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.

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.

An exhibit of music and documents that "commemorates and celebrates a variety of songs that were a part of everyday American life through the centuries." Includes 18 audio excerpts lasting approximately one minute each of representative ballads, hymns and spirituals, patriotic odes, minstrel tunes, songs from musicals, protest songs, and songs about the state of Virginia. Clips include performances by Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Accompanied by a 10,500-word essay arranged by types of music and interspersed with more than 100 historical documents, including manuscripts, illustrations, photographs, hymn books, songsters, portraits, posters, sheet music covers, album covers, and record labels. A "Virginiana" section provides material from Thomas Jefferson's library to illustrate his interest in music. The site is a good introduction for those interested in understanding historical roles, functions, and uses of music by various American groups.

Presents an exhibit of 36 political cartoons and five essays by Herblock (Herbert Block), the acclaimed Washington Post political cartoonist who died in October 2001 after a career spanning seven decades. This tribute includes cartoons and the essays originally put together in 1995 for the exhibit "Five Decades of Herblock," as well as cartoons from 1998 to 2001, 12 photographs, three essays of appreciation, and the editorial that appeared in the newspaper the day after he died. As if to illustrate Herblock's observation that "Political cartoons, unlike sundials, do not show the brightest hours," the exhibit addresses such "dark" American topics as the "fear and smear" era of HUAC and McCarthyism (a term Herblock himself coined), Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s, the Vietnam War, Watergate and other Nixon-era scandals, Reagonomics, the 1994 Republican "Revolution," the Clinton impeachment, the Columbine shootings, and the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Although the site is marred by annoying pop-up ads, this remains a valuable site for those studying popular culture and the history of political cartoons.

A selection of 53 items of correspondence between folksinger and songwriter Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) and members of the staff of the Library of Congress' Archive of American Folk Song. Consists mostly of letters from the early 1940s between Guthrie and Alan Lomax, at that time in charge of the Archive and who, like Guthrie, was an important force in the movement to document, record, and publicize vernacular American music. Includes scanned images of documents and transcriptions, allowing keyword searching. Also offers a 2,400-word biographical essay; a timeline of Guthrie's life; 14 photographs; a finding aid for the complete Woody Guthrie Manuscript Collection; a 21-title bibliography; and a 15-title discography. Valuable for those studying the histories of American music, radio broadcasting, and government efforts during the Roosevelt era to document American culture.

An exhibit of 60 images, mostly photographs, and a 2,500-word essay that presents a social history of deaf community life in the U.S. from the early 19th century to the present. Covers education, the development of American Sign Language, the "silent press," deaf people in the workplace, media portrayals, deaf clubs, activism, and technological developments. Also includes material on a few historical figures such as the Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell. Hosted by the National Deaf Life Museum, the website also has links to educational resources and the Through Deaf Eyes documentary film produced by Florentine Films/Hott Productions and WETA, Washington, DC, in association with Gallaudet University. A solid introduction to the history of deaf people in America.

Gateway to more than 100 links, most of which provide visitors with the capability to search for events that occurred on specific days. "Specialty sites" link to resources dealing with specific ethnic groups, entertainment forms, politics, professions, regions, and countries. Users can find hundreds of holidays, birthdays of famous people, and calendar-related quotations, as well as links to events involving African Americans, American Indians, popular culture, sports, radical history, psychology, health, and the literary world. No depth, mostly trivia, but still of use to students and teachers who need to check a date.

Furnishes more than 19,000 survey reports, more than 6,200 photographs, and 103 annotated county and city maps that document the history of thousands of structures built in Virginia prior to the Civil War. Original research was gathered in the late 1930s by the Virginia Writers's Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and includes information compiled by field workers through onsite investigations—including interviews with residents—and by using court records and other local resources. Provides descriptions of architectural details, histories of buildings, lists of owners, and in many cases photographs and sketches. The project was "specifically charged with describing the vernacular architecture and history of everyday buildings built before 1860: homes, workplaces, churches, public buildings." Also includes materials on cemeteries, tombstones, antiques, historical events, personages, land grants, wills, deeds, diaries, and correspondence.

Provides a 5,600-word essay on the project's history. Users may search reports, maps, and photographs by keywords; includes specific instructions for genealogical research and for finding documents dealing with the Civil War and African American history. Site creators note that many of the structures documented by the project "no longer exist, and the VHI photographs may be the only extant visual records of them." A valuable resource for those studying the material culture of Virginia's past.

Adflip is an archive of more than 6,000 print advertisements published from 1940 to the present. The site is privately financed and was created by two individuals who felt that "print advertising captures the essence of society at any given time." Products advertised include everything from dog food to DeSotos. The site may be searched by year, product type, and brand name. Many ads may be sent as electronic post-cards for free. For each ad, the site tells when and in what publication it appeared. A 170-word introduction describes the site. There are 17 search categories, from automotive to travel, and eight themed categories such as comic books and obsolete products.

A top ten collection changes daily and features ads that the site creators find funny. Visitors may also search a collection of ads indexed by publication. This collection includes 65 magazines and comic books, from Archie to Wired. The site does not give information about advertising agencies. This site will be useful as primary source material for research on advertising, consumer culture, and material culture, but note that the pages of this site download very slowly.

Trading posts, small businesses that sold American Indian arts and crafts, were a colorful part of the culture of the American West. When the United Indian Traders Association (UITA), an organization of trading post owners and operators, disbanded in 1997, they directed some of their financial reserves toward this oral history project, capturing the history of these posts through the reminiscences of traders and their families. The 44 interviews offered on this site were conducted from 1998 to 2000 by Karen Underhill and Brad Cole of Northern Arizona University. Each interview is accompanied by a photograph and a brief (approximately 50 words) biography of the interviewee. The site offers edited excerpts, full-text transcriptions, and selected audio clips of each interview. There is no search engine and the interviews are arranged only by name, not by geographical location, so the site is somewhat difficult to navigate. But for those interested in the recent history of the American West, Native Americans, and the intermediary functions of the trading posts, this is a unique source.