Gilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraska tackles the issue of urban development through the lens of a nationally-followed murder case.

A document archive provides a rich variety of related primary sources—39 legal documents, 225 newspaper articles, 39 newspaper illustrations, 129 photographs, and 42 postcards. Documents range from items directly related to the Sheedy murder trial to sources depicting parts of the city or describing Lincoln culture and society.

One practice worth applauding on this site is it's loyalty to the concept of scaffolding. The first page offers links to vocabulary, an extensive list of Lincoln personages, and a similarly detailed timeline.

Selecting "Explore the City" brings up an introductory essay on Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1890s, as well as an interactive map. The map shows many buildings in red or yellow. Yellow buildings offer period images of the structure, as well as a description of its purpose. Red buildings only have the explanation. The most fascinating feature of the map is that it allows you to select a subsection of the city, such as "demimonde," "physician," "boosters," or "transportation." Each of these options alters the map so that only buildings within that particular subcategory are shown in red or yellow. This lets you see how food distribution and transportation, for example, are grouped in different parts of the city. Each subcategory also has an accompanying essay offering more on the social clime of 1890s Lincoln, Nebraska.

"Spatial Narratives" offers a series of texts on the location and nature of various city subcultures—practitioners of law, boosters, men, African Americans, women, the working class, and university students. Obviously, these subcultures overlapped both in body and in spatial terms within the city.

At this point, one might wonder where the Sheedy case comes into the picture. The third major site section "Interpretation and Narrative" introduces the murder. The narrative includes links to relevant newspaper articles.

Taken as a whole, the site is likely not particularly useful in the K-12 classroom. However, when used in pieces, it can be seen as an example of the ways in which cities develop, racial and moral tensions of the 1890s, or media "spin" of the period versus that of today.

This website presents historical sources and teaching materials that address notions of childhood and the experiences of children and youth throughout history and around the world. Primary sources can be found in a database of 200 annotated primary sources, including objects, photographs and paintings, quantitative evidence, and texts, as well as through 50 website reviews covering all regions of the world. More than 20 reviews and more than 70 primary sources relate to North American history.

The website also includes 20 teaching case studies written by experienced educators that model strategies for using primary sources to teach the history of childhood and youth, as well as 10 teaching modules that provide historical context, strategies for teaching with sets of roughly 10 primary sources, and a lesson plan and document-based question. These teaching resources cover topics ranging from the transatlantic slave trade, to girlhood as portrayed in the novel Little Women, to children and human rights. Eight case studies relate to North American history, as do two teaching modules.

The website also includes a useful introductory essay outlining major themes in the history of childhood and youth and addressing the use of primary sources for understanding this history.

Featuring primarily maps, texts, and images, this gateway site is designed to be a resource for those interested in the history of the greater Cleveland area. The site includes approximately 35 journal articles (from journals such as the Saturday Evening Post) on the history of Cleveland, its newspapers, its railroads and industries, and a few prominent citizens; 36 digitized books; seven manuscript collections (three merely describe the contents of the collection, while four offer digitized resources); an audio file and a video file; two cartoon collections; and nine photograph collections, containing about 600 photographs. Although many of the collections are located on outside websites, visitors can access the collections by subject, date, geographic location, or format.

For educators, the site includes 20 lesson plans, under such categories as American Heritage and Democratic Process. The classroom activities are well-conceived; they feature problem solving and critical thinking exercises like the Mystery Photo Album, in which students attempt to figure out where in the Cleveland area historical photographs were taken, and By the Neck Until Dead, an e-book that details the history of Cuyahoga County, OH, hangings. The site also maintains a list of local history websites.

This is a collection of 107 transcribed interviews with "distinguished men and women from all over the world," about a wide range of topics. Harry Kreisler has been moderating this interview series since 1982 at the University of California at Berkeley. An additional 104 interviews are not available online.

Interviews are unedited and can be searched by interviewee, profession, topic, chronology, Berkeley faculty, and Berkeley alumni. The interviews may also be searched by keyword. Interviews are from three to 10 pages and address topics such as Africa, civil rights, Communism, ethics, free trade, human rights, and women's roles. Professions include education, diplomacy, law, journalism, psychiatry, history, policy making, and economics. Howard Zinn, Kofi Annan, and Robert MacNamara, among others, talk about everything from their own childhoods to global politics.

The "Research Galleries" present interview excerpts in text and video grouped around topics such as "China and the World," "Truth and Power," and "Women Role Models for the New Millenium." In some cases, the galleries include email conversations between interviewees, such as Alan Cranston, and high-school students. The site will be particularly useful for research in international relations.

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 site is a collaborative effort between the Connecticut Historical Society, the Thomas H. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, and the Mystic Seaport Museum, funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. It offers approximately 14,000 images depicting Connecticut's history from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century.

The images are divided into categories: "Artifacts," "Manuscripts and Documents," Maps, Charts, and Bird's-eye Views," "Newspapers and Magazines," "Photographs, Prints, and Drawings," "Posters/Broadsides," and "Sound Recordings and Transcripts." Each image includes notes on the creator, date, and place created, medium, repository information, and a brief (40-word) description of the subject. Visitors can search the site by keyword, subject, creator, title, and date.

The site also includes four sample lesson plans for middle school classes comparing and contrasting two Connecticut families and the roles of men and women through exercises interpreting the site's images, a list of ideas for future topics, and themes for secondary-level classrooms. This site is ideal for teachers and students interested in the history of Connecticut and its communities.