This American Memory project, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and Duke University, provides a window on American culture between 1850 and 1920 by offering more than 3,000 pieces of sheet music from Duke University's Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. These musical pieces represent American history and culture through a variety of music types including minstrel, protest, sentimental, patriotic, and political songs, bel canto, spirituals, dance music, vaudeville, and musical pieces.

The collection is particularly strong in antebellum Southern music, Confederate imprints, and Civil War music and includes a large collection of piano marches, opera excerpts, waltzes, polkas, and quadrilles as well.

In addition to the music and lyrics, each item includes an image of sheet music cover illustrations, which provide further perspective on contemporary ideas about politics, patriotism, race, religion, and sentiment. Descriptive remarks, including notes on the composer, publication information, repository, and a transcription of lyrics accompany each item.

The site also offers a 750-word essay; a link to Duke University's home page for sheet music collections; a 1,000-word essay that defines sheet music as a cultural medium and outlines the history of music publishing in the U.S.; a bibliography of more than 150 works on the history of sheet music, composers, musicians, and performers in the U.S.; and links to five other American Memory collections with related materials.

The site is searchable by keyword and browseable by composer name and subject. Students and teachers researching American cultural history or the cultural significance of music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries will find this site useful.

Part of the Library of Congress American Memory project, this site features 26 films of San Francisco, produced from 1897 to 1916, both before and after the Great Earthquake and fire. Seventeen of the films depict life in San Francisco before the 1906 disaster, including an arrest in Chinatown, a panoramic view of the city from a balloon, and various other scenes of buildings and special attractions in the city.

Seven films describe the earthquake and fire, and two films show a rebuilt city and give a tour of the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915. Each film includes a roughly 500-word descriptive summary of the contents of the film. The site also includes a 250-word descriptive essay on pre-earthquake San Francisco and an approximately 750-word essay on America at the turn of the 20th century. A selected bibliography notes 32 scholarly works on San Francisco's earthquake.

This site is keyword searchable and contains a subject index and an alphabetical list of film titles. For those exploring San Francisco's history, urban history, or natural disasters, this is a useful site.

Funded by the Rockefeller Corporation and part of the Library of Congress American Memory Project, this site features approximately 200 maps that document the history, cultural aspects, and geological features of the areas that became the Acadia, Grand Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, and Yellowstone National Parks. The maps date from the 17th century to the present and include early European, exploration, geological, environmental, United States Geological Survey, and National Park Service maps.

The site is divided into four sections, one for each of the featured national parks. Each section includes a 1200-word essay describing the history of the area and the process by which it became a national park, illustrated with five to seven maps.

The site also includes a bibliography of over 200 scholarly works on related topics. Other links include a 750-word general history of the mapping of national parks and a "Learn More About It" section that offers links to 14 Library of Congress Special Presentations and related collections and exhibits. The collection is keyword searchable and can be browsed by geographic location, subject, creator, and title. This easily navigable site is ideal for students and teachers interested in cartography, the National Parks system, and conservation in America.

This project provides a collection of more than 280 digitized materials documenting the history of Florida from pre-contact to the present. It includes materials relating to Florida history, culture, arts, literature, and social sciences in a number of major thematic areas, including Native American and minority populations, exploration and development, tourism, natural environment, and regional interests. These materials are drawn from the archives, special collections, and libraries of the 10 state universities in the Florida system.

Items include family papers, local history books and booklets, diaries, advertising materials, and Civil War letters, business records, maps, and photographs. Many of the materials are regional or local in scope.

The site also includes an extensive (5000-word) Florida history narrative timeline from pre-contact (before 1492) to the present. A user guide and tutorial are provided, and the documents are searchable by county name, keyword, subject, author, or title. The search engine has an option for listing either electronic holdings only or all collection holdings under a particular subject. Entries in the electronic catalog include the archive in which the original is located as well as a 20-word description of the item and its contents.

Note that a few links are still under construction with no completion date indicated. The site is ideal for researching Florida's state and local history.

A collection of 19 audio clips of speeches recorded by seven turn-of-the-century public figures—William Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Booker T. Washington. The clips last between one and seven minutes each; all but one were made between 1900 and 1920. Subjects of the speeches include politics, reform, socialism, isolationism, trusts, the gold standard, U.S. military force, labor issues, and race relations. The site includes transcripts of the speeches as well as 150-word biographies and three photographs of each speaker.

Through digitization, technicians have improved the sound quality of these recordings, some of which had become nearly inaudible. An opportunity for users to experience the oratorical powers of influential men from the early 20th century.

Designed to document the presence of Belgian immigrants in three Wisconsin counties, this site contains a variety of primary and secondary sources. Legal documents, diaries, letters, photographs, and oral histories are included, totaling some 1,500 resources. The site includes 400 architectural surveys, 54 oral histories (many given in Walloon, a primarily oral French patois spoken by generations of Belgian immigrants to Wisconsin), and approximately 500 pages of Immigration Histories.

The entire collection (with the exception of a few documents that have defied OCR translation) is searchable by keyword and can be browsed. This is a unique collection of primary sources, easily accessed, and usable by students, teachers, or researchers.

These 43 audio files present Kansas City jazz recordings that span the years 1906–1954. Most were recorded during the city's "Golden Age"—from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. Provides 100- to 500-word profiles on 28 jazz artists including Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Big Joe Turner, Benny Moten, and Andy Kirk.

Also includes a 1,700-word article on the 18th and Vine district, "internationally recognized as one of the cradles of jazz"; a 1,500-word article on the first Kansas City jazz band to become known nationwide in the 1920s, the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawks Orchestra; shorter essays on Kansas City clubs and nightspots; a 26-title annotated bibliography; and a 45-title discography. Small photos of people and places accompany some of the essays. A good introduction to this important center of jazz creation that will be of interest not only to jazz aficionados, but to those studying 20th-century urban and cultural history.

Allows genealogical searching of a number of indexes—with listings of names numbering in the hundreds of millions—created by the Mormon church to assist their members with family history research. Offers guidance and forms useful for conducting genealogical research in many places in the world and census worksheets for the U.S. covering the years 1790–1920, Canada for 1851–1901, and Ireland for 1901–1911.

Also includes links to hundreds of related sites accessible according to category. A good introduction to family history research.

Provides more than 300 musical selections and sheet music covers, in addition to essays on ragtime music and related subjects. Music available as MIDI files, performed by site creator Bill Edwards, a professional musician and collector. Selections include descriptive annotations from 200 to 600 words, and many include lyrics. Biographical essays of 100-800 words each on 26 composers, including Scott Joplin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Artie Matthews, and Eubie Blake. Longer essays (2,000-6,000 words) on the histories of ragtime music, player pianos, sheet music cover art, and technique tips for playing ragtime. A section on ragtime nostalgia provides information on people, inventions, events, advertising, city life, and rural life during the ragtime era. Provides annotated links to approximately 80 related sites and a bibliography of 17 titles. Valuable to those studying music history and turn-of-the-century American culture.

This website uses photographs, historical maps and atlases, and city directories to contextualize "the people, places, and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal." The site has four exhibits, each accompanied by an introduction. Moments is a searchable collection of more than 2,500 historic maps and photographs that includes some of the earliest urban photography in the country. Places presents three historic atlases of the city, from 1874, 1898, and 1928. Each of the 94 plates in the atlases can be viewed individually. People offers nine city directories from 1845 to 1925 and five examples of how people's histories can be traced in the directories and how the directories can be combined with the images and maps from the site to "contextualize in time and place a single history or the history of millions."

Cowpaths allows users to plot information gathered from the images and directories on a map as an aid to tracing the history of the city and its people. Users can define their own data layers, query the data, and have results mapped on historical maps. An illustrated primer on how to use "Cowpaths" is available.

Each exhibit is individually searchable with basic or advanced searches. This site is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Boston and is also of interest to those studying urban history.