Historic Missouri Newspaper Project

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This website provides a searchable archive of 14 historic Missouri newspapers. The newspapers available are The Columbia Missourian (1929, 1966-1985), Palladium (April 1907), the The Missouri Republican (July 1865), the St. Louis Christian Advicate (1857-1858, 1860, 1866-1870, 1874-1879), the St. Louis Globe Democrat (1875), the Daily Evening Herald (1835), The Far West (1836), the Liberty Weekly Tribune (1846-1848, 1850-1883), The Liberty Banner (March 1844, one issue), The Phelps County New Era (1875-1880), The Rolla Express (1860-1863, 1865, 1868, 1872-1873), The Rolla New era (1880-1897), the M.S.U. Independent (1894-1905), and The Hannibal Courier (October 1935; January and August 1988).

For many of the newspapers only several months of the years indicated are available. The full text of all available newspaper issues is searchable, and a range of keyword search options are offered. The user can search an individual publication or all newspapers in the archive. All content can be searched or the user can limit the search to articles, pictures, or advertisements. Newspapers are displayed by page and a rollover feature highlights individual articles that can then be read in a separate window. This archive is a useful resource for those researching the history of Missouri in the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape 1922-1932

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This site offers five exhibits featuring designs by Frank Lloyd Wright's for projects that were never built—a prototypical suburb, two resorts, an automobile objective, and a desert retreat. "Although none was ever realized, they embody Wright's changing views of the fundamental relationship between building and land." Each exhibit is centered on an explanatory essay that ties together images of Wright's designs. The images include hypothetical study models based on Wright's designs and Wright's own preliminary sketches.

"A.M. Johnson Desert Compound" looks at a design Wright planned for the desert compound of Albert Mussey Johnson near Death Valley, CA. "Gordon Strong Automobile Objective" is focused on Wright's designs for a structure atop Sugar Loaf Mountain in Maryland to serve as a motor tourist destination and observation point. "Lake Tahoe Summer Colony" examines Wright's speculative designs for the Lake Tahoe Summer Colony at the head of Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe, featuring floating cabins. "Doheny Ranch Development" explores Wright's designs for a residential development "of unparalleled scale" on the 411-acre ranch property of Edward Doheny outside Beverly Hills, CA. "San Marcus in the Desert" focuses on Wright's designs for a luxurious resort in the desert on 1,400 acres south of Phoenix, AZ, commissioned by a successful developer. Some of the links on the site are no longer functional and there is no search. A website of interest to those researching Frank Lloyd Wright or the history of American architecture.

Wright on the Web

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This website offers "a virtual look at the works of Frank Lloyd Wright" through more than 170 images of the buildings he designed and short overviews of each period of his career. There are seven presentations: "The Early Years," "Prairie Style," "Non-Residential Works, 1900-1920," "The Twenties," "The Thirties," "The Forties," and "The Fifties." Each presentation includes a brief overview and images of the buildings he designed in that period. Most of the images are available through links to other websites. Additionally, the site includes a feature on 17 buildings by Wright that have been designated by the American Institute of Architects as examples of his architectural contribution to American culture. The site also offers links to more than 50 collections, directories, and miscellaneous resources on Wright and his architectural works. There is no search capability available, but the site is a good starting point for exploring the history of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

Jacob Lawrence: Over the Line

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Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) examined the African American experience through art. This website was created in 2001 to accompany an exhibition exploring his life and work. The website (with a flash version and an html version) provides a straightforward account of Lawrence's life and work accompanied by images.

The site is presented in three parts, "Beginnings," "The Young Artist," and "Over the Line," each organized as a sequence of pages consisting of short descriptions (50 words) and associated images. There are two short audio clips of Lawrence talking about Harlem and color. The images are relatively small and cannot be enlarged.

Dolley Madison Digital Edition

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This website presents all known correspondence of the wife of James Madison, containing roughly 2,000 letters. Although many letters are thank-you notes or polite responses to social invitations, others offer rich insights into the personality and experiences of the First Lady, especially those exchanged with her sisters. The letters are organized into five periods: birth and youth; the years as wife of the secretary of state; the years as first lady; retirement; and widowhood. Users can search by name, date, topic, or place. A table of contents lists the letters by date, author, and recipient.

Additional features include a biographical sketch; "Crosslinks" listing all names (including nicknames, middle, and maiden) appearing in each letter, in order of appearance; a different color font to highlight unclear or missing characters or words; and a summary of the contents of each letter. Although the site is gated, a free trial option is accessible to all.

Getting the Message Out! National Political Campaign Materials, 1840-1860

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After property qualifications for voting were eliminated in the 1830s, the American electorate expanded from 1.5 million to 2.4 million. As abolition, the extension of slavery, the Mexican War, and the Dred Scott decision dominated the national debate, songs, parades, and barbecues became increasingly important campaign tools to reach out to new voters. This type of political material culture is highlighted through this website, presenting 1,200 documents, more than 650 images, 100 songs, and interactive country-wide Presidential election maps for all six Presidential elections between 1840 and 1860. Detailed contextual information is available on a wide range of subjects, such as political campaigns, political parties, and major national events. Five short videos by well-known scholars address political culture, the second party system, politics as popular entertainment, and women's roles in antebellum politics. The detailed lesson plan in the "Teacher's Podium" challenges students to assess changing campaign strategies through song lyrics.

Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819

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This database is the most essential collection of written materials for historical research in American history from 1801-1819. It provides full-text access to nearly 4.5 million pages of 36,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints published in the U.S. during this period. Gazetteers, almanacs, juvenile literature, chapbooks, hymnals, campaign literature, novels, slave narratives, spelling books, school readers, treaties, maps, atlases, advertisements, diaries, autobiographies, and much more are all included. Most of these materials were originally detailed in the bibliography compiled by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker. This collection, long available on microfiche, is made available here as a digital, fully searchable online database. It complements Readex's other Early American Imprints series of material from the period of 1639-1800.

Travel, Tourism, and Urban Growth in Greater Miami: A Digital Archive

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This site uses essays, a detailed timeline, and an image gallery to examine the growth of Miami and the history of its travel and tourism industry. An essay by Project Director Bachin provides an introduction to the website. The site has seven main thematic sections: advertising, architecture, environment, land use, migration, tourism, and transportation. Each section is introduced by a short three-to-five page essay and features a chronology and an annotated bibliography. There is also a searchable image gallery with more than 590 subjects, many with multiple images. The visitor can browse the gallery by subject, location, resource (such as aerial views, photographs, or postcards), or collection.

The site also offers an overall chronology (1823-2000), divided into sections for 1800s to WWI, WWI to 1930s, WWII to the 1950s, and the 1960s to the 1990s. The chronology can also be viewed by 18 themes such as civil rights, the Great Depression, hurricanes, land use, migration, and tourism. The overall annotated bibliography lists more than 90 books, links to 16 related websites, and 14 related archives. This site offers outstanding resources for those teaching or researching the history of Miami and South Florida and should also be of interest to anyone working on 20th-century urban and business history.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

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The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Harned Walt Whitman Collection

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This site contains facsimiles of four of Walt Whitman's original notebooks—ranging in length from 24 to 210 pages—and two color photographs of a cardboard butterfly—with words from a poem by John Mason Neale printed on its ventral side—photographed on the poet's finger. These items disappeared from the Library of Congress in 1942 but were returned in 1995.

The notebooks contain both prose and poetry, and include ideas for prospective journal articles, early versions of poems that were used in Leaves of Grass, and notes taken during hospital visits to wounded Civil War soldiers. The site also includes articles on the preservation of these items.