American Women's History: A Research Guide

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Photo, Guadeloupan Woman, 1911
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Maintained by Ken Middleton, reference/microforms librarian at Middle Tennessee State University, this site provides citations and links to more than 1,700 sources on American women's history. More than 900 of these are internet sources, approximately 270 of which offer online primary sources.

Content is accessible according to type of source (such as, general reference, bibliographies, biographical sources, archival collections), location by state and region, and 72 subjects. The site also includes useful guides for finding resources. Updated frequently, this is a valuable aid to help in locating materials in women's history.

American Women

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Lithograph, "Swan dive," Mabel W. Jack, 1939.
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Designed as a gateway for researchers working in the field of American women's history, this site provides easy access to an online version of the Library of Congress' 2001 publication American Women: A Library of Congress Guide for the Study of Women's History and Culture in the United States. The structure of the 456-page guide is maintained and enhanced through hyperlinks and full-text searching. Most of the digital content featured in "American Women" was not digitized solely for the site; rather, it is either linked to or displayed elsewhere on one of the Library's many web pages. The expanded resource guide allows users to easily move across the Library's multiple interdisciplinary holdings and provides guidelines on searching for women's history resources in the Library's catalogs; advice on locating documents relating to women within the American Memory collections; and a valuable tutorial for discovering women's history sources in the Library's online exhibitions.

The research guide also contains five essays that explore several aspects of women's history. They include an introduction by historian Susan Ware and a short piece describing the 1780 broadside "The Sentiments of An American Woman." The newest addition to the site is an audiovisual Web broadcast lecture featuring Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, editor-in-chief of the Jane Adams Papers Project at Duke University, and Esther Katz, editor-in-chief of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University. This site is an important resource for any student or researcher studying American women's history.

Scholars in Action: Analyzing Blues Songs

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Scholars in Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. "Two White Horses Standin' in Line" (sung by Smith Cason) and "Worry Blues" (sung by Jesse Lockett), both recorded in 1939 by folklorist Alan Lomax, are known as "blues" songs.

The blues emerged as a musical form among African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and gained the attention of folklorists and record companies. Historians have studied blues and other African American musical forms to gain insight into the experiences and perspectives of poor and working-class African Americans who left few written records about their lives.

Historical World War II Photos

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Photo, Lt. John W. Wainwright Of Marshall, Texas. . . , NARA
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NOTE: Unpublished as too commercial, 2/8/12

Historical World War II Photos claims to be the largest free collection of World War II photographs available online, digitized from the National Archives.

The downside to the site is that it's unclear whether registration is free or not. One page claims that you can sign up for a free seven-day trial, while the actual registration page simply states that the site is free.

Regardless of registration cost ambiguity, there is still plenty to do without signing up. Access to the photographs is free, and you can search by keyword or using a list of topics located on the main page. Once you find a photograph that you are interested in, you can select it for a large copy. Then click on "About image" in the toolbar above the photo for a list of information on the work—source, author, caption, location, categories, and more. If registered users have accessed the photo, they may have added annotations, such as comments, names of individuals pictured, and text transcriptions; connections, links to small informative pages; and spotlights, which appear to be notices that one or more users have marked the photograph as being of interest.

Take a look at a sample connection on Kristallnacht. The page offers a timeline, links to all the photos listed as related, facts, stories, and links. This information appears to be largely user-generated, so it would require fact-checking; but it could be a handy way to connect photographs to the bigger picture or to find photographs related to a particular event, person, or topic.

Without registering, all of the above can be accessed. What you can't do is participate in annotating, spotlighting, linking connections, or uploading your own World War II photos.

Even without the annotations, this website would be worth your time. The search system is easy to use, and breaks results down into categories, helping you to narrow your search.

Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

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Illustration, Cover of Comic Book, Library of Congress
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This site features two "special presentations" and presents hundreds of primary materials relating to baseball in America. Materials include letters, manuscripts, trading cards, lobby cards, newspaper images, photographs, advertisements, sheet music, and transcripts of interviews, speeches, and television broadcasts. The first presentation, "Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson, 1860s-1960s," furnishes approximately 30 documents and photographs in a 5-section timeline that examines the history of Jackie Robinson's entry into the major league baseball. It includes material on the Negro Leagues, the nature of baseball's color line, Robinson's career as a Brooklyn Dodger, and his role as a civil rights activist.

A second presentation, "Early Baseball Pictures," presents 34 images dealing with baseball from the 1860s to the 1920s divided into five sections. The site also includes an annotated bibliography comprised of 82 titles and a list of six links to related resources. While limited in size and focus with regard to general baseball history, this site is valuable as an introductory look at Jackie Robinson's life and the topic of race in American sports history.

Architecture and Interior Design for America: 1935-1955

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Photo, Charles E.F. McCann residence, Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, LoC
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A photo archive of more than 29,000 images, produced by architectural photographers Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner. Gottscho and Schleisner were commissioned to document the work of architects, sculptors, and artists for individuals and institutional clients, such as House Beautiful and House and Garden magazines. The collection specializes in views taken primarily in the northeastern United States--many in the New York City area--and in Florida. Subjects include homes, stores, offices, factories, and historic buildings. Also of note are 100 color images of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. As the introductory text points out, the assembled group of photographs can "serve as a document of social change from a particular vantage point of the middle and upper classes of society."

Hitting the Sawdust Trail With Billy Sunday

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Portrait, Billy Sunday, 1916, Wheaton College
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This site provides information about the American evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935). A 400-word biographical essay, accompanied by seven images, traces Sunday's background. A 750-word essay with 22 images describes selected exhibit items, including 26 photographs of Sunday, eight photographs of Sunday's associates, 9 photographs and a blueprint of Sunday's tabernacles, a prayer pamphlet, a clippings scrapbook, samples of press coverage, and sermon notes. Many of these items are presented as images, not as readable texts. The site furnishes researcher information on the Sunday Papers, held at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois, and includes a link to a website with an audio file of a Sunday sermon on "booze."

The Urban Landscape

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Photo, San Francisco
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A searchable database of approximately 1,000 historical images from 14 collections at Duke University, focusing mainly on cities and towns in the American South from the late 19th century to the 1980s. Includes 41 aerial views taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1918 of towns in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina; 150 picture postcards of southern towns from the turn of the century to the 1960s; 22 photos of the 1886 earthquake in Charlotte, SC; 32 photographs taken in Savannah, GA around the turn of the century; 28 taken in Cheraw, SC, in the early 20th century; 112 shot in Durham, NC, from the turn of the century up to 1950; and 66 photos, taken mostly in Durham, for 18 Duke University undergraduate documentary photography projects created between 1979 and 1985. The site also includes a series of 97 photographs taken in Salem, MA, in the 1890s; 31 images from the Philippine Islands and other Far East locations taken between 1899 and 1902; and four series of 218 photographs by documentarist William Gedney taken in New York, San Francisco, and Benares, India. Especially of value for students of urban architecture and for those interested in images of southern street life.

Benjamin H. Marshall: Architect and Bon Vivant

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From the Chicago Amplified website:

"Benjamin H. Marshall's designs included vast country estates, palatial residential buildings, sumptuous hotels, and innovative high-rise structures. His circle included anyone with intelligence, style, and wit.

Benjamin Marshall Society docent and lecturer Steven Monz paints a portrait of the architect and highlights several of his projects in Chicago, including residential buildings along East Lake Shore Drive, and the Drake and Blackstone Hotels."

New York State Civilian Conservation Corps Museum

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Photo, Sawing ice off of Gilbert Lake to be stored in the Ice House...
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In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the federal government developed many programs designed to ease unemployment and put people back to work. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of these federal programs and this site was created as an introduction to the significant role the Corps played in the development of New York State's Gilbert Lake State Park. From 1933 to 1941, CCC Company 212, SP-11, lived and worked at Gilbert Lake. Those unfamiliar with the park should read the 1,300-word essay about Gilbert Lake and its accompanying 1,400-word essay, History of the CCC at Gilbert Lake, about the contribution of the CCC to the park.

The center of this otherwise simple exhibit is the more than 150 photographs. They include pictures of young men swimming in the lake, enjoying sack races, and building the camp. Visitors will also find recent photographs of the camp, including a 1999 restoration project of one of the park's cabin. The site is rounded out by three donated letters from people with memories about the CCC at Gilbert Lake and those interested will find the 40-item bibliography useful.