related technologies.

University of Missouri-Columbia: Digital Library Collections

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This archive makes available varied material on English, American, and Missouri history, including speeches, pamphlets, plat books, and government documents. The collection of Daniel Webster speeches offers more than 100 items that, in addition to his addresses and speeches in Congress, include sermons, addresses, orations, and speeches in his honor, as well as some correspondence. The Fourth of July orations collection contains more than 100 items, including orations by John Quincy Adams, Charles F. Adams, and Daniel Webster. The site also offers a collection of more than 110 Missouri county plat books published in 1930, a collection of various items of Missouriana, and a group of four miscellaneous texts that includes an 80-page text on the liberty of the press published in London in 1812. The collection of 17th- to 19th-century British religious, political, and legal tracts contains more than 400 documents and pamphlets published primarily during the English Civil War. Each collection can be individually searched. For anyone researching 17th- and 18th-century transatlantic history, the political history of New England, or the history of Missouri, this is a collection worth consulting.

Arizona State Museum

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Presenting a virtual alternative to the museum in Tucson, this site allows visitors to experience the indigenous cultures of Arizona and the greater southwest. The Online Exhibitions section offers a plethora of digital programs and resources, including Paths of Life: American Indians of the Southwest, With an Eye on Culture: The Photography of Helga Teiwes, and The Pottery Project: Explore the Arnold and Doris Roland Wall of Pots.

The Paths of Life section features a virtual reality tour of the exhibit that consists of 22 panoramas of the museum space with accompanying text. This presentation enables online visitors to vividly examine the origins, lifestyles, and contemporary lives of 10 Native American Indian tribes from the American Southwest and/or northern Mexico.

The With an Eye on Culture photography exhibit features more than 50 photographs, along with explanatory notes and video footage of interviews with some Native American subjects.

The Pottery Project enables vistors to virtually explore the Arizona State Museum's Wall of Pots. According to the Museum, the primary purpose of this exhibit is to "illustrate continuity and change over nearly two millennia of pottery making in the Southwest." For this reason, the Wall of Pots showcases both protohistoric and contemporary pottery. Visitors can view the collection column by column, and even explore individual shelves.

However, these are just a few examples of the resources complied by the Arizona State Museum. Younger students might enjoy the What Would Frida Wear? section, which allows users to dress a virtual paper doll of the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, in indigenous clothing and read about her life. Interested in more games like this? Pop over to the Explore Culture Online page for informative podcasts, videos, reading lists, and a ton of other engaging activities and useful information.

Selected Historical Decennial Census Population and Housing Counts

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More than 40 historical census reports, including decennial reports dating back to 1790, are available for download on this website as PDFs. Historical statistics address topics such as population totals by race, urban or rural status, educational attainment, and means of transportation to work, among others.

There are also histories of the 21 U.S. census questionnaires produced from 1790 to 2000, including instructions to census marshals dating back to 1820. Comparative tables show which censuses included specific questions on subjects, such as ancestry and mental disabilities, and whether respondents were deaf, blind, insane, feeble-minded, paupers, literate, or convicts. Additional information includes state and territorial censuses, mortality schedules produced for a number of 19th-century censuses, population at the time of each census, and supplemental censuses taken at various times on free and slave inhabitants, Indian populations, unemployment, and housing.

Because of the PDF format, the reports take a number of minutes to download. These materials are useful for those needing demographic information or researching the history of census taking and the development of census categories.

Worthington Memory, Online Scrapbook

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Currently provides more than 122 images of objects, documents, and photographs pertaining to the history of the town of Worthington, OH, founded in 1803 by a group of families migrating from western Connecticut and Massachusetts. The site creators plan to add more materials in the future, including digitized versions of 19th- and 20th-century newspapers and oral histories. Users may search by subject, title, or keyword in bibliographic records—which include abstracts of up to 100 words for each item—or browse the collection by decade or 27 categories covering aspects of the social, economic, cultural, civic, and environmental history of the town. Includes links to 22 related sites. Useful for those studying local history.

Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting

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Presents 470 audio excerpts of interviews and 3,882 photographs compiled in 1994 by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress during a study of occupational culture in Paterson, NJ. The project—sponsored by Congress—explores ways that the industrial heritage of Paterson, with manufacturing roots going back to the 18th century, still affects present-day community life and culture with regard to work practices and leisure activities. Audio files are available in three formats, accompanied by bibliographic records with word-searchable summaries and subject headings. The site includes five essays—from 2,500 to 5,000 words in length with photographs—by project fieldworkers on African American family businesses in Paterson; an ethnography of a single workplace—Watson Machine International, a manufacturing film established in 1845; business life along a single street—21st Avenue, home to Italian and Hispanic communities; a traditional Paterson food—the hot Texas wiener; and remembrances by retired workers.

Offers a 27-title bibliography, annotated links to 32 related sites, and a glossary of specialized terms. Valuable for those studying the intersection of labor and ethnic history, urban history, and the functioning of historical memory.

U.S. Intelligence Policy Documentation Project

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Presents histories of two secretive U.S. intelligence organizations—the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Security Agency (NSA)—and documents the use of satellite imagery in U.S. intelligence operations. Material is organized into three electronic briefing books. The site includes 23 documents from 1961 to 1996 on the creation of the NRO—established in 1961 to coordinate U.S. reconnaissance efforts; 24 documents from 1950 to 2000 on the NSA, created to manage and control U.S. communications intelligence activities; and 14 satellite photographs with a 4,400-word essay on the history of U.S. satellite imagery from 1960 to 1999. The NSA briefing book offers President Truman's 1952 memo establishing the agency and additional documents concerning topics such as North Vietnam military strategy, India's atomic energy program, the global surveillance network known as Echelon, and concerns about possible infringement by the agency of privacy rights of U.S. citizens. Satellite photographs show sites in the Soviet Union, the Sudan, Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan.

Includes links to information on three microfiche sets of related documents and three books on the history of U.S. intelligence operations by the site's creator, Jeffrey T. Richelson. Valuable for those studying the effects of technological developments on the history of U.S. espionage activities and international relations during and after the Cold War.

The Joshua Lederberg Papers

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Provides nearly 12,300 documents pertaining to Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and microbiologist Joshua Lederberg (b. 1925), acclaimed for his work in molecular biology and the genetics of bacteria. Most of the material dates from 1945 to the present. Includes more than 10,300 pieces of correspondence, more than 550 articles, 19 lab notebooks, 228 newspaper columns, 48 speeches, 55 monographs, 28 essays, 32 official reports, 83 photographs, and 9 video clips. An exhibit orients visitors to Lederberg's important work in bacterial and cellular genetics, artificial intelligence and expert systems, exobiology ("the study of life outside the atmosphere"), emerging infectious disease and biological warfare (Lederberg was a critic of biological warfare research), and health and the future. The site is fully searchable. Valuable for those studying the history of science and social policy.

The Hartford Black History Project

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Provides two exhibits on black history in Hartford, CT. "A Struggle from the Start" charts stages in the life of the Hartford African-American community from 1638 to 1920. Structured in five chronological sections, each with three-to-four thematic subsections, a text of 21,000 words is punctuated with approximately 60 images of documents, photographs, illustrations, newspaper clippings, tables, paintings, and maps. This exhibit covers slavery, black codes, free blacks, Black governors in the early Republic period, black soldiers, the black bourgeoisie, the formation of the black community, black labor, black society, black churches, the "Talented Tenth" in Hartford, black painters Charles Ethan Porter and Holdridge Primus, black migration from the South, mass politics, and black community institutions. A second exhibit presents approximately 80 photographs from Hartford's African-American community covering the years 1870 to the 1970s. Valuable for those interested in studying African-American history from a community perspective.