Ohio Memory: An Online Scrapbook of Ohio History

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This wealth of materials—more than 26,000 images in 4,100 collections—comes from 330 archives, libraries, and museums. Together, they document Ohio life, culture, and history from prehistoric times to the recent past. Currently the site provides 2,786 visual items; 768 historical objects, artifacts, or buildings; 106 natural history specimens; 809 published works; and 691 collections of unpublished material. Users can browse or search by word, place, and subject. Displayed materials are presented chronologically on scrapbook pages with 10 selections per page. "Learning Resources," with 22 categories, offers essays of up to 2,000 words illustrated with relevant material. Topics include African Americans, agriculture, American Indians, arts and entertainment, business and labor, civil liberties, daily life, education, immigration and ethnic heritage, government, religion, science and technology, sports, and women.

Public Papers of the Presidency

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Bringing together a wide range of material on the public communications of American presidents, as well as election data and statistical information on presidency, this website presents the public messages, statements, speeches, and news conference remarks of presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush. Materials can be browsed or searched by month and year. Visitors can also view transcripts of all inaugural addresses and State of the Union messages, convention speeches of presidential candidates from 1960 to 2004, and all the presidential debates.

The site offers major party platforms from 1840 to 2004 and transcripts of various events from the 2001 presidential transition. Transcripts from the "Presidential Candidates Debates" from the 1960 through the 2004 election are presented. A media archive contains various audio and video clips from the late 19th century to the present. A map shows electoral votes and popular vote totals and percentages by state from 1828 to 2004.

SCETI: Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image

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This eclectic collection of more than 2,200 items spans the 17th to the 20th centuries. Visitors can search material from nine sections and visit 14 exhibitions. "A Crisis of the Union" presents 224 pamphlets, broadsides, clippings, paintings, and maps on the Civil War. A collection devoted to Theodore Dreiser presents correspondence, various editions of the novel Sister Carrie, an early manuscript for Jennie Gerhardt, and scholarly essays. Approximately 4,000 photographs from singer Marian Anderson's papers are complemented by more than 40 audio and video recordings. A collection on the history of chemistry emphasizes the pre-1850 period with monographs and more than 3,000 images of scientists, laboratories, and scientific apparatus while another exhibit emphasizes the ENIAC computer. Other collections on the birth of the University of Pennsylvania, early sheet music, and Jewish music and history are also available. See also "Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas" [ID].

The Tax History Project

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Created by a nonprofit group interested in "open debate on federal, state, and international tax policy," this site furnishes an eclectic range of primary and secondary resources on the history of American taxation. "Tax History Museum" currently offers a 23,000-word narrative in eight chronological segments summarizing tax policy and politics from 1660 to 1900, supplemented with 70 images and links to related documents. The 20th-century portion is in development. "The Price of Civilization" makes available 14 posters and more than 6,500 pages of federal documents—primarily Treasury Department reports—on the development of the current tax system during the Great Depression and World War II. "Presidential Tax Returns" includes returns of recent presidents and Vice President Cheney. "Taxing Federalism" features nine Federalist Papers, and "Image Gallery" offers 15 political cartoons from the turn of the century to 1947, many by Washington Star cartoonist Clifford Berryman. The site also offers a bibliography and four sound clips of federal officials discussing tax policy.

Naval History and Heritage Command

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The Naval History and Heritage Command collects, preserves, and presents the history of the U.S. Navy in physical locations throughout the U.S. and online. Teachers will be most interested in "Resources & Research," a rich collection of primary and secondary sources related to naval history, including photographs, paintings, documents, oral histories, historical overviews, chronologies, and bibliographies. Teachers may want to start with "Photograpy," "Web Exhibits," or "Commemorations," some of the richer and more navigable sections. "Photography" features an online library of selected images on subjects including recruiting posters, albums and scrapbooks, women in the U.S. Navy, aircraft, naval insignia, individual ships, and more. "Web Exhibits" gathers together more than 20 curated collections of resources on topics from the Civil War to Japan/U.S. Navy relations; resources vary by exhibit but include documents, photographs, videos, related articles, oral histories, and links to off-site resources. "Commemorations" features collections of resources related to specific events, including the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Battle of Midway, and the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Teachers may also find unique primary sources in "Art." The Naval Art Gallery offers more than 25 galleries including "Women in Uniform" and "The Invasion of Normandy." Additionally, the "Archives" section provides downloadable Commander Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV) monthly summaries from 1966 to 1973 and links to other archives holding material on the U.S. Navy. "Navy Department Library" makes available naval documents from 1775 to the present day (note that the documents are presented chronologically by topic, with no distinction between primary and secondary sources). "Diversity" directs visitors to collections on women, African Americans, Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans in the U.S. Navy. "Videos" indexes more than 90 video clips, some primary sources and some secondary. "Ships Histories" provides brief histories of specific ships, indexed by name, and "Aviation" provides data on different types of aircraft and aircraft carriers. "Bios" features more than 100 essays with images on naval figures. Teachers will need patience to navigate the site and uncover the primary sources available.

ProQuest Information and Learning

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This fee-based service provides a range of resources. There are a large number of secondary sources, including more than 2,500 scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, and trade publications, with full-text access and searching capabilities available for approximately half. "Historical Newspapers" offers an enormous body of primary sources, including access to the following: The New York Times (1851–2001), The Washington Post (1877–1988), The Wall Street Journal (1889–1986), The Christian Science Monitor (1908–1991), and The Los Angeles Times (1881–1984). For recent history, there are articles from more than 500 newspapers worldwide from the 1980s to the present. These include specialized publications from the worlds of business, education, medicine, religion, and sciences and reference resources. ProQuest offers subscribers a variety of product "modules," so materials described above may not be available at all institutions.

Readex Digital Collections

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Hundreds of thousands of documents spanning four centuries of American history are available in this large archive. Broadsides, ephemera, pamphlets, and booklets are available from 1639 to 1900. More than 1,300 newspaper titles, representing all 50 states, range in date from 1690 to 1922. U.S. Senate and House of Representatives reports, journals, and other documents are available from 1817 to 1980. Legislative and executive documents from the Early Republic are also included. The entire body of documents is keyword searchable, and, in addition, each collection can be searched and browsed individually. These documents shed light on many aspects of American social, political, economic, and cultural history, and can provide a valuable window into the daily lives of early Atlantic peoples. The collection of broadsides and ephemera is especially useful for exploring the history of printing in the United States, as all titles can be browsed by bookseller, printer, or publisher.

Lakota Winter Counts

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This anthropological exhibit displays, explains, and interprets the Lakota pictorial histories known as winter counts. Featuring a searchable database of winter count images, a documentary about Lakota history and culture, and video interviews with Lakota people, website visitors can view images from 10 winter counts and examine their symbols in detail by year with curator comments. Visitors are also able to examine the various symbols used by the winter count keepers to represent plants and animals, ceremonies, health, trade goods, places, people, the U.S. government, and the sky. "Who Are the Lakota" offers a historical overview of Lakota history in 10 segments that include the Lakota and the Sioux people, Lakota origins, westward migration, horse-centered culture on the northern Great Plains, important conflicts and treaties, confinement to the Great Sioux Reservation, and subsequent land cessions.

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.