Legal Information Institute: Supreme Court Collection

Image
Logo, Cornell University Law School
Annotation

This site, maintained by the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell University Law School, is a database containing synopses of cases sent to the United States Supreme Court from 1990 to the present. The site is also linked to more than 600 of the Supreme Court's most historically important decisions, from Marbury v. Madison (1803) to Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000). Four "Focused Collections" of cases deal with the Amistad case of 1998 in which movie director Stephen Spielberg was accused of plagiarizing portions of his movie script; 13 of the most important administrative law cases from 1947 to 1984; seven copyright law decisions from 1952 to 1994; and 12 patent law decisions from 1950 to 1995. The database is searchable by the names of the involved parties, the dates on which the case came before the Supreme Court, or the docket number. There is a link to general information about the court, including a Supreme Court case calendar, schedule of oral arguments, a biography and decision list for each current justice, a text of the rules of the Supreme Court, information about the Court's authority and jurisdiction, and a glossary of terms encountered in the Court's written opinions. The site also contains ideas for using the website for teaching, but these ideas, and the site itself, are geared more toward law students, and perhaps undergraduate upper-division legal history classes, than college survey or high school teaching. The site is somewhat difficult to understand and, despite the keyword searchable database, a bit confusing to navigate. Nevertheless, it is a good site for advanced research on Supreme Court cases.

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1945-1972

Image
Logo, US Department of State
Annotation

Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity, with material culled from Presidential libraries--including transcripts of tape recordings--and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of published volumes. For the Truman Administration, the site provides "1945-50, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment." Three volumes are available for the Eisenhower years, on American republics, Guatemala, and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Cyprus. The Kennedy Administration is represented by 25 volumes that cover, among other areas, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the Berlin crisis, and exchanges with Premier Khrushchev. A complete set of 34 volumes is available on the Johnson Administration, and 19 volumes currently are furnished from the Nixon Administration. Fifty-four volumes will eventually be available on the Nixon and Ford administrations. Useful volume summaries provide historical context. FRUS volumes for 1900-1918 (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/) are described in a separate entry.

Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1861-1960

Image
Logo, FRUS
Annotation

Published annually by the State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) is the official record of major declassified U.S. foreign policy decisions and diplomatic activity. Material, including transcripts of tape recordings, comes from Presidential libraries and executive departments and agencies. Digitized material does not reflect the full range of the published volumes. Documents included have been selected for their ability to illuminate "policy formulation and major aspects and repercussions of its execution."

The first website covers the years from 1861 to 1960. Each volume of more than 500 pages contains an annual message from the President, a list of papers with subjects of correspondence, circulars on subjects such as sanitation and conservation, and chapters dedicated to individual nations. Decisions involve a wide range of topics, including international arbitration and the protection of migratory birds. Visitors may search volumes individually or the whole set by keyword, subject, and date.

The second website offers materials from 1945–1972. Materials come from the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. Additional volumes will be added on the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Flowerdew Hundred: A Virginia Historic Landmark

Image
Logo, Flowerdew Hundred
Annotation

This site contains information on one of the earliest original land grants in Virginia. For the past 30 years, Flowerdew Hundred has been the site of archaeological excavations and now houses a museum located in an 1850s schoolhouse. The exhibit is divided into four categories. The Museum section describes the current exhibits, educational programs available for classes wishing to visit the site, and two interactive exhibits about the plantation site. One of these exhibits covers "Grant's Crossing," the site of a Civil War event; the other allows the visitor to view and compare images of selected artifacts. The section on the Artifacts Collection is a searchable and browsable database of images of 300 selected artifacts from the museum's collection. Voices of the Past provides brief (100-word) descriptions of the people who lived on the plantation and events that took place in five chronological periods: prehistoric, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The fourth category provides information on the Flowerdew Hundred Foundation and the Foundation and museum staff. This is an excellent site for studying archaeological data and material culture from all periods of Virginia's history.

American Journeys

Image
Image for American Journeys
Annotation

These 181 firsthand accounts of North American and Canadian exploration range from Viking stories such as The Saga of Eric the Red from circa 1,000 CE to journal entries written in the early 19th century on a trapping expedition in the Southwest. Documents include the Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1806. Materials include rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives.

Users can browse the full archive or by expedition, settlement, geographic region, and U.S. state or Canadian province. Each document is individually searchable and accompanied by a short background essay and a reference map. There are also 150 images available, including woodcuts, drawings, paintings, and photographs. Highlights follows the collection chronologically and connects moments in American history with eyewitness accounts.

History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web

Image
Image for History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
Annotation

Providing a host of resources on U.S. history survey, the three main features are: WWW.History, Many Pasts, and Making Sense of Evidence.

WWW.History provides an annotated guide to more than 1,000 high-quality websites covering all of U.S. history. Users can browse websites by time period or topic and can search by keyword.

Many Pasts offers more than 1,000 primary sources in text, image, and audio, from an exchange between Powhatan and Captain John Smith to comments by the director of the Arab American Family Support Center in Brooklyn after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Making Sense of Evidence offers eight guides with interactive exercises designed to help students learn to analyze various kinds of primary sources, including maps, early film, oral history, and popular song. These guides offer questions to ask and provide examples of how to analyze kinds of evidence. There are also eight multimedia modules that model strategies for analyzing primary sources, including political cartoons, blues, and abolitionist speeches.

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History

Image
Logo, AMDOCS
Annotation

Provides links to approximately 390 documents, most of which are related to the nation's political, diplomatic, military, and legal history. Arranged chronologically, the site begins with excerpts of Christopher Columbus' journal of 1492 and ends, at present, with President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 address announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq [update: documents reach from around 800 to 2007]. Includes speeches, statutes, treaties, court decisions, memoirs, diaries, letters, published books, and even a few songs. The site, created by Lynn Nelson, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas, is valuable especially for high school and college students who need easy access to many of the canonical documents in American history.

Congress for the New Urbanism

Image
photographic print, Model Fort Lincoln housing, Washington, D.C., 1966, Paul Rud
Annotation

This resource center was designed for students and citizens interested in the New Urbanism movement. Most of the substantive materials are located in the "Resources" section, which contains reports on different planning projects undertaken by New Urbanists, a bibliography of suggested readings organized around different topics (such as housing, policy, and retail), and an image bank containing visual materials from a host of different design sites. A special search feature allows visitors to search by state for New Urbanist developments across the country. Containing very little in the way of historical resources, this site is instead an introduction to the philosophy and aims behind New Urbanism.

Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro

Image
Image for Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro
Annotation

The complete facsimile and transcript versions of the March 1925 Survey Graphic special "Harlem Number," edited by Alain Locke, is presented here. Locke later republished and expanded the contents as the famous New Negro anthology. The effort constituted "the first of several attempts to formulate a political and cultural representation of the New Negro and the Harlem community" of the 1920s.

The journal is divided into three sections: "The Greatest Negro Community in the World," "The Negro Expresses Himself," and "Black and White—Studies in Race Contacts." The site also includes essays by Locke, W.E.B. DuBois, and James Weldon Johnson; poems by Countee Cullen, Anne Spencer, Angelina Grimke, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes; and quotations from reviews of the issue.

Gulf War

Image
Image for Gulf War
Annotation

Focusing on Operation Desert Storm, these materials emphasize the perspectives of those directly involved. There are 19 oral history interviews (up to 20 pages each) with eight "decision makers," seven commanders, two Iraqi officials, and two news analysts.

"War Stories" presents the personal reminiscences of five pilots, available in text and audio. "Weapons and Technology" details 10 ground, aircraft, and space weapons systems and munitions. A seven-minute video excerpt from the "Frontline" program is available as well as four 15-minute episodes of a BBC radio program in text and audio. The site includes a chronology, 10 maps, a bibliography, facts and statistics, and brief essays on press coverage and Iraqi war deaths. Links are available to five sites produced to accompany more recent "Frontline" reports on Iraq.