Treasure Keepers

Description

Colonial Williamsburg curator John Watson discusses the considerations curators and preservationists must make in deciding how to conserve, preserve, restore, and display historical artifacts.

Dog Tags: History, Stories, & Folklore of Military Identification

Description

According to the Library of Congress Webcasts site:

"The 100th anniversary of the official use of American personal identity tags, affectionately known as 'dog tags,' recently passed without fanfare. Dog tags are highly personal items to warriors of every service and to their families as well. Each dog tag carries its own human-interest story. The acts of receiving the dog tag, hanging it around the neck, and feeling it against the body constitute a silent statement of commitment. The tag itself individualizes the human being who wears it, despite his or her role as a small part of a huge and faceless organization. While the armed forces demand obedience and duty to a higher cause, dog tags, hanging under service members' shirts and close to their chests, remind them of their individuality. They bring comfort and help calm the fears of soldiers facing death: 'I do not want to be forgotten; I do not want to become an unknown."

American Anthrax

Description

In this interview produced by The Library of Congress Webcasts, author Jeanne Guillemin discusses her new book, American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nation's Deadliest Bioterror Attack, which offers a definitive account of the five-year investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands

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Photo, Class on coconut growing. . . , Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
Annotation

This website offers more than 50,000 slides and photographs that document the history of the American period in Micronesia from 1947 to 1988. The image collection can be browsed or the visitor can sample the types of images in the collection through 12 short animated image tours. The topics of the image tours give an idea of the variety of images available in the collection: parades, dancing, voting, agriculture, stone money, canoes, architecture, women, leaders, education and children, health and hospitals, and men. The only search capability on the site is a Google search of the photograph description files. Additional resources include a map of Oceania and a link to the Hawaii War Records Archive. This archive is a useful source of images for those researching, writing, or teaching the cultural history of the Pacific Islands.

Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library

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Image, Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library
Annotation

These 29 collections document the history of Hawaii and Micronesia from 1834 to the 1990s. "Annexation of Hawai'i," for example, contains thousands of pages of documents concerning the U.S. plan to annex Hawaii, realized in 1898. Materials include the 1,437-page Blount Report of 1894–95, initiated by President Grover Cleveland on the history of relations between the U.S. and Hawaii and the planned annexation; Congressional debates on the Hawaii Organic Act, passed in 1900 to establish a territorial government; and Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions and protest documents from 1897–98.

"Hawaii War Records" presents 880 photographs documenting the impact of World War II on Hawaii and its people. The "Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands" photo archive provides 52,000 photographs on programs in education, health, and political and economic development in the 2,100 islands of Micronesia administered by the U.S. from 1947 to 1994. The website also includes a collection of 16 Hawaiian-language newspapers.

Online Archive of California

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Photo, Joseph Sharp, 1849 gold miner of Sharp's Flats, Online Archive of CA
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This archive provides more than 81,000 images and 1,000 texts on the history and culture of California. Images may be searched by keyword or browsed according to six categories: history, nature, people, places, society, and technology. Topics include exploration, Native Americans, gold rushes, and California events.

Three collections of texts are also available. Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive furnishes 309 documents and 67 oral histories. Free Speech Movement: Student Protest, U.C. Berkeley, 1964–1965 provides 541 documents, including books, letters, press releases, oral histories, photographs, and trial transcripts.

UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office offers full-text transcripts of 139 interviews organized into 14 topics including agriculture, arts, California government, society and family life, wine industry, disability rights, Earl Warren, Jewish community leaders, medicine (including AIDS), suffragists, and UC Black alumni.

Oral History Research Center

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Photo, "The Kim Sisters at a table in Reno"
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Established in 1905, Las Vegas, NV, officially became a city in 1911. Its growth and development over the course of the 20th century is documented through this diverse collection of oral histories. Eight oral histories, in video, audio, and transcript format, expose aspects of daily life in early Las Vegas from the 1930s to the 1960s. Las Vegas showgirls Anna Bailey, Carol Baker, Betty Bunch, Sook-ja, Ai-ja, Mia Kim, and Virginia James discuss working conditions on the Las Vegas strip in the 1960s and 70s as well as their involvement with prominent shows, the racial integration of showrooms, and the growth of the Las Vegas Korean community. Present-day Las Vegas comes to life through oral histories and videos of six women in their 70s and 80s who tap dance together several times a week at the West Las Vegas Arts Center. Segregation, integration, the Nevada Test Site, and local history in Las Vegas are the focus of the oral history roundtable with Rose Hamilton and four other women who grew up together in Las Vegas and remain friends to this day.

Maine Memory Network

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Photo, Percival Procter Baxter, Age 10, 1886
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This site has two primary goals: to serve as a resource center for Maine history, and to assist classroom teachers as they teach American and Maine history. The site provides a search engine for its 5,700 primary sources (photographs, artwork, and documents), while the 34 online exhibits cover subjects including the 20th Maine regiment in the Civil War, Irish immigration, and Maine during the Revolutionary War.

Particularly interesting is My Album, where visitors can select, save, and arrange photographs and add text. Albums can be viewed in a slideshow or shared with other visitors through email or by storing them in a publicly accessible folder (users must register and give personal information to use this feature).

In addition to the nine lesson plans for teachers, there is a Community Gallery, where visitors can view 15 exhibits created by elementary, middle, and high school students posted for public viewing.