In October 2015, the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation launched the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) Online Reading Room, providing streaming access to nearly 10,000 public television and radio programs from the past 60 years. The entire AAPB collection of more than 68,000 files – approximately 40,000 hours of programming – is available for viewing and listening on-site at the Library of Congress and WGBH.

The collection contains thousands of nationally-oriented programs. The vast majority of this initial content, however, consists of regional, state, and local programs selected by more than 100 stations and archives across the U.S. that document American communities during the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. The collection includes news and public affairs programs, local history productions, and programs dealing with education, science, music, art, literature, dance, poetry, environmental issues, religion, and even filmmaking on a local level.

The site also provides three curated exhibits of broadcasts pertaining to the southern civil rights movement, climate change, and individual station histories.

Children's Lives at Colonial London Town tells the stories of three 18th-century families who lived in the port town of London Town, MD. Funded by a Teaching American History (TAH) grant, Anne Arundel County Public School teachers created this interactive online storybook and complementary app in partnership with the Center for History Education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Historic London Town and Gardens.

The storybook includes a three-chapter narrative exploring the lives of the Pierponts, a four-child, single-mother family running an ordinary (a public house) in 1709; the Hills, a middle-class young Quaker couple raising Mrs. Hill's five young siblings in 1739; and the Browns, 1762 tavernkeepers who owned several slaves, among them seven-year-old Jacob. Introductory sections explore the pre-colonial lives of Native peoples and the early days of colonization.

Each of more than 40 pages features images of primary sources, photographs of reenactors, and two to three paragraphs describing the everyday lives of these families. The stories look at how both parents and children (including enslaved children) ate, slept, dressed, worked, learned, played, and attended to their health. Questions throughout the text ask students to consider the information they read and develop questions about the past. Highlighted names and vocabulary invite readers to click to visit a glossary.

A slideshow gallery of images used in the storybook, an interactive map showing the locations of the three families' homes, and a timeline of events of both national and local London Town events from 1600 to 1800 support the storybook. Clicking on highlighted names and terms on the timeline takes visitors to related primary sources and articles off-site.

But how to use the storybook in the classroom? An Educators section orients teachers to the storybook and its supporting materials. A guide outlines the purpose and structure of the storybook, while the "Educator Resource" section offers more than 10 downloadable lesson plans and activities for 4th- through 5th-graders. Teachers can also review pre-reading and during-reading strategies for using the storybook, as well as strategies for writing prompted by it. Teachers can also follow links to sections of the Historic London Town and Gardens' website, including a 300-word introduction to London Town's history and information on London Town school tours.

To learn more about subjects covered in the storybook and to explore the sources that went into making it, see "Additional Websites and Places of Interest" for more than 25 links to websites focusing on Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and Pennsylvania history and "Sources Used to Create This Book" for a bibliography of more than 30 books, primary sources, and websites.

A window into history tailored specifically for upper-elementary students, Children's Lives at Colonial London Town could make a compelling whiteboard read-along activity for teachers covering the colonial era. For students and teachers with smartphones and tablets, try the free app version and let students explore at their own pace.

This archive offers a collection of more than 900,000 photographs, maps, letters, documents, books, artifacts, and other items relating to all aspects of Texas history, from prehistory through the 20th century. Subjects include agriculture, arts and crafts, education, immigration, military and war, places, science and technology, sports and recreation, architecture, business and economics, government and law, literature, people, religion, social life and customs, and the Texas landscape and nature. Some subjects include sub-categories. For instance, social life and customs, with 694 items, includes 13 sub-categories, such as clothing, families, food and cooking, homes, slavery, and travel. The visitor can also search the collection by keyword.

Resources for educators include seven "primary source adventures," divided into 4th- and 7th-grade levels, with lesson plans, preparatory resources, student worksheets, and PowerPoint slideshows. Subjects of the lessons include Cabeza de Vaca, Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War, life in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the journey of Coronado, the Mier Expedition, runaway slaves, the Shelby County Regulator Moderator war, and a comparison of Wichita and Comanche village life. This website offers useful resources for both researching and teaching the history of Texas.

Provides 55 images and 60 short essays, ranging in length from a few sentences to approximately 1,500 words, on significant topics in the history of American education. The essays were prepared by undergraduates and edited by their professor, Robert N. Barger, who holds a Ph.D. in the history of education. Organized into five chronological categories from the colonial era to the present, with an additional essay on European influences. Covers such topics as hornbooks, primers, McGuffey Reader's, normal schools, kindergarten, high school, African-American education, adult education, prayer in schools, student rights, and education of the handicapped. Includes essays on such personages as Freidrich Froebel, Herbert Spenser, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, Horace Mann, and G. Stanley Hall. Also offers information on recent topics such as the Committee on Excellence in Education's 1983 study, A Nation at Risk, and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act, signed into law in 1994. Professor Barger's warning that he did not add balance to the "triumphalist" perspective that some of his students adopted should be remembered by those using this site. Nevertheless, it provides a useful introduction to high school students and undergraduates studying the history of American education.

More than 137,000 photographs of Florida, many focusing on specific localities from the mid-19th century to the present, are available on this website. The collection, including 15 online exhibits, is searchable by subject, photographer, keyword, and date.

Materials include 35 collections on agriculture, the Seminole Indians, state political leaders, Jewish life, family life, postcards, and tourism among other things. Educational units address 17 topics, including the Seminoles, the Civil War in Florida, educator Mary McLeod Bethune, folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, pioneer feminist Roxcy Bolton, the civil rights movement in Florida, and school busing during the 1970s.

"Writing Around Florida" includes ideas to foster appreciation of Florida's heritage. "Highlights of Florida History" presents 46 documents, images, and photographs from Florida's first Spanish period to the present. An interactive timeline presents materials—including audio and video files—on Florida at war, economics and agriculture, geography and the environment, government and politics, and state culture and history.

This ongoing project was designed to present materials on the historical experiences of those with disabilities. The website currently presents nearly 800 documents and more than 930 still images dating from the late 18th century to the present.

Subjects are organized according to categories of advocacy, types of disability, government, institutions, medicine, organizations, private life, public life, and personal names. Documents include articles, poems, pamphlets, speeches, letters, book excerpts, and editorials.

Of special interest are documents from the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation Archives, including the Polio Chronicle, a journal published by patients at Warm Springs, Georgia, from 1931 to 1934. Images include photographs, paintings, postcards, lithographs, children's book illustrations, and 19th-century family photographs, as well as postcard views of institutions, beggars, charity events, and types of wheelchairs.

Created in anticipation of the 50-year anniversary of the monumental Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, this website covers four general areas. These include Supreme Court cases, busing and school integration, school integration in Ann Arbor (home of the University of Michigan), and recent resegregation trends in America. The site contains a case summary and the court's opinion for each of 34 landmark court cases, from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Brown includes transcripts of oral arguments, as well. Visitors can also read the oral histories of five members of the University of Michigan community who remember the Brown decision and its impact. There are more than 30 photographs of participants in the Brown case and other civil rights activists, as well as a collection of documents pertaining to desegregation in the Ann Arbor Public School District. A statistical section details the growing number of African Americans in Michigan and Ann Arbor schools from 1950 to 1960.

A work in progress, this site presents the southern Arizona school newspaper, Little Cowpuncher. Created by Anglo and Mexican American ranch children, from kindergarten through 8th grade, between 1932 and 1943 at five neighboring Arizona schools (Redington, Baboquivari, Sasco, San Fernando, and Sopori), the newspapers present the original and unedited stories, poems, and illustrations of students about their community and school life. The site includes a map that identifies the location of the five schools and users may select which newspaper they wish to examine by school and by year.

The newspapers include many stories about holiday celebrations, especially Halloween and Christmas. Also frequently featured are tales of rodeo activities and issues dedicated to graduating classmates. Other local events, such as an outbreak of chicken pox and droughts offer a unique perspective on the students' isolated rural lives.

Although the site is simply designed, middle and high school students and teachers will find that the newspapers present an opportunity to study pioneer Mexican and American ranch families and understand the bilingual and bicultural communities they created in Southern Arizona.