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 Accompanied by a 10,500-word essay arranged by types of music and interspersed with more than 100 historical documents, including manuscripts, illustrations, photographs, hymn books, songsters, portraits, posters, sheet music covers, album covers, and record labels.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.

Provides 44 government documents that track the organizational and operational history of various CIA departments designed to coordinate science and technology research with intelligence operations. Many of the documents—reports, letters, and memos—have been declassified through Freedom of Information Act requests by the site's editor, Jeffrey T. Richelson for his research. Other documents have been obtained from the National Archives, Library of Congress, and the CIA's public affairs office. Material dates from 1951 to 2000, with the bulk covering operations during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations.

Subjects include determining France's nuclear capabilities in 1957; assessments of U-2 spy plane missions over the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s; "Black Shield" flights over North Vietnam and North Korea to find missile sites; the development of a real-time imagery satellite in the 1970s; the strategic rationale for mining harbors in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration; and restructuring efforts following the end of the Cold War. Also includes a report on technical support provided to E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy for gathering information on Daniel Ellsberg and Senator Edward Kennedy, and a memo on project "Acoustic Kitty," in which a cat, surgically wired with transmitting and control devices for eavesdropping purposes, was run over by a cab. Each document is annotated with a short description of up to 300 words. The site, though modest in size, will be of interest to those studying the history of American espionage agencies, foreign relations, and the secret use by nations of science and technology.

Offers more than 40 multimedia presentations featuring oral history excerpts and photographs that document aspects of life in the Colorado Plateau--encompassing parts of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado--during the past half century. Also presents audio files of 10 complete oral histories and transcripts of the interviews ranging from 2,200 to 19,000 words in length. A joint project of eight libraries and museums in the four Colorado Plateau states and Nevada, the site is organized into three sections--People, Places, and Topics--with subheadings that allow visitors to access the audio excerpts, many of which are accompanied by slide shows of photographs. The people interviewed include a Navajo language interpreter, the son of homesteaders, a schoolteacher, a pioneer in commercial river running, and an administrative officer for a town built for dam workers. Topics range from sociocultural concerns, such as growing up, education, families, food, and leisure, to work- and environment-related subjects, including ranching, timber, and tourism. Valuable for those studying the American West and the use of oral history for exhibit presentations.

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.

A "National Registry of Historic Places Travel Itinerary" covering 42 places of significance with regard to the postwar African-American civil rights movement. Churches, colleges, private homes, places of business, neighborhoods, and government offices, primarily located in the South, are each described in 300-word entries illustrated with one or two photographs. An introductory 5,000-word essay offers a narrative history of the movement with annotations to specific sites. Focuses on the 1950s and 1960s, with no attempt to cover civil rights struggles of groups other than African Americans. A few sites cover events and persons active prior to the 1950s, such as Ida B. Wells's home in Chicago and the W. E. B. Du Bois Homesite in Great Barrington, MA.

Users can access sites from a map of the U.S. or by a list organized by states. Information for visiting each site is also provided, as is a list of 39 related websites and a 34-title bibliography. The site's creators note that the places were nominated by states and thus "do not represent a systematic effort to survey, identify, and list all important civil rights sites in the National Register." A useful way to introduce students to civil rights history.

This site provides access to 272 facsimiles of National Security Action (NSA) memoranda written by President John F. Kennedy or by McGeorge Bundy, his NSA advisor. The memoranda are 50-200 words each and cover subjects such as the training of Cuban nationals, the distribution of U.S. forces in Vietnam, Berlin, civil defense, and a "Review of the Iranian Situation." The documents are indexed by NSA numbers from February 1961 to November 1963. More documents will be added as they are declassified. The index provides a one to five-word description of the subject of each memo. There is a 100-word introduction to the collection, but no contextual material or annotations. The site cannot be searched by subject. Teachers and students in search of primary source material about foreign policy in the Kennedy Administration will find this site useful.