A Maritime Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890 jmccartney Wed, 10/07/2009 - 14:53
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Focusing on 19th-century American maritime history and westward expansion, this collection of more than 160 documents from the Mystic Seaport Museum and Library provides diverse materials to explore themes such as the California Gold Rush, whaling, maritime business, migration and immigration, women's role in the West, and interactions between European migrants and native inhabitants. This Ameritech Award-winning site includes more than 25 photographs, more than 20 letters, logbooks from ships, published travel narratives, paintings, maps, and nautical charts. Provides four essays published previously in a Mystic Seaport publication, including an 1866 newspaper essay assessing Honolulu as a whaling port by youthful journalist Mark Twain.

The site is searchable by subject, name, title, and keyword, and includes an annotated bibliography of hundreds of documents in the Seaport's collections, and of 65 secondary sources. Valuable for those studying the American West, maritime history, business history, and the history of coastal and island localities.

Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History

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History Link is an encyclopedia of the history of Seattle and King County, WA. A timeline of 180 "Milestones" connects visitors to 500-word historical essays on topics in Seattle-area history from before 1851 to 2000. "People's Histories" presents roughly 150 memoirs and oral histories (1000 to 16,000 words) of Seattle residents of diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, including Squamish and Nordic. There are 18 "Magic Lantern" photographic essays ranging from one image and 40 words to 50 images and 300 words. Special collections have been arranged in 17 folios, which cover topics such as Martin Luther King's 1961 visit to the city and the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in 1999. The WTO archive contains 19 articles of 100 to 2000 words on the history of radicalism in Seattle and the WTO protests of 1999 and 2000. This archive also contains 48 photographs of the protests taken by History Link staff.

Visitors may take four Cybertours of the city in which they click on sections of a map and connect to one or two images and 300-word descriptions of local history. "Then and Now" contains 49 before-and-after photographs of Seattle landmarks with 300-word essays on the history of each location. The site is easy to navigate and can be searched by subject. In March 2003, HistoryLink added a database for all of Washington state. It is an excellent resource for all levels of scholars interested in the history of the Northwest or oral history.

Korean American Digital Archive

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Thousands of primary materials, including documents compiled by Korean American organizations, personal papers, more than 1,900 photographs, and around 180 interviews, address the experiences of Koreans in the United States between 1903 and 1965 on this website. The materials run the gamut from organizational memos and other official documents to personal letters, wedding programs, birth certificates, and social security check stubs.

This material allows users to piece together the life histories of individual Korean Americans. They will find individuals like Soon Hyun, an activist in the Korean resistance movement against Japanese colonialism in 1919, who later moved to the United States and became a minister in Hawaii. Or Florence Ahn, a Korean American who became a prominent singer in Los Angeles. These personal biographies, in turn, allow users to examine the human dimension of the history of Asian Americans, and place individuals within a larger history.

Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Rare Books c. 1820-1910

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This American Memory website traces the history of the Upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) from the 17th century to the early 20th century, through 138 volumes drawn from the Library of Congress General Collection and the Rare Books and Special Collection Division. Selected works include first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, and colonial archival documents that depict the region's land and resources, cross-cultural encounters, experiences of pioneers and missionaries, soldiers, immigrants, reformers, growth of communities, and development of local culture and society. Each work is available in full-text transcription or page image, and is accompanied by notes giving the title, author, publication information, and a 300–350 word summary of the contents.

The site also offers a 2,000-word essay on the history of the Upper Midwest that covers the discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the region from pre-contact to the early 20th century; a regional map dated 1873; links to more than 40 related websites; and a bibliography of nine related works, three of which are ideal for younger readers. The site can be searched by keyword and browsed by author, subject, and title. For those interested in the history of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, this site offers some informative resources.

The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906

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Part of the Library of Congress American Memory project, this site offers 45 films of New York City, 1898 to 1906, from the Paper Print Collection of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. Subjects of these films include buildings, parades, everyday activities like delivering newspapers, immigrants landing on Ellis Island, and the interior of a subway.

Each film is accompanied by a 75–100 word summary of the film's contents and notes on the duration of the film, the cameraman's name, filming location, date filmed, and the call number and location information for the original film. The site also offers a 500-word essay on New York City at the turn of the century; a 750-word essay about America at the turn of the century; and a 200-word essay on the career of "Pioneer Cameramen" of the era.

A "Learn More About It" section includes links to 10 other American Memory resources and related exhibits, and selected bibliographies offer 24 works on the history of New York City and 14 works on the history of motion pictures. Visitors can search the site by keyword and browse by subject and film title.

Though somewhat limited in scope, this site is ideal for those interested in urban history, the history of New York, or the early motion picture industry.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online (1841-1902)

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The Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper was published from 1841 to 1955 and was revived for a short time from 1960 to 1963. This website covers the period from October 26, 1841, to December 31, 1902, representing half of the Eagle's years of publication.

Approximately 147,000 pages of newspaper, in various digital formats, are available. Access can be gained either by date of issue, keyword, or by eight subjects (African American history, Bridges, Crime, Draft Riot, Spanish American War, Women and Women's Suffrage, Arts and Entertainment, and Holidays). A timeline contains detailed information about the creation and development of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. For an overview, users can browse the newspaper in five-year increments.

Picturing Modern America Project

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It is difficult at times for young people (and people in general) to understand the past, even the more recent past of the past century or so. It seems almost banal to observe that many aspects of life have changed dramatically, and perhaps not so banal to note that many things have in fact not changed as much as we think. This fine site contains a number of interactive exercises (drawing on the vast collections of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress) that will help deepen students' understanding of common topics in the study of modern America from 1880 to 1920 and to build their skills in analyzing primary sources.

Teachers and student alike will appreciate the "Investigations" area, which contains exercises such as "Picturing Social Change", "Modern Women", and "Picturing Prairie Life". Through the exercises, visitors will be asked a variety of questions that draw on the visual materials contained within each thematic section, such as "What brought people to the prairie?" or "Why might people have left the prairie?". Visitors also have the opportunity to build their own exhibits by choosing their own theme or question about modern America, and through choosing their own images and documents for their exhibit.

National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center

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The highlight of the site is its Online Exhibitions section. There are currently 64 exhibits available. These include Separate is Not Equal, celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision (including audio and video files); Bon Appetit, documenting chef Julia Child's kitchen and career (including panoramic views and virtual examination of Childs's kitchen tools); and West Point, marking 200 years of military academy training.

Parents and teachers may appreciate the Kids area with hands-on history and science. Less useful for research, this site would be most useful as a virtual visit to the Museum.

Crime and Justice Data Online

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Presents statistic tables showing trends in crime and law enforcement operations at state, local, and national levels. Users can find tendencies in types of crimes, types of victims, and types of weapons based on figures voluntarily reported to the FBI by state law enforcement agencies from 1960-1999, and by local agencies from 1985. In addition, statistics concerning law enforcement operations for states and large local agencies are searchable according to variables such as demographic composition of police forces, function, salary, and employment and training requirements. Valuable for those studying American social history, urban history, and human geography, in addition to students of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Samuel F. B. Morse Papers, 1793-1919

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Offers approximately 50,000 images of 6,500 items from the papers of 19th-century American scientist and painter Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), inventor of the electromagnetic telegraph. In addition to science and art-related papers, the materials in the collection document Morse's interest in photography and religion, as well as his involvement with the American nativist movement. Includes correspondence, diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, books, pamphlets, broadsides, maps, drawings, and other materials, primarily produced during between 1807 and 1872.

The site provides a timeline supplemented with 15 documents; a family tree; two essays of approximately 1,000 words each (entitled "The Invention of the Telegraph" and "The Lesser-Known Morse: Artist, Politician, Photographer"); a bibliography of 22 titles; and links to 16 additional sites.

Searching capabilities leave much to be desired. Keyword searching applies only to titles assigned to documents by the Library of Congress. Thus even though the finding aid lists "Nativism" as a subject, a keyword search turns up nothing. The site unfortunately is of limited use because of this shortcoming.