Provides more than 300 musical selections and sheet music covers, in addition to essays on ragtime music and related subjects. Music available as MIDI files, performed by site creator Bill Edwards, a professional musician and collector. Selections include descriptive annotations from 200 to 600 words, and many include lyrics. Biographical essays of 100-800 words each on 26 composers, including Scott Joplin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Artie Matthews, and Eubie Blake. Longer essays (2,000-6,000 words) on the histories of ragtime music, player pianos, sheet music cover art, and technique tips for playing ragtime. A section on ragtime nostalgia provides information on people, inventions, events, advertising, city life, and rural life during the ragtime era. Provides annotated links to approximately 80 related sites and a bibliography of 17 titles. Valuable to those studying music history and turn-of-the-century American culture.

This website uses photographs, historical maps and atlases, and city directories to contextualize "the people, places, and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal." The site has four exhibits, each accompanied by an introduction. Moments is a searchable collection of more than 2,500 historic maps and photographs that includes some of the earliest urban photography in the country. Places presents three historic atlases of the city, from 1874, 1898, and 1928. Each of the 94 plates in the atlases can be viewed individually. People offers nine city directories from 1845 to 1925 and five examples of how people's histories can be traced in the directories and how the directories can be combined with the images and maps from the site to "contextualize in time and place a single history or the history of millions."

Cowpaths allows users to plot information gathered from the images and directories on a map as an aid to tracing the history of the city and its people. Users can define their own data layers, query the data, and have results mapped on historical maps. An illustrated primer on how to use "Cowpaths" is available.

Each exhibit is individually searchable with basic or advanced searches. This site is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Boston and is also of interest to those studying urban history.

This website is devoted solely to the study of 8th Ward from Harrisburg, PA, in the 19th century, with essays, images, maps, and directory lists. A virtual walking tour offers more than 70 pictures of 8th Ward buildings and a Then and Now tour pairs views of streets and buildings in the 19th century with views of the same areas today.

The site has three informational directories on businesses, institutions, and residents. The business directory lists businesses found in the Old 8th Ward organized by goods or services and provides the owner's name, dates of operation, and links to photographs. The institutions directory lists charitable organizations, churches, fire companies, market houses, and schools with links to photographs and a brief description. The extensive resident directory is organized by streets and lists residents with their occupation, ethnicity, years of residence, and other available information.

A guide to student research on the Old 8th Ward includes 16 scholarly essays on such topics as business and industry, churches and synagogues, newspaper accounts, politics, residents, and saloons. Additionally, there are six period maps and a miscellanea section with advertisements, newspaper articles, postcards, and real estate listings. There is no search capability. In addition to those interested in Harrisburg itself, the site is of interest to anyone studying urban development in the 19th century.

A companion to the series Frontier House, this site documents the five months that 26 American volunteers spent in a Maine wilderness recreating life in 1628 New England. The site provides short biographies of all 26 participants, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show, and a series of short activities designed to highlight colonial American history. Teachers will find most useful the four lesson plans (for grades five to eight) that discuss the settling of America.

In addition, an online scavenger hunt allows students to learn about day-to-day colonial life (teachers may tape broadcasts and show them in class for 12 months after airing). The site also includes 14 video clips, 12 audio clips, and more than 90 photographs of the cast and village.

Visitors should not miss the Myth-Conceptions quiz, or the language tutorial, where they can test their knowledge of colonial America and compare 17th-century English to 20th-century English.

Visitors will not find document collections or historical maps; the site's primary value is in the anecdotes that reveal little bits of information about 17th-century life in New England.

This collection of materials addresses the Moravian community of Bethlehem, PA, from its founding in 1741 to 1844, when the community first opened to non-Moravians. Most documents are available in three formats: facsimile of original in German type, transcription, and translation into English. All documents may be read in English.

A 650-word essay introduces visitors to Bethlehem history. The community kept a diary that visitors may read for the years 1742 to 1745. The Journal of the Commission of the Brethren of Bethlehem, from 1752 to 1760, allows further access to the inner workings of the community. The death register currently lists 400-word obituaries for five women and six men. Birth and marriage registers are to be added to the site.

Moravians of this era read memoirs (2,000–3,000 words) at the funerals of community members, sometimes incorporating autobiographical writing. Visitors may read 34 of these memoirs.

The records of the community also include four maps, a survey, and the ledgers of the town finances from 1747 to 1765. Inventories of four shops may also be examined.

Other material includes a 32-page 1876 historical sketch of the Bethlehem Seminary for Young Ladies, a 19-page scholarly essay on the Moravian approach to business, and a 1762 discussion of how to finance the Single Sisters' Choir. Visitors may search the site by subject. The site will be very interesting for research in colonial history and the history of religion in America.

Photographs from 1839 to the late 20th century are on view in 12 exhibits that offer 100- to 600-word introductory essays and a diverse range of images.

"The Face of Slavery" presents 10 photographs of African Americans from 1855 to 1905.

The work of Southworth and Hawes, a photography team active between 1843 and 1862, is represented by eight daguerreotypes of women.

In "Do You Believe?" visitors may consider evidence of ghostly existence offered by 22 "spirit photographs" taken between 1875 and 1932.

In "Photography as a Fine Arf!," 16 photos from the 1850s to the 1950s "explore the complex relationships of people and dogs."

In "At Ease," nine photographs from around 1850 refute the popular notion that early portraiture was stiff.

An exhibit of the trick photography of William H. "Dad" Martin presents eight photos produced between 1894 and 1912 that show exaggerated ordinary objects.

In "Of Bricks and Light," the museum exhibits 33 architectural photographs.

Business executive and photographer Shotaro Shimomura took pictures of his trip around the world in 1934-35; nine of these are exhibited in "An Eye for the World."

An interactive exhibit of nine cartes de visite allows visitors to investigate details such as the hats worn by men in Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession.

"Scott Mutter: A More Perfect World" presents 11 "hyper-realistic" photomontages by the acclaimed image maker.

"Masterworks of Photography" includes 25 images produced from 1840 to 1975, including English inventor William Henry Fox Talbot's "The Footman," of 1840, considered the earliest photograph on paper of a human being.

In addition, the museum showcases 42 of its favorite pieces.

The site also provides a 1,700-word explanatory essay on photographic processes and links to 25 other resources concerning the history and art of photography. This site cannot be searched by subject, however, which limits its usefulness for research.

Images and articles on the famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1851, including some pre-famine material on related events. Taken primarily from newspapers in London and Ireland, the site includes 74 images and 16 articles from the Illustrated London News; short reports and articles from the Cork Examiner, September 1846 to December 1847; 17 illustrations and two articles from the Pictorial Times of 1846 and 1847; 30 cartoons and four articles from London's Punch; and the contents of an 1847 pamphlet, Narrative of a Journey from Oxford to Skibbereen during the Year of the Irish Famine by Lord Dufferin and G. G. Boyle.

Provides a master picture list of 99 illustrations and cartoons from the materials, arranged by depicted subjects such as cabins, landlords and ejections, begging, food riots and attacks, relief, workhouse, funerals, voyage, and life in America. Also presents a list of 44 links to related resources. Although the site lacks contextual material, other than sentence-long biographical data on some of the cartoonists, it offers visitors visual and textual material that was available to contemporary Irish and English readers of popular print forms to make sense of the Famine.

This site contains selections from 13 interviews with former slaves conducted between 1936 and 1938 by journalists working for the New Deal Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Each selection is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch of the interviewee, a photograph or drawing of the interviewee taken at the time of the interview, and in one instance, an audio component. Includes guidelines for reading slave narratives, a bibliography of 16 scholarly works on the history of slavery, and 21 links to related sites in general American history, southern history, and African-American history. A useful sample of first-hand testimony on American slave experience and culture.

This website offers access to the digital collections of six Alaska universities and museums. The more than 3,700 historical images of Alaska can be browsed in their entirety or by selecting specific thematic collections organized under the two broad themes. "Alaska Native History and Cultures" has 12 collections with themes that include ceremonial life, education, native leadership and politics, making a living, and health care facilities. "Movement to Statehood" has seven collections with themes such as government, business and commerce, natural resources, transportation, and society and daily life.

Both "Alaska Native History" and "Movement to Statehood" can be browsed by region or time period. Bibliographic data accompanies each image. The user can also search the collection by phrase or keyword. Future stages of the project will add oral histories, maps, documents, and film clips in multiple formats. Alaska's Digital archive is an outstanding resource for those seeking images of Alaska's history.

This exhibition "indicates the depth and breadth of Franklin's public, professional, and scientific accomplishments," offering documents, letters, books, broadsides, and cartoons. Eight sections exploring periods or aspects of Franklin's life are focused around items from the Library's collections with accompanying explanatory text.

Topics include Franklin's role in events prior to the Revolution, his role in the Continental Congress, his role as a diplomat in Paris and in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, his role in the early republic as President of Pennsylvania and delegate to the Constitutional Convention, his life as a scientist and inventor, and his activities as a printer and writer. There are more than 60 documents and other items available in the exhibition. There is also a Benjamin Franklin chronology from 1706 to 1790, a bibliography with 11 books and seven books for young readers, and four links to related websites. A good starting point for researching Franklin's life or the political and diplomatic history of colonial America or the early United States.