World War I Document Archive

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Hundreds of documents and thousands of images relating to World War I, with particular emphasis on military, diplomatic, and political resources, are available on this website. Documents are arranged chronologically and by type, including more than 100 official documents from 16 countries, 100 personal reminiscences, and 24 treaties from 1856 to 1928. A photo archive provides 1,844 images in 15 categories, including individuals, locations, heads of state, commanders, refugees, and war albums. The website also offers substantial sections on the maritime war and the medical front, an alphabetical bibliographical dictionary with over 200 names, and approximately 125 links to related sites. The authors—volunteers from a World War I electronic discussion network—encourage user participation in expanding the site.

Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

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Nearly 4,000 panoramic photographs of cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits, deposited as copyright submissions by more than 400 companies, are displayed on this site. Panoramic photographs were used to advertise real estate and to document groups, events, and gatherings. Images depict all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and more than 20 foreign countries and territories. Subjects include cityscapes, landscapes, group portraits, agricultural life, disasters, education, engineering, fairs and expositions, industrial scenes, military activities, performing arts, sports, and transportation. Although the images cover the period from 1851 to 1991, the collection centers on the early 20th century. The site includes a bibliography, an illustrated 1,000-word background essay on the history of panoramic photography, and an essay outlining the technicality of shooting a panoramic photograph. Four essays focus on specific photographers: George R. Lawrence (1869–1938); George N. Barnard (1819–1902); Frederick W. Brehm (1871–1950); and Miles F. Weaver (1879–1932).

Touring Turn-of-the-Century America

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The Detroit Publishing Company mass produced photographic images—especially color postcards, prints, and albums—for the American market from the late 1890s to 1924. This collection offers more than 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies and about 300 color photolithographs from this company. It also includes images taken prior to the company's formation by landscape photographer William Henry Jackson, who became the company's president in 1898. Jackson's work documenting western sites influenced the conservation movement. Although many images were taken in eastern locations, other areas of the U.S., the Americas, and Europe are represented. The collection specializes in views of buildings, streets, colleges, universities, natural landmarks, and resorts, as well as copies of paintings. Nearly 300 photographs were taken in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. About 900 Mammoth Plate Photographs include views of Hopi peoples and their crafts and landscapes along several railroad lines in the 1880s and 1890s.

USC Archival Research Center

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These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.

Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars

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This annotated collection of more than 30 letters addresses the personal and political costs of war. Letters cover conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the current war in Iraq and are divided thematically into five sections: "Enlisting," "Comforts of Home," "Love," "Combat," and "The End of the War." Letters come from well-known military figures, such as Douglas MacArthur and Robert E. Lee, as well as ordinary veterans, such as Peter Kiterage, one of the 5,000 African Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War. The thematic organization allows users to chart changes and continuities over 200 years of American history. Each letter is read aloud so students can listen as well as read. In addition, a "magic lens" feature provides transcriptions over the original handwriting to help students decode the letters.

Photographs from the Chicago Daily News: 1902-1933

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More than 55,000 photographs taken by staff photographers of the Chicago Daily News during the first decades of the 20th century are available on this website. Roughly 20 percent of the photos were published in the paper. The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon paper, sold at a cost of one cent for many years, with stories that tried to appeal to the city's large working-class audience.

The website provides subject access to the photographs, which include street scenes, buildings, prominent people, labor violence, political campaigns and conventions, criminals, ethnic groups, workers, children, actors, and disasters. Many photographs of athletes and political leaders are also featured. While most of the images were taken in Chicago and nearby areas, some were taken elsewhere, including at presidential inaugurations. The images provide a glimpse into varied aspects of urban life and document the use of photography by the press during early 20th century.

The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War

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This exhibit collects a series of chronologies, images, maps, bibliographies, biographies, essays, and other materials for studying the Spanish-American War. An overview essay discusses the historical context, including events leading up to the war and well-known individuals such as Jose Martí and Theodore Roosevelt.

There are four main sections: Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Spain. Each section presents an introductory essay, a chronology, and guides to related resources. An index offers short descriptive entries on 57 people, 13 places in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, and 21 events. Also available are a chronology and a selected bibliography of personal narratives, illustration sources, manuscripts, and maps. Finally, there is a list of additional Library of Congress resources and relevant American Memory presentations.

Chinese in California, 1850-1925

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These 8,000 items document the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials include photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and artwork.

Access is provided through nine galleries, each containing an introductory essay and 70 to 575 items. Four galleries present materials on San Francisco's Chinatown, including architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders. Additional galleries deal with Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiments concerning the Chinese. Visitors may search by keyword, name, subject, title, group, and theme. The site will be useful for studying ethnic history, labor history, and the history of the West as well as Chinese-American history.

Amateur Athletic Foundation Digital Archive

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For those studying the history of the Olympics, sports history, and the history of leisure and recreation, this website provides more than 45,000 documents (in .pdf format) pertaining to official Olympics history as well as other sports. Complete or partial runs of 10 journals have been digitized, including Journal of Sports History (3,030 articles from 1974–2003), Olympic Review (1901–2003), Baseball Magazine (1909–1918), American Golfer (1908–1911), Golf Illustrated and Outdoor Man (1914–1915), and Outing (1883–1899).

The site also furnishes 58 oral histories of Southern California Olympic athletes and 83 official Olympic Reports from 1896 to 2004. The full text of This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games by John MacAloon and some recent studies of aspects of sports history are also available. Additions to the site are made regularly.

Urban Experience in Chicago: Hull-House and Its Neighborhoods, 1889-1963

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This well-organized website offers more than 900 items related to Hull House—including newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, letters, memoirs, reports, maps, and photographs. Materials are embedded within a clear historical narrative that illuminates the life of Jane Addams in addition to the history and legacy of Chicago's Hull House.

Users can search the site or focus on any of the 100 topics arranged in 12 chapters that begin with settlement life in Chicago in the 1880s and end with the movement after Addams's death. Topics include the reform climate in Chicago; activism within the movement; the immigrant experience of race, citizenship, and community; education within the settlement house; and cultural and leisure activities at Hull House and in Chicago. The site provides a timeline, featuring a pictorial biography of Addams; a geographical section that includes maps of Chicago; and an image section, with 12 photograph sections and essays.