This site presents more than 1,000 original panoramic maps, "a popular cartographic form" during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The maps, often prepared for civic organizations, such as chambers of commerce and real estate agents, to promote an area's commercial potential, cover the contiguous 48 states and four Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec between 1847 and 1929. While most of these maps were not drawn to scale, viewers can zoom in to find artists' renderings of individual streets, buildings, and landscape features. The site also includes a 1,200-word history of panoramic mapping; a bibliography comprised of 24 titles; and background essays (1,000 words) and images relating to five prominent panoramic artists: Albert Ruger (1829-1899), Thadeus Mortimer Fowler (1842-1922), Oakley H. Bailey (1843-1947), Lucien R. Burleigh (1853-1923), and Henry Wellge (1850-1917). This site is an excellent resource for those studying urbanization, cities, business growth, and the art of mapmaking.

The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, unofficially known as the Centennial Exhibition, was held in Philadelphia in 1876 and was attended by more than nine million people. This website presents 1,500 images, including photographs, lithographs, engravings, maps, scrapbooks, and albums, searchable by keyword or subject, on this event.

"Exhibition Facts" provides statistics, a summary of the fair's significance, photographs of buildings erected by foreign nations, and images of sheet music. A timeline traces the fair's lifespan from the 1871 Act of Congress that created its planning commission to the removal of exhibits in December 1876. A bibliography lists more than 130 related works and 17 websites. "Tours" features an interactive map of the fairgrounds. "Centennial Schoolhouse" offers activities, including excerpts from a 17-year-old boy's diary. This website provides revealing images of the event that introduced America "as a new industrial world power."

The papers of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922), more than 4,600 items, are presented on this website. Materials include family papers, general correspondence, laboratory notebooks from 1891 to 1893 and 1910, scientific notebooks, blueprints, journals, articles, lectures, and photographs.

Writings address a range of subjects, including the telephone, deaf education, experiments with aeronautics, and other inventions. There are more than 100 letters to and from Helen Keller, family correspondence, and material on life in Washington, DC and Nova Scotia, where Bell had a summer home and conducted experiments. Ten "collection highlights," including notebook pages, document his first success with the telephone, essays on Bell's career and on the telephone, an annotated timeline, a 19-title bibliography, and a list of related sites.

Records on the more than 25 million passengers and ship crew members who passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924 are available through this website. Most passengers came from Europe and Russia, although there are some records from Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The website requires a free, simple registration to view detailed records that include name, residence, date of arrival, age on arrival, ethnicity, place of residence, marital status, ship of travel, place of departure, and a copy of the original ship manifest (a transcription is also available). The website includes extensive contextual information about Ellis Island, immigration, and genealogical research. "Family Histories" illuminates the genealogical research experiences of six Americans of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

The "Peopling of America" exhibit covers six periods from pre-1790 to 2000, with graphs, photographs, and immigration statistics geared to place of origin. Additional information is available for an annual fee.

Produced at the Mathew Brady studio, this collection contains more than 725 early photographs, most of them daguerreotypes. The Brady images include portraits of prominent public figures, such as President James K. Polk, Thomas Hart Benton, Thomas Cole, Horace Greeley, and the earliest known images of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln.

In addition, the site presents daguerreotypes by African American photographers; architectural views taken around Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD; street scenes of Philadelphia, PA; early portraits by Robert Cornelius; and copies of painted portraits. A short introduction to the daguerreotype medium and a "Timeline of the Daguerrian Era" provide context for the images. A special presentation, "Mirror Images: Daguerreotypes at the Library of Congress," includes photographs from the American Colonization Society, occupational daguerreotypes, portraits, and architectural views. Useful for studying 19th-century photography and visual culture, as well as for viewing some of the earliest American photographs.