This site explores the work lives of Brooklynites (historic and present) as they made their living in the borough. The site has four main sections: Confronting Racial Bias documents discrimination in the workplace; Women Breaking Barriers examines the ways in which women's work roles changed over the decades; Seeking a Better Life takes a look at the issues facing new immigrants; and Changes in the Workplace discusses challenges such as unemployment and job displacement.

Each section contains an approximately 2,000-word article on its respective topic, photographs, and audio files of people speaking about their various vocations. The site also includes eight help wanted advertisements from the 1850s, 1860s, 1920s, and 1930s.

Visitors should not miss the interactive feature Can You Make Ends Meet?, where they can pick one of four vocations, and see if they can stretch their salary out to adequately include housing, transportation, and entertainment.

Telling Your Story allows visitors to share their own recollections of Brooklyn life. The site includes few primary sources, but the personal stories of Brooklyn workers may be useful to students, teachers, or researchers.

Created for the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this website provides the legal history of the court case, and focuses attention on Howard University's contributions.

The website is divided into five main sections. Chronology presents a timeline of events and offers links to external resources. Brief History is a concise background of the Brown v. Board case and an overview of the case details and impact. Cases & Other Law provides a "legal road to Brown," with court decisions leading up to and following the Brown decision. Biographical Sketches introduces key figures. And Educational & Other Resources links to a wide variety of external websites and resources pertaining both to Brown v. Board of Education and to civil rights more generally.

Brown@50 will be especially useful to those researching the legal arguments of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, effectively beginning the "space race" with the U.S. that would last throughout the Cold War. Sputnik followed more than 25 years of research by scientists interested in rocket propulsion. This extensive archive presents more than 50,000 scanned newspaper pages, shedding light on virtually all aspects of the space program from 1930 through 2009. A good place to begin is the website's "Timeline" section, which highlights prominent events in the history of space discovery, such as the Guggenheim Foundation's decision in 1935 to support Dr. Robert H. Goddard's research into self-propelled rockets, and the launch of the Challenger in 1985 which made Sally Ride America's first woman in space. It also provides links to newspaper articles. An "Advanced Search" features allows users to input specific search terms and dates and retrieve newspaper pages—primarily from newspapers published in smaller and medium-sized cities in the south, mid-west, and California (Fresno, Jefferson City, Tuscon, Danville, VA) covering those events. The archive's decision to provide full scanned newspaper pages (as opposed to transcribed articles) allows users to better historically contextualize these events with other prominent contemporaneous events.

A collection of 17 oral histories conducted by secondary students focusing on topics relating to "The American Century": World War II; the Cold War; Vietnam; the "rights revolution"; immigration; education; and science and technology. Each oral history entry contains a biography of the interviewee, historical contextualization and evaluation essays, and bibliography.

The site provides tools for teachers to use in designing oral history courses: release form for interviewees, pre-interview worksheet, "do's and don'ts," guidelines for transcribing and editing interviews, how to analyze the historical value of an interview, grading rubrics, and student feedback. Also offers a 36-title bibliography, including 24 links to related sites. Of interest to teachers preparing oral history courses and for those studying selected 20th-century American history topics.

On May 10, 1869, in Promontory Summit, UT, a rail line from Sacramento, CA met with another line from Omaha, NE. When the last spike was driven, the Central Pacific became the first transcontinental railroad. This site provides a vast collection of online materials documenting the history of the Central Pacific Railroad and rail travel in general, as well as material on the history of photography. The site boasts more than 2,000 photographs and images, including stereographs by Alfred Hart and Eadweard Muybridge; engravings and illustrations from magazines, travel brochures, and journals; and more than 400 railroad and travel maps. Also included are more than 60 links to images and transcriptions of primary documents dealing with the construction and operation of the railroad, including government reports, travel accounts and diaries, magazine and journal articles, travel guides, and railroad schedules.

A separate section documents the Chinese-American contribution to the transcontinental railroad, including four scholarly articles, two links to Harper's Weekly articles and illustrations about Chinese workers, a bibliography of 15 scholarly works, and links to more than 20 related websites. Timelines on the building of the transcontinental railroad from 1838 to 1869, the history of photography from 1826 to 1992, and the development of the railroad from 1630 to 1986 also help to contextualize the history of the railroad in America. The volume of information on the home pages make this site slow loading, unwieldy, and confusing to navigate, and there are no descriptive captions or other information on most of the images. But the site is keyword searchable, and for those interested in the history of railroads, this site is certainly worth the time.

The complete archives and current editions of a journal about African-American religious history from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The first issue was published online in the fall of 1997. Each issue includes one or two scholarly articles of 30 to 40 pages, two to four book reviews, and a 200- to 2000-word discussion of research resources. In addition, each issue provides a list of Internet resources for research in African-American Religious history. Articles address topics such as "church media and racial discourse" (Lawrence Little) and "rap, religion and the politics of a culture," (Charise Cheney). The site will be useful for research in African American history and the history of religion in America.

This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to the four sections, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as Jackie Robinson and the lynching of Emmett Till. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple.

The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.

This archive of thousands of photographs, paintings, maps, and other primary documents on the history and culture of the trails of the American West brings together the "western trails" collections of the six libraries and institutions. The main features are exhibits and search function, but the site also offers some limited teaching resources. "Trails through Time Exhibits" features 10 exhibits on Native American, explorer, military, settlement, freight, cattle, railroad, tourism, health, and population trails. Each exhibit has a short essay, images, and links to related exhibitions and websites. "Western Trail Collections" allows the visitor to browse through 10 pre-selected categories or conduct a keyword search by creator, title, subject, or date.

The teaching section, "Trails for Teachers," offers one lesson plan for grades 1-6, two plans for grades 6-8, and two multi-grade level plans, all utilizing the collection's materials. Subjects include such diverse topics as ranch life and the early history of Jews in Colorado. A useful resource for researching the history and culture of the American West and for a basic introduction to the various movements in and across the West.

For historians researching New Jersey, this site's main interest will be its "state archives." "Catalog" provides access to nearly 200 pre-established searches on the archive's manuscript series, genealogical holdings, business and corporate records, cultural resources, and maps. Topics include military conflicts, society and economics, transportation, public works agencies, and photographic collections, as well as state, county, municipal, and federal government records. The other major feature consists of eight image collections with themes that include New Jersey Civil War soldiers, Spanish-American War Infantry Officers, Spanish-American War Naval Officers, Gettysburg Monuments, and views of the Morris Canal. The archives site also includes a searchable index of New Jersey Supreme Court cases, a transcription of New Jersey's 1776 constitution, and a table summarizing the holdings of the state archives. This site is a useful aid for researching the history and culture of New Jersey.