Black Wings: African American Pioneer Aviators

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Approximately 75 items that tell the story of pioneering African American flyers, their contributions to the World War II effort, and racial discrimination they suffered. The site is arranged into four sections containing narratives of approximately 350 words each with hyperlinks leading to related images, mostly photographs. The exhibit also includes reproductions of posters, newspaper articles, insignias, advertisements, personal accounts, government documents, and letters. Searchable by keyword, decade, exhibit section, media, or name of plane. The reproduction quality of some of the items is poor; several newspaper articles are so blurred they are virtually unreadable.

Includes two lesson plans for grades 5-12, links to nine related sites, and an 11-title bibliography. The site will provide students with a brief introduction to an often neglected aspect of African American and aviation history.

The Joshua Lederberg Papers

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Provides nearly 12,300 documents pertaining to Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and microbiologist Joshua Lederberg (b. 1925), acclaimed for his work in molecular biology and the genetics of bacteria. Most of the material dates from 1945 to the present. Includes more than 10,300 pieces of correspondence, more than 550 articles, 19 lab notebooks, 228 newspaper columns, 48 speeches, 55 monographs, 28 essays, 32 official reports, 83 photographs, and 9 video clips. An exhibit orients visitors to Lederberg's important work in bacterial and cellular genetics, artificial intelligence and expert systems, exobiology ("the study of life outside the atmosphere"), emerging infectious disease and biological warfare (Lederberg was a critic of biological warfare research), and health and the future. The site is fully searchable. Valuable for those studying the history of science and social policy.

Physical Sciences Collection: Surveying and Geodesy

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Provides historical information and photographs pertaining to more than 300 surveying instruments used in America to delimit land and transport boundaries "since the first European colonists settled here some 400 years ago and turned the American landscape into property." Visitors may browse by 23 types of instruments—from alidades to zenith telescopes—and by 117 names of instrument makers. Informative texts on makers, types of instruments, and specific instruments run from one sentence to 300 words in length. Entries include bibliographic references. Of value for those studying the history of science and technology.

U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection

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Provides nearly 3,500 photographs taken at Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in Newport News, VA, where more than 1.5 million people arrived and departed during 1942-1946. The photographs were shot for the Army's Transportation Corps by U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers. In addition to military personnel, photos present civilian employees, Red Cross workers, wounded persons, entertainers, and German and Italian prisoners of war. In addition to Hampton Roads, seven photos were taken in Baltimore; one was shot in Chicago. Bibliographic records describe the images with information on persons, location, and date.

A special group of 34 images with descriptive captions document "The Odyssey of an American Soldier" from his arrival at Hampton Roads to his debarkation near a combat zone. Users can search images by personal name, ship name, geographic location, and keywords used in bibliographic records. Valuable for those studying military history and life at this key transportation site.

WPA Life Histories, Virginia Interviews

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Provides approximately 1,350 life histories and youth studies created by the Virginia Writers' Project (VWP)—part of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project—between October 1938 and May 1941. In addition, the site offers more than 50 interviews with ex-slaves conducted by the VWP's all-black Virginia Negro Studies unit in 1936 and 1937 and six VWP folklore studies produced between 1937 and 1942. The life histories—ranging between two and 16 pages in length—offer information on rural and urban occupational groups and experiences of individuals during the Depression, in addition to remembrances of late 19th-century and early 20th-century life. The youth studies investigate experiences of young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who left school and include a survey of urban black youth. The ex-slave narratives, selected from more than 300 that were conducted for the project—of which only one-half have survived—provided research for the 1940 WPA publication The Negro in Virginia.

Interviews and studies were edited—sometimes extensively—at the Richmond home office. Each study includes a bibliographic record with notes searchable by keyword; for many records, notes are structured to include searchable data on age, gender, race, nationality, industrial classification, and occupation. The site includes a 2,300-word overview of the project. Valuable for those studying social, economic, and cultural life in Virginia during the Depression, in addition to early periods, youth culture, and the history of slavery.

Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time

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A celebratory exhibit of approximately 35 images and accompanying short texts—each only approximately 100 words in length—on the life of Nobel prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). The exhibit begins with the writer's family and educational background in Oak Park, IL, then offers sections on his Paris, middle, and later years. Images include photographs and artists' renditions of Hemingway and a few literary contemporaries, and images of covers of some of his novels. Though commentary is slight in content and in insight into the man and his art, the images and accompanying quotations are well-chosen.

Student Voices from World War II and the McCarthy Era

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Presents transcriptions of oral history interviews—with selected accompanying audio files—of five students who participated during World War II in Brooklyn College's Farm Labor Project.

The students, most of whom were children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland and were committed to radical politics, journeyed upstate during the summer to work on farms in order to support the war effort. The site organizes excerpts of the words of the five interviewees—four women and one man—into four broad sections covering their background and youth, campus life, life on the farm, and life after the project.

These sections are further divided into 20 subsections covering such topics as family life, social influences, politics, working conditions on the farm, protests against a "capitalist" farmer, interactions with locals, and later life. Individual excerpts range in length from one sentence to 750 words. Audio files are provided for 23 of the excerpts.

The site also includes 12 photos from the project, a timeline, and a syllabus for an undergraduate-level course in Oral History Theory and Practice.

A second group of oral histories addresses the shutdown of Brooklyn College's newspaper during the McCarthy era as well as related biographies, contextual essays, and primary documents. The site will be valuable to those studying student life, radical culture, American Jewish history, and homefront experiences during World War II.

The Hartford Black History Project

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Provides two exhibits on black history in Hartford, CT. "A Struggle from the Start" charts stages in the life of the Hartford African-American community from 1638 to 1920. Structured in five chronological sections, each with three-to-four thematic subsections, a text of 21,000 words is punctuated with approximately 60 images of documents, photographs, illustrations, newspaper clippings, tables, paintings, and maps. This exhibit covers slavery, black codes, free blacks, Black governors in the early Republic period, black soldiers, the black bourgeoisie, the formation of the black community, black labor, black society, black churches, the "Talented Tenth" in Hartford, black painters Charles Ethan Porter and Holdridge Primus, black migration from the South, mass politics, and black community institutions. A second exhibit presents approximately 80 photographs from Hartford's African-American community covering the years 1870 to the 1970s. Valuable for those interested in studying African-American history from a community perspective.

Linus Pauling Research Notebooks

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Presents 7,680 scanned pages of 47 notebooks kept by American chemist Linus Pauling (1901-1994) from 1922 to 1994. Pauling won two Nobel Prizes—for Chemistry in 1954 and for Peace in 1962—due to his involvement in campaigns for nuclear disarmament. Each notebook contains a contents index. In addition, the site provides a detailed alphabetical subject index that includes personal names. Notebooks offer many reprints of articles published by Pauling. The site also directs users to 23 selected highlights—pages relevant to Pauling's most significant work and to some autobiographical entries. Includes "An Open Letter to President Bush," dated January 1991, in protest of the Gulf War. Valuable for those studying the history of American science in the 20th century.

U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1971

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This site presents more than 2,200 digital images of the Gary Works Steel Mill and the corporate town of Gary, IN. The "tour" includes 36 photographs with interpretive text documenting the creation of the steel mill and city life in Gary. The main body of the site contains thousands of digital images and users can search by keyword or browse by subject and date for various aspects of this planned industrial community. The subject headings include the steel mill and its workers; factories and furnaces; houses and office buildings; women, children, and welfare facilities; and work accidents. The "Contextual Materials" section is a good starting place for historians and researchers interested in the Industrial Revolution. It includes an approximately 2,200-word introductory essay, "The Magic City of Steel," by Steve McShane; four magazine articles dating from 1907 to 1913; six book excerpts, including the 1911 work by John Fitch, The Steel Workers; 14 pages from Raymond Mohl and Neil Betten's Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1950 and the Carl Sandburg poem, "The Mayor of Gary."

This section is rounded out by a nearly 80-item bibliography and links to additional information about Gary, steel making, and 30 archival collections. There is also a "Teacher's Guide" with ten primary and secondary school lesson plans and other online activities. A great site that is easily navigable for researchers, teachers, and students.