The Library of Congress’s By The People program works to transcribe historical documents with the help of volunteers who can both transcribe materials and review others’ transcriptions for accuracy. This allows students to gain experience with the full transcription process from beginning to end. The mission of the Library of Congress is, in part, to engage and inform both Congress and the American people. This project supports that mission by encouraging direct participation from the public and exposing participants to historic documents. Through this work, individuals are encouraged to interact directly with primary sources and to consider developments in American history as they relate to those sources.

This site could serve as the foundation for a hands-on lesson that can be easily integrated into a variety of units, as determined by teachers. The collections include materials related to figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, musical scores, and women in the Early Republic. Students do not need to create an account to participate, making the activity accessible for classroom use. The project can be completed as a whole-class activity, allowing students to collaborate not only on transcribing documents but also on researching references within the text, interpreting difficult passages, and discussing the historical relevance of the materials.

The project is structured to be beginner-friendly, requiring minimal introductory instruction for students to learn how to navigate and contribute to the site. Teachers can track student progress by requiring screenshots of completed work, particularly if the assignment is completed independently.

With the rise of generative AI and the increasing prevalence of disinformation, familiarizing students with primary documents helps them build confidence in evaluating the authenticity of information encountered on social media and in everyday conversations. By engaging with documents beyond transcription alone, this hands-on lesson empowers students to research unfamiliar content and trust their own historical judgment.

The Digital Library on American Slavery is a database of primary sources related to slavery, comprising three types of materials: North Carolina slave notices, race and slavery petitions, and slave deeds. The project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Its goal was to compile independent collections focused on slavery in the American South—and parts of the North—into a single, searchable site. The University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro maintain the site, which is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ We the People initiative and the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program.

The Digital Library on American Slavery aims to center the lives and stories of enslaved people while also serving as a documentation project designed to support individual research. There are geographical limitations within the collection: slave deeds and notices are limited to North Carolina, and deeds also include Washington, D.C. The petitions have the widest geographical coverage, extending across the South and into parts of the North, including states such as Delaware. While the site offers only a limited window into American slavery through these documents, it remains a valuable tool for gathering primary sources to share with students in lecture-based lessons or as a foundation for independent research or reflective papers for older middle school or high school students.

The petitions, in particular, allow students to gain an understanding of the complexity of navigating the institution of slavery as an enslaved person. They represent a wide range of subjects, including petitions to carry a gun, to purchase one’s own freedom, and to pass as white. An added benefit of the petitions is that they center the experiences of enslaved individuals more fully than deeds or notices, which tend to reflect the perspectives of enslavers. This allows students to encounter a view of slavery that is less dominated by enslavers’ voices. Older students can use the petitions as the basis for a research paper examining how enslaved people navigated the institution of American slavery, with each student researching a different subject, such as those listed above.

Lessons can also incorporate the deeds and notices through student participation by asking students to reflect on the limited information provided about enslaved individuals in these documents and to consider what information is missing when compared to what is available about figures such as George Washington or Theodore Roosevelt. This comparison exercise can help students learn not only about slavery but also about the limitations of the historical record itself. Despite its geographical limitations, the Digital Library on American Slavery is an easily navigable site with a manageable collection of sources for both students and teachers to explore and use in the classroom.

The Hurricane Digital Memory Bank is a project focused on the human impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which both hit American communities in 2005. This project was started shortly after the hurricanes in collaboration between the University of New Orleans and George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This site serves as a database of first-hand accounts and experiences of individuals and community members who have gone through the disasters during and the aftermath of the hurricanes.  These stories, through oral histories, images, stories, and videos provided by the people themselves, are presented within the site without secondary sources. 

While this site does not offer any intentional classroom use, it can be utilized as a foundational part of a long-term project for older students to participate in. Teachers could have each student take on the role of a historian of these disasters, and through periodical check-ins, progress and participation will be graded. The goal of this assignment would be to provide a hands-on practice not only to show the students how to write a history, but also by presenting their final paper to the class, demonstrating how histories can differ. Additionally, the activity can help students understand the distinction between the past and history, and how history is subject to revision. Through this lesson, students will learn how to cite sources, about different types of sources, how to use these sources effectively, how to structure and defend a historical argument, how to find additional sources outside the site, and how historians with the same foundation of sources may not agree. The last goal is especially critical for students to learn, as it will encourage them to start developing the muscle of deciding which expert makes the most compelling argument. 

The site is outdated and may pose challenges in accessing the material; for example, the videos have no visuals. Other than that, the site serves as a solid foundation to build such a lesson as outlined above for older students. Not only will it allow them to learn the historical process and historical ways of thinking, but it can also reshape their relationship and understanding of what history is. By reframing history away from the Great Man focus and onto people, students can easily relate based on their socio-economic conditions and identity. This new understanding of what history can be will encourage a deeper connection to and respect for the past than Great Man history allows for.

The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) has updated its site to include interdisciplinary classroom activities that highlight a diverse set of topics relating to both World War I and World War II. ABMC manages permanent U.S. military cemeteries, memorials, and monuments within the United States and abroad. The lesson plans are geared for grades 6-12 and offer different levels of challenge, adaptations, and methods for extension.

“Horace Pippin: The Artist of No Man’s Land” introduces students to the experience of an African American soldier in World War I and how he used writing and painting to explain what he saw. “Tweeting the Air War Against the Nazis” employs technology to help students understand the role the Allied Air Forces played in the Normandy invasion.

Additionally, the user can search for lessons by grade level and subject: grades 6-8 or 9-12, Art, Art History, ELL, Journalism, Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Special Education. The lesson plans provide teachers with detailed teacher tips including links to interactive maps, primary sources, timelines, and videos.

One of the new features is “Teacher Voice” pieces on some activities. These provide a teacher’s feedback on their experience with teaching the activity in their classroom and include suggestions for adapting the activity according to time restraints or specific classroom needs. There is also a backpack feature that allows the user to bookmark items.

Fallen Hero profiles detail the experiences of individual service members during World War II. Teachers and students can view eulogy videos and primary sources on each individual’s profile page. Teachers can use collections of primary sources provided onsite to help their students visualize the war and the lives of their servicemen.

For Us the Living is a resource for teachers that engages high school students through online primary-source based learning modules. Produced for the National Cemetery Administration's Veterans Legacy Program, this site tells stories of men and women buried in Alexandria National Cemetery, and helps students connect these stories to larger themes in American history. Primary sources used include photographs, maps, legislation, diaries, letters, and video interviews with scholars.

The site offers five modules for teachers to choose from, the first of which serves as an introduction to the cemetery's history. The other four cover topics such as: African American soldiers and a Civil War era protest for equal rights, the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth after Lincoln’s assassination, commemoration of Confederates during Reconstruction, and recognition of women for their military service. Most of the modules focus on the cemetery’s early history (founded in 1862) although two modules reach into the post-war era. Each module is presented as a mystery to solve, a question to answer, or a puzzle to unravel. Students must use historical and critical thinking skills to  uncover each story. Each module ends with two optional digital activities, a historical inquiry assignment and a service-learning project, related to the module theme.

Teachers should first visit the “Teach” section which allows them to preview each module (including its primary sources, questions and activities), learn how to get started, and see how the site’s modules connect with curriculum standards. In order to access the modules for classroom use, teachers do have to create their own account, but the sign up process is fast, easy, and best of all, free! The account allows teachers to set up multiple classes, choose specific module(s) for each class, assign due dates, and view student submissions.

Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was an artistic storyteller whose drawings document the African American experience. This site complements an exhibition entitled "Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence," and offers educational resources on Jacob Lawrence's work. The site includes images of Lawrence's paintings, learning plans, and art activities. It highlights the themes in Jacob Lawrence's work, such as the universal quest for freedom, social justice, and human dignity, as well as his repetitious and rhythmic approach to visual storytelling. This site brings together paintings and drawings of the streets of Harlem, southern African American life, and black heroes and heroines. There is additional information about one of the most characteristic features of Lawrence's work, his storytelling panels. Visitors can view 12 drawings from one of his most acclaimed works "The Migration Series."

The site is rounded out with a selection of unique student activities. Designed for 3rd through 12th grades, 21 lessons are based on 12 themes found in Lawrence's work such as discrimination, migration, labor, and working women. Students and teachers will enjoy this unique and well-organized site.

Produced as a companion to a PBS documentary, this site explores the history of Las Vegas through interviews, essays, and primary documents. "The Film and More" offers a film synopsis, a program transcript, and six primary documents on Las Vegas. These include a 1943 Time article on lenient divorce laws in Nevada as a tourist attraction and a newspaper report of an NAACP protest. "Special Features" offers seven presentations that include an interview with noted Las Vegas historian Hal Rothman, an exploration of the Federal government's public relations campaign on nuclear testing in the 1950s, and an essay on Las Vegas architecture. "People and Events" offers 14 essays on the people of Las Vegas and three essays on Las Vegas history.

An interactive map allows the visitor to survey the Las Vegas area and examine its development, and a timeline from 1829 to the present charts the growth of Las Vegas from a small railroad town to the present-day resort and gaming metropolis that is the most visited place in the world. A teachers' guide contains two suggested lessons each on history, economics, civics, and geography. The site also has 11 links to related websites and a bibliography of 55 books. The only search capability is a link to a search of all PBS sites.

This website explores "girls' history" with 40 oral history interviews conducted by women's studies students at Minnesota State University-Mankato. Each interviewee was asked extensively about her girlhood. Questions focused on adolescence and growing up as well as the social, cultural, and physical implications of girlhood and personal experiences. Topics include family, race, sexuality, education, and women's issues. The archive includes brief biographies, video clips, and transcripts of interviews (arranged thematically), photographs, and reflections of the interview process. Most of the women interviewed were born and raised in Minnesota, although a few came from other states with a smaller number immigrating from other countries. The site is not searchable, and the video clips are not high quality.

Part of a larger project involving 4 million pages of St. Louis court records dating between 1804 and 1875, this website was designed to preserve and make accessible the freedom lawsuits filed in the St. Louis Circuit Court. In January 2001, the freedom suits brought by Dred Scott and his wife Harriet in 1846 became the first cases to go online. There are now more than 280 freedom suits are available. These case files consist of legal petitions for freedom by people of color originally filed in St. Louis courts between 1814 and 1860. They make up the largest corpus of freedom suits currently available to researchers in the United States. The images of original handwritten documents in which black men, women, and children petitioned the courts for freedom offers a glimpse at what some argue was the beginning of America's civil rights movement.

The short Macromedia Flash film "Freedom Suits" offers a glimpse into the pursuit of freedom by African Americans in St. Louis during the 19th century. This online archive will help researchers understand the length of enslaved African American's struggles and the historical significance of the lawsuits.

This website overviews the early history of the U.S. Parcel Post system. Although the website states that it examines “one hundred years of parcels, packages, and packets,” most of the content is from the first few years of the service, 1913 through 1915. An introduction and six subsections—Congressional Opposition, The First Packages, The Oddest Parcels, The Service in Use, Preparing for All of Those Packages, and A Century of Posted Parcels—feature short essays and 25 photographs and cartoons.

Though the website is text-heavy, teachers could potentially use its resources with students to examine early 20th-century United States history or changes in communication within the United States.