Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation

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Logo, Sixties Project
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Sponsored by the Viet Nam Generation, Inc., and the Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, this site is a resource for teaching and researching America in the 1960s and during the Viet Nam War. The site contains links to 17 primary documents, including materials from the Black Panther Party, the Free Speech Movement, and GI's United Against War in Viet Nam. There are more than 100 images of political buttons and posters from the era and a full-text version of Vietnam: An Antiwar Comic Book, written by civil rights activist Julian Bond after he was expelled from the Georgia legislature for protesting the Vietnam War. Additional items on the site include five keyword searchable, full-text back issues of Viet Nam Generation, a journal of recent history and Viet Nam War studies published between 1988 and 1996. The site also contains ten syllabi for courses on the 1960s and the Vietnam War. Visitors may contribute their own personal narratives about the 1960s (the quality and accuracy of these personal narratives are not controlled and should be used with caution).

The Lindbergh Case: The Trial of the Century

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Photo, Charles Lindbergh, The Lindbergh Case: The Trial of the Century
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Created by a weekly newspaper based in Flemington, New Jersey, this site is devoted the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the subsequent trial of a 35-year-old Bronx carpenter named Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Among the few primary materials included are approximately 35 photographs related to the trial and six episodes from a 1934-35 comic strip about the crime. The site offers a summary of events and biographies of the leading characters, theories about Hauptmann's innocence, a timeline, nine recent articles from the newspaper on the case and about several "Lindbergh baby claimants." Of limited value due to the site's reliance on only one newspaper for most of its documentation.

The "Inside Lindbergh Trial" menu is defunct. Use the links located throughout the page.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

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Logo, National Baseball Hall of Fame
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Official site of the Baseball Hall of Fame, located in Cooperstown, New York. Gives 100-word biographies on all past 253 inductees and 1,000-word essays on the four members elected in 2001. Includes four educational programs, each containing 4-5 primary source documents--cartoons, articles, letters, photographs, and advertisements--on World War II and baseball, Jackie Robinson, the Negro Leagues, and women in baseball. Provides extensive bibliographies of more than 100 titles each on Robinson, Roberto Clemente, women in baseball, sex discrimination in athletics, and the 1972 antitrust suit "Flood v. Kuhn," dealing with baseball's controversial "reserve clause." Also includes a 4,000-word essay on a leading midwest minor league team from 1901-1961; research lists dealing with baseball trivia topics; an exhibit of paraphernalia given by a collector; a "Treasures of the Hall of Fame Quiz" for visitors age 12 and under; links to 34 major and minor league ball club sites; and information about using the organization's library and research collections. A useful source of historical information on baseball players, clubs, leagues, law, and lore.

World War I: Trenches on the Web

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Painting, Second Battle of the Marne, World War I: Trenches on the Web
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An independent historian assembled this collection of materials relating to World War I. The site focuses heavily on military and diplomatic aspects of the war, providing 25 maps, 10 documents, 42 biographical sketches, 33 musical clips, 56 posters, five reviews of books and a television documentary, 23 timelines, approximately 150 links to related sites, more than 100 photographs grouped into six collections, a 6,500-word essay on the war's origins, and a reading list of more than 100 titles, as well as sections on war "trivia," weapons, artwork, and access to discussion groups. A user-friendly site that will be useful primarily to those interested in military history.

Children in Urban America: A Digital Archive

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Photo, Lester Earl Kesserling playing. . . , 1926, Children in Urban America
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This website offers more than 4,000 primary sources, including newspaper stories, photographs, statistics, oral histories, and personal narratives, related to children and childhood in urban America, specifically in the greater Milwaukee area, from 1850 to 2000. The search page is the most direct route to these sources and is accessible by clicking on the purple kite in the top, right corner of some pages. On other pages, "search entire site" in the footer is the only link. The site is organized around five sections-Work, Play and Leisure, Schooling, Health and Welfare, and "Through Children's Eyes." Each section offers a 150-word introduction, a gallery of five to 40 images, and approximately five "Special Topics" that combine a background essay (300 to 500 words) and a collection of five to ten relevant primary sources. "Special Topics" range from the Socialist Party, religion, and newsboys to National Child Health day and polio in Milwaukee County.

A section for teachers and students offers 25 possible research questions and tips for middle school, high school, and college and cover a host of topics, from games to newspaper coverage of children to the impact of technology on the lives of children. This website is useful for studying childhood and urbanization during a time when what it meant to be a child was changing rapidly.

Alaska's Digital Archive

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Photo, Chief Cow-Dik-Ney. . . , 1906, Case and Draper, Alaska's Digital Archive
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This website offers access to the digital collections of six Alaska universities and museums. The more than 3,700 historical images of Alaska can be browsed in their entirety or by selecting specific thematic collections organized under the two broad themes. "Alaska Native History and Cultures" has 12 collections with themes that include ceremonial life, education, native leadership and politics, making a living, and health care facilities. "Movement to Statehood" has seven collections with themes such as government, business and commerce, natural resources, transportation, and society and daily life.

Both "Alaska Native History" and "Movement to Statehood" can be browsed by region or time period. Bibliographic data accompanies each image. The user can also search the collection by phrase or keyword. Future stages of the project will add oral histories, maps, documents, and film clips in multiple formats. Alaska's Digital archive is an outstanding resource for those seeking images of Alaska's history.

Vietnam War Era Ephemera Collection

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Cover, Helix, Vol. 2, no. 3 (October 20, 1967), Walt Crowley, U of WA
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This small but interesting archive of 232 items "contains leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. They reflect the social environment and political activities of the youth movement in Seattle during that period." The collection can be browsed in 24 thematic categories that include Vietnam protests, human rights, gay rights, feminism and women's issues, racism, socialism and labor, farm workers, peace candidates, environment, religion, fanaticism, "Age of Aquarius," civil liberties, freedom of speech, anarchy, communism, pro-Vietnam War, and Palestinian protests. Basic keyword and advanced searches are available. This website is a useful resource for researching the history of campus protest in the 1960s and 1970s.

A Century of Progress: The 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair

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Introductory graphic, A Century of Progress
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This website provides materials published for the 1933-34 World's Fair including copies of official publications, press releases, souvenir albums, guidebooks, maps, brochures, postcards, photographs, and newspaper clippings. Users can search the checklist of the Official Publications of the Century of Progress International Exposition and Its Exhibitors containing over 1,225 items, some 350 of which are available online. The checklist can also be browsed by author, title, or subject. Additionally, the site provides links to websites related to the 1933-34 World's Fair.

Library of Congress: Webcasts

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Photo, introductory image, Library of Congress Webcasts
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This video archive assembles Library of Congress webcasts in one easily accessible location. The biography and history section offers 159 webcasts of talks by historians, writers, commentators, and political figures, including historians Joseph J. Ellis, John Hope Franklin, Jill Lepore, Lawrence W. Levine, David McCullough, and Robin Shields and writers and commentators David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell. The wide variety of subjects discussed include Vietnam, Iraq, Abraham Lincoln, early American printers and the Declaration of Independence, Pearl Harbor, the national character, early African American life, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The section on government has 67 webcasts by current and former government officials, such as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, George Shultz, and David Weinberger. Subjects include intellectual freedom, global democratic governance, and guardianship and the First Amendment. Moreover, the site offers 56 webcasts on culture and the performing arts and 305 webcasts on poetry and literature. There are also sections on religion, science and technology, and education. This website is a useful resource for information on historical subjects from the historians and authors who have written about them.

NASA History Division

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Photo, Lunar Landing Research Vehicle in Flight, NASA
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An extensive site covering the history of NASA's aeronautical and space programs. Materials include photographs, flight communications transcripts, essays, timelines and chronologies, policy documents, biographies, and much more. "Aeronautics" includes flight research centers, flight research projects (such as the lifting body program and the X-1 that first broke the sound barrier), and the X-15 project. "Biographies" includes all present and former astronauts. "Human spaceflight" offers extensive material, including essays, technical information, and other material on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and Space Shuttle projects. The Apollo Program includes the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, an extensive site that provides corrected transcripts of recorded conversations between lunar surface crews and mission control with commentary from the site editor and 10 of the astronauts who walked on the moon. The same is available for Apollo 12, 15, and 16 Flight Journals. Reference material includes more than 50 historical policy documents including NASA's 1959 Long Range Plan and the 1986 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. There are more than 30 timelines and chronologies.

The photo and video section has video clips from the Apollo missions including lunar surface exploration. The massive Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection has a searchable database of more than 9,000 NASA press release photos from the manned space program (Project Mercury to the Space Shuttle). "Space science" includes descriptive information and technical data on all planetary exploration projects from Mariner and Pioneer to Voyager and Galileo, as well as the lunar probe series Ranger and Surveyor. "NASA History for Kids" includes more than 25 links to sites for elementary and middle school students' research. With a wealth of both primary source material and secondary source information this site is an outstanding resource for teaching or researching the history of aeronautics and astronautics and the history of U.S. science and technology in the 20th century.