Currently provides 22 census data samples and 65 million records from 13 federal censuses covering the period 1850-1990. These data "collectively comprise our richest source of quantitative information on long-term changes in the American population." The project has applied uniform codes to previously published and newly created data samples. Rather than offering data in aggregated tabular form, the site offers data on individuals and households, allowing researchers to tailor tabulations to their specific interests. Includes data on fertility, marriage, immigration, internal migration, work, occupational structure, education, ethnicity, and household composition. Offers extensive documentation on procedures used to transform data and includes 13 links to other census-related sites. A complementary project to provide multiple data samples from every country from the 1960s to 2000 is underway. Currently this international series offers information and interpretive essays on Kenya, Vietnam, Mexico, Hungary, and Brazil. Of major importance for those doing serious research in social history, the site will probably be forbidding to novices.

This well-organized and useful site provides full-text versions of over 200 classic American and European literary works, as well as reference materials for scholarly use and readers' enjoyment. The site is divided into four sections. The Reference category includes 27 reference works, from dictionaries to Gray's Anatomy. The Verse section offers over 60 collections from poets like William Butler Yeats and Walt Whitman. The Fiction category provides over 75 works from authors like Leo Tolstoy, Agatha Christie, and Charles Dickens. And the Nonfiction section includes over 30 works from figures such as 18th century women's rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft, writings by Theodore Roosevelt, and Thomas Paine's Common Sense. The site is remarkably easy to navigate and provides keyword author/subject/title/phrase indices for searching among works. The individual works are also searchable by index and table of contents. This site is ideal for researching the lives and works of many prominent literary figures.

In 1996, eight historians of religion and three advisors embarked on a five-year project to illuminate ways that material culture and economic history can be used in the study of American religion, a discipline traditionally dominated by ideas. The site presents annotated photographs of 39 objects, including an evangelical coffee bar, chewing gum packed with biblical verses, artwork in a family Bible, and a church stick used to awaken sleeping congregants. Thirty-eight documents from the 1850s to the 1960s, range from an 1854 book steward report for the African Methodist Episcopal Church to a chain e-mail from the 1990s. The site also includes 23 essays and interviews by the project's participants on such eclectic subjects as "Material Christianity," religious architecture, how Catholic practice has shaped children's experiences, the role of costume in the Salvation Army, how to practice economic history of religion, and "what makes a Jewish home Jewish." Includes eight issues of the project's newsletter; a bibliography of 22 titles; and links to 18 related sites. This site will be especially valuable to university students interested in evaluating the value of material culture scholarship in religious studies, students of economic history curious about applying their discipline to non-traditional fields of inquiry, and scholars within the field of material culture and the broad discipline of American cultural history.

This website is a companion to the one-hour Public Broadcasting System documentary Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland, produced by Chuck Olsen of Twin Cities Public Television. The film and website were inspired by photographer and essayist William Gabler's book of the same title, and depict the first settlements, rise, flourishing, and decline of the farm houses of the midwestern prairie. The Homes on the Prairie section includes a lengthy (roughly 1500-word) narrative about the history of the settlement and rural culture that developed in the midwest, along with descriptions and 15 images of the different kinds of architecture found on the prairie. The Literary Collection category provides 13 links to poems, essays, and excerpts from novels that capture the character of the midwest farm life. Another section offers a virtual tour of a classic "L" shaped farmhouse, from the porch to the kitchen, parlor, and bedrooms. The site also contains a bibliography of five scholarly books on the midwest and rural farm life, links to seven websites on similar topics, and a bibliography of ten essays and photographic essay works about rural midwestern life. Though this site provides no primary documents, it is a good site for gathering general information on the midwest, rural life, and vernacular architecture.

With a focus on business history and its connections to larger cultural, social, and political trends, the Hagley archive presents digital images on a range of topics, including "industrial processes; commercial landscapes; marketing and advertising; transportation facilities and methods; development of information technology; and, the social and cultural aspects of work and leisure." Pictured are bridges, dams, coalmines, and the testing and manufacturing of gunpowder and explosives, nylon, steel, railroads, automobiles, and airplanes. Also included are images of historic buildings, homes, and gardens in Delaware and Pennsylvania.

There are some images of advertisements, packaging, company brochures, trade catalogs, pamphlets, internal documents, letters, and other ephemera from various industrial enterprises. It includes, for example—under "nylon"—not only shots of machinery, product samples and images of the stages of melting and forming polymers, but also such treasures as ads and publicity shots of women modeling nylon stockings and swimsuits (including "Miss Chemistry" at the 1939 New York World's Fair), and news photos of the riotous early sales of nylon stockings.

Other topics include the early development and use of computers by Univac, IBM, and Remington Rand, aerial photos of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard; automobiles; Lukens Steel Company; ship building; and coal mining.

This site, part of the larger TeacherServe offers an interactive curriculum enrichment service providing teachers with creative lesson plans and access to materials for the secondary school classroom. To help teachers convey the importance of religion in the development of the United States, this site highlights the intersections between American history and religion at key points like the Puritan migration to New England, abolition, and the Civil Rights Movement. The site offers essays on 24 topics grouped into 17th- and 18th- century, 19th- century, and 20th-century categories. Subjects covered include Native American religion in Early America, witchcraft in Salem village, African American religion in the 19th century, the Scopes trial, and the American Jewish experience.

Each of the 2,000-word essays includes background to the topic, tips on guiding student discussion, a bibliography of approximately five related scholarly works, a discussion of historians' debates over the issue, and links to related resources. Teachers can submit questions and comments on teaching about religion in the classroom to the Center and its consulting scholars, and a discussion link posts these questions and answers. The site also offers links to three websites that offer additional advice on teaching about religion in public schools. This is an excellent site for high school history teachers and it also provides a useful framework for college survey courses.

A comprehensive gateway to more than 3,000 links that provide historical maps and information about the history of cartography, with an emphasis on early maps. Searchable by an index with more than 400 alphabetically-arranged subject terms or by keyword. Includes sites offering listings for conferences, discussion lists, fellowships, map societies, journals, images of early maps, map collecting, web projects on early cartography, histories of maps, and articles on cartography. Now incorporated into the World Wide Web–Virtual Library and updated weekly. Extremely useful as a starting point for online cartographic resources.

Designed as both an archive and an online exhibit, this site features 3,457 hand-drawn township maps of Illinois. When the government began surveying in 1803 what would later become Illinois, they divided the land into squares six by six miles (36 square miles) called townships. This site includes a 1,000-word introductory history describing the surveying process and introducing the methods and tools of surveyors. Also included here are the maps, available to researchers and the public. A 1,000-word narrative outlines the role of the United States Surveyor General, and traces the custody of these records through the years.

Visitors use a map of Illinois to locate the region and county of the plat they wish to view, and can pan left and right or zoom in and out. A legend helps users decipher early 19th-century symbols. In addition, the site links to an Illinois state website (Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales), where researchers can search for the first owners of plats. This site is a great place to view original, early-19th-century maps of Illinois.

This site provides an interactive and engaging examination of the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe. The interactive "It'll Be the Death of Me" section walks visitors through the various explanations of Poe's mysterious death. It asks the viewer to make choices, and directs them based on the decisions they make. The "Point of View" feature uses Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado" to illustrate the effect of point-of-view in literature. Viewers choose to read the story from the point of view of Fortunato, Montresor, or a narrator.

Although this is not an archive of Poe's work, it nonetheless provides access to about a dozen of his stories and 16 primary documents. Many of Poe's writings are annotated on this site, allowing students to compare first, second, and third drafts of "The Lake," or to analyze the rhyme scheme of "The Raven." Another interactive feature allows visitors to examine the melody of Poe's poem, "The Bells." Visitors control the voice of the reader (male or female, emotive or monotonic), add or delete sound effects and background music, and then listen to the creation to see how those factors affect the emotional impact of poetry. "Talking About Poe" allows visitors to leave messages for other users.

This site complements the 16-part PBS television series of the same name. Based on Joy Hakim's award-winning U.S. history textbook series, the site explores the theme of freedom chronologically from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights movement and concluding with the inauguration of George W. Bush. Designed to help teachers find lesson plans or design their own curriculum, the site includes sample activities and historical primers, each based on one of the 16 "Webisodes," such as "Liberty for all?" or "Whose land is this?" Teachers can search for lesson plans by Webisode or by multiple subject matters, from mathematics to physical education. There is also an interactive timeline that links to photographs, paintings, biographies, and quizzes. The site is visually and textually rich, but most valuable for K-12 teachers and students.