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.

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.

Designed to provide access now and in the future to documents created by groups that protested the World Trade Organization's "Ministerial Week," held in Seattle from November 29–December 3, 1999. Offers texts of more than 80 oral histories of organizers and participants, 73 photographs, and images of 224 fliers, posters, and leaflets. Also includes 46 planning documents, 18 signs carried by protesters, two audio files, three videos, and a timeline documenting 520 events from March to December 1999. A second timeline covers the week of protests and a table with contact information for more than 1,400 organizations that opposed the meetings. Documents in the collection can be searched by keyword, organizations, and issues—labor, environment, trade, democracy, direct action, food, agriculture, health, and independent media.

The site's creators state they are "dedicated to ensuring that any account ever written of the WTO protests be attentive to the range of people who turned out, the varieties of strategies and issues they brought to the streets and the meeting rooms, and the coalitions that emerged and failed." As a result, the site will be of great value to those studying social protest movements in the late 20th century.

This photographic archive contains more than 1,500 images commissioned by the Pittsburgh Department of Public Works, Division of Photography, from c1890 through 1973. "The images show Pittsburgh parks, recreation facilities, and athletic events as well as hospital exteriors and interiors, mayoral events, traffic situations, and general street scenes."

The image collection emphasizes interior and exterior photographs of familiar and historic buildings and "interesting depictions of home life, and the famous and not so famous people of Pittsburgh." Each image is accompanied by bibliographic and descriptive information. The archive can be searched by image title, date, creator, location, address, description, or subject. A useful resource for those interested in urban development, city life, and architecture.

This site offers textual and visual historical resources for teaching, learning, and researching the history of women working in the United States. It currently includes almost 3,500 digitized books, 7,500 manuscript pages, and 1,200 photographs. Holdings include letters, diaries, scrapbooks, magazines, catalogs, photographs, books, and pamphlets (both non-fiction and fiction).

Visitors may browse through the "New Additions" area, look through materials by topic (such as home labor, arts, or business), search catalog keywords, or perform a full text search.

Designed to provide support for elementary, middle, and high school history teachers, this site makes the entire American Memory collection at the Library of Congress available for classroom learning. Using the more than 7 million digital sources available through American Memory's 100 collections, the creators have written and collected 140 lesson plans for teaching American history. Organized chronologically and thematically, the lesson plans are detailed suggestions for classroom activities. Each has a recommended age group and uses primary sources collected by students or teachers from American Memory.

Especially useful are the included guides on using primary sources, using American Memory resources, and using digital or Internet sources in the classroom. A "Professional Development" section offers online workshops and tutorials to improve teachers' digital literacy. An excellent resource for the classroom, this site would be useful to both student and teacher.

This site uses about 45 sources to document the planning and construction of the New Jersey Turnpike, opened after two years of construction in 1952.

Building It contains a 1,000-word history of the turnpike's construction, as well as eight primary documents from the planning stages of the highway, including an early map of the proposed route. A dozen promotional documents (pamphlets, public announcements, bond solicitations) and newspaper coverage are also available as is a narrative account of tensions in Elizabeth, NJ, where more than 200 citizens were displaced to build the highway.

Driving It includes 10 accounts from many of the first to drive along the turnpike, advertisements from Howard Johnson's and other turnpike concessionaires, and an excerpt from a 1950s film on highway safety.

Telling It features 16 primary sources, 10 driver stories, and accounts from toll collectors, as well as the story of the first highway worker to lose his life on duty in 1967.

Three Detour sections allow visitors a little diversion with short activities: visitors can match up song lyrics that mention the turnpike with the artists who wrote them (Bruce Springsteen and Simon and Garfunkel are included).

For teachers, the site includes an annotated bibliography of works for various age groups.

This curriculum addresses labor politics and economics from the colonial period to the present day. Conceived and written by James D. Brown, Jr, "in cooperation with teachers from the metro Chicago area and local union members," it is divided into 11 chronological sections, each comprised of several elements: a 100–200-word overview; an inventory of major themes, episodes, and concepts; and a feature entitled "Integrating Labor History into Effective Teaching of the Period." This last portion recommends questions and lessons for students, and, for several sections, provides primary source materials. Thus "The Growth of a New Nation" outlines a lesson that asks students to compare Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence with an 1829 essay by George H. Evans—a founder of New York's Working Man's Party—entitled "The Working Men's Declaration of Independence."

The 11 sections emphasize gains achieved by organized labor and invite teachers to "highlight the stark contrast between today's working environment and the relationship between workers and owners of the past." Includes a list of 44 "Significant People in America's Labor History"; a 16-title bibliography; a link to an international news desk providing daily stories dealing with labor groups and issues; and additional material on Illinois labor history.

Some sections of the curriculum are thinner than others. More curiously, the site does not furnish any primary documents from the 20th century, and generally relies more on lists of events and issues than the sort of narrative prose that can enliven the past.

Presents a wide array of materials that explore "the struggle between these two visions" of pluralism and unity in early 20th-century American thought and life. Arranged into six major sections: The Idea of Pluralism; The Idea of Internationalism; Culture and Pluralism; Labor and Pluralism; Race and Pluralism; and Gender and Pluralism.

The site links to major sites on such topics as ethics, politics, culture, sociology, anthropology, religion, economics, imperialism, hegemony, world systems theory, the League of Nations, Jim Crow laws, eugenics, the Niagara Movement, NAACP, KKK, unions, strikes, modernism, the genteel tradition, localism, and ragtime.

Outlines the perspectives of important public figures including William James, Eugene Debs, Randolph Bourne, Daniel DeLeon, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Horace Kallen, Scott Nearing, Max Eastman, William Cowper Brann, Madison Grant, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Charles S. Peirce, Margaret Mead, Woodrow Wilson, John Reed, and Irving Berlin.

Although many of the site's direct links to texts by these figures are no longer operable, users can access sites containing important writings through the "Concepts" section of each of the six major parts. Also includes 12 audio components and dozens of photographs.

For its inclusion of links to many extremely useful sites from a variety of perspectives, this site will be valuable to those studying early 20th-century American ideas and debates and their resonance throughout later times.

Introduces an organization begun in 1996 that "creates social spaces for civic and academic conversations on working-class life and culture and its intersections with other identities and serves as a clearinghouse for information on working-class culture, issues, and pedagogy." The site presents information about the Center, its outreach programs and electronic discussion network; a 1,000-word essay defining working-class studies and commenting on recent trends; six course syllabi; online student exhibitions for a course on "Working in Youngstown," which deals with the history and representations of work in "Steeltown, U.S.A." and throughout the U.S.; 88 abstracts of papers presented at the 1999 conference on "Class, Identity, and Nation"; 84 partially annotated links to related resources, including 24 for museums on working-class and labor history; and a bibliography organized into 24 thematic categories such as "Working-Class Fiction," "Class as Culture," "Class Perception in the U.S.," and "Class and Sexuality." A useful site for introducing students to discussions of class and labor issues in American history.