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.

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."

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.

Freedom Now! An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University

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Brochure, Fundraising to aid. . . , 1970, NAACP, Tougaloo College Archives
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This searchable archive offers more than 250 documents from the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the struggle to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi in the early 1960s, and the continuing Brown-Tougaloo Cooperative Exchange that grew out of it. The Freedom Movement was "one of the most inspiring and important examples of grass-roots activism in U.S. history." The archive includes books; manuscripts; periodicals; correspondence; interview transcripts; photographs; artifacts; and legal, organizational, and personal documents.

The collection can be searched by document type, keyword, or topic, including black power/black nationalism, college students, gender issues, incarceration, labor issues, legislation, media, non-violence, protest, segregation, and state government. The site offers two lesson plans on the Mississippi Freedom Movement based on documents in the database, one focused on the experiences of college-aged civil rights workers during the Freedom Movement and the other on voter registration. Other teaching resources include links to five websites on teaching with primary documents, six sites related to the African-American civil rights movement, and eight related books. This site is a useful resource for researching the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the history and people of the civil rights movement, or African-American history.

Route 66 State Park [MO]

Description

Located along the original Route 66 corridor, the nearly 419-acre park is a boon to park visitors who want to enjoy nature and see interesting historical displays showcasing Route 66. Bridgehead Inn, a 1935 roadhouse, serves as Route 66 State Park's visitor center. It houses Route 66 memorabilia and interprets the environmental success story of the former resort community of Times Beach, which once thrived on the location of the park.

The park offers exhibits.

Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor [OH]

Description

The Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor provides a dramatic overview of the impact of the iron and steel industry on Youngstown and other Mahoning Valley communities. The building, designed by renowned architect Michael Graves in 1986, houses the museum's permanent exhibit, "By the Sweat of Their Brow: Forging the Steel Valley," which explores labor, immigration, and urban history, using videos, artifacts, photographs, and reconstructed scenes. Objects on display range from workers' tools and clothing to "last heats," the last batches of steel produced at each of the mills before they closed. Hundreds of photographs, some more than 30 feet long, are used throughout the museum. Videos examine topics such as housing, recreation, and urban history. Life-size scenes—including a mill's locker room, part of a company-built house, and a blooming mill, where steel ingots were shaped for further processing—help visitors understand steelmaking and the lives of steelworkers.

The center offers exhibits, tours, research library access, and educational programs.

Larz Anderson Auto Museum [MA]

Description

The Larz Anderson Auto Museum seeks to increase interest in collector cars and foster community among those interested in antique vehicles. The museum collection includes at least 14 vehicles from before 1930, including an 1899 Winton. Interpretation focuses on the ways in which automobile technology has altered U.S. culture.

The museum offers exhibits, lawn events, guided tours, customizable guided group tours, lesson plans, a play zone, and educational programs for students.

Ohio Statehouse Education and Visitors Center

Description

The Statehouse Education and Visitors Center interprets the state capitol's history and significance for the public, and guides school groups in their study of government, citizenship, and Ohio history. The Statehouse complex represents one of America's finest examples of Greek Revival civic architecture, and is one of the oldest working statehouses in the United States. Visitors can see where and how the vital business of state government is conducted, view architectural and artistic treasures, and learn more about Ohio through guided tours, educational displays, and interactive touch-screen kiosks.

A second site, specifically for the Statehouse, can be found here.

The center offers exhibits, tours, educational programs, and educational and recreational events.