Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

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Nearly 4,000 panoramic photographs of cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits, deposited as copyright submissions by more than 400 companies, are displayed on this site. Panoramic photographs were used to advertise real estate and to document groups, events, and gatherings. Images depict all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and more than 20 foreign countries and territories. Subjects include cityscapes, landscapes, group portraits, agricultural life, disasters, education, engineering, fairs and expositions, industrial scenes, military activities, performing arts, sports, and transportation. Although the images cover the period from 1851 to 1991, the collection centers on the early 20th century. The site includes a bibliography, an illustrated 1,000-word background essay on the history of panoramic photography, and an essay outlining the technicality of shooting a panoramic photograph. Four essays focus on specific photographers: George R. Lawrence (1869–1938); George N. Barnard (1819–1902); Frederick W. Brehm (1871–1950); and Miles F. Weaver (1879–1932).

USC Archival Research Center

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These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.

Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars

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This annotated collection of more than 30 letters addresses the personal and political costs of war. Letters cover conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the current war in Iraq and are divided thematically into five sections: "Enlisting," "Comforts of Home," "Love," "Combat," and "The End of the War." Letters come from well-known military figures, such as Douglas MacArthur and Robert E. Lee, as well as ordinary veterans, such as Peter Kiterage, one of the 5,000 African Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War. The thematic organization allows users to chart changes and continuities over 200 years of American history. Each letter is read aloud so students can listen as well as read. In addition, a "magic lens" feature provides transcriptions over the original handwriting to help students decode the letters.

Picturing America

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Twenty-seven iconic images in American history are presented here, designed specifically to encourage educators to use images as primary source documents in the classroom. The images range in time from 17th-century depictions of the Catholic mission in San Antonio to the contemporary art of Washington, DC native Martin Puryear.

Also included are the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," and Hiram Powers's statue of Benjamin Franklin, as well as works by artists such as Grant Wood, George Catlin, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Edward Hopper, and by photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. All images are accompanied by a brief annotation providing historical context, a biography of the artist, and a list of online resources offering further contextual information, lesson plans, and classroom activities. Images enlarge to fullscreen and are searchable by artist and by theme: Leadership, Freedom & Equality, Democracy, Courage, Landscapes, and Creativity & Ingenuity.

Rutgers Oral History Archives

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This collection of oral history interviews centers on men and women who served overseas and on the home front during World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War. The project was started to learn more about the war from ordinary people. The archive contains 444 full-text interviews, primarily of Rutgers College and Douglass College (formerly New Jersey College for Women) alumni and many of these interviews were conducted by Rutgers undergraduate students. Interviewees were selected to investigate the effects of the G.I. Bill on American society. The easily navigable site provides an alphabetical interview list with the name of each interviewee, date and place of interview, college of affiliation and class year, theater in which the interviewee served, and branch of service, if applicable. The list also provides "Description" codes, including military occupations such as infantry and artillery members, nurses, and civilian occupations.

Teach Women's History Project

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These teaching and reference materials focus on the women's rights movement of the past 50 years and its opposing forces. Teaching materials include 40 primary documents selected from The Feminist Chronicles: 1953–1993, ranging from the first National Organization for Women (NOW) statement of purpose to topical task force statements. Twenty-eight suggestions for further reading in women's history, feminist theory, and contemporary women's issues, as well as listings for 20 relevant organizations, appear in the Additional Resources section. A current "Feminist Internet Gateway" provides 15 annotated links in "History of Women/Social Studies." Additional topics ranging from arts and media to reproductive rights and their annotated links are available in the "Reviewed Links" section.

Marchand Archive

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A memorial to Roland Marchand, the late historian of popular culture and advertising, this website presents a slide library with more than 6,100 images, including more than 2,000 advertisements, drawn from Marchand's collection. The images are organized into more than 40 major categories and close to 200 subcategories.

The site also offers 48 lesson plans designed by Marchand, each with an introduction, an essay assignment, and 10 to 40 primary source documents. The lessons cover a diverse range of controversial topics, including the Antinomian Controversy, the reactions against Chinese immigrants, the Pullman Strike, the Women's Suffrage Movement, and Watergate. The site will be useful for researching popular culture and advertising, as well as numerous other topics in American history, such as women, wars, immigration, labor, and African Americans.

Selling the Computer Revolution: Marketing Brochures in the Collection

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Presenting more than 250 computer marketing brochures from 1948 to 1988, this collection represents materials from more than 90 companies.

Visitors can explore the entire collection or browse by company. Categories include: calculators, mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers, supercomputers; applications for which the computer was intended; and decade.

Of particular interest are six early marketing brochures from Apple Computer, a brochure for the Commodore 64 computer, and two mid-1950s IBM brochures for "electronic data processing machines." Each group of brochures is accompanied by a brief introduction with historical information about the company, category, type of application, or decade. The full contents of each brochure are available for viewing or download in .pdf format and each brochure is accompanied by descriptive data.

Vietnam Center and Archive

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This massive website furnishes several large collections. The Oral History Project presents full transcriptions of more than 475 audio oral histories conducted with U.S. men and women who served in Vietnam. The Virtual Vietnam Archive offers more than 408,000 pages from over 270,000 documents regarding the Vietnam War in addition to a number of video interviews.

The site focuses on military and diplomatic history, but aims to record the experiences of ordinary individuals involved in Vietnam and on the home front. Additional items address Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as Americans and Vietnamese. Secondary and reference resources are also available, including conferences papers, and video versions of a 1996 address by former ambassador William Colby on "Turning Points in the Vietnam War."

NSA and the Cuban Missile Crisis

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This website provides access to facsimiles of 100 declassified documents relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Documents include reports from Signal and Communications Intelligence and NSA memos, 20 written by the Director of National Security. For example, the first document from 1960 is entitled, "Indications of Soviet arms shipments to Cuba, weekly COMINT Economic Briefing."

Documents are indexed by date and include brief descriptions. The documents describe Soviet involvement in Cuba and Cuban military activities by year, focusing on 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, and 1969. This site also provides a synopsis of the crisis, emphasizing the Cuban arms buildup, the growing crisis, and the moments of crisis.