This site, based on a National Archives exhibition of historically significant photographs, commemorates 20th-century events and everyday life. The gallery features 70 photographs grouped into six chronological headings: A New Century, The Great War and the New Era, The Great Depression and the New Deal, A World in Flames (World War II), Postwar America, and Century's End. Images contained in the gallery depict events such as the first Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk, immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, Lyndon Johnson meeting Martin Luther King, Jr., a war protestor placing daisies into the rifle of a U.S. soldier, and Nixon's post-resignation departure from the White House, as well as images of everyday life across the nation and throughout the century. Each chronological section opens with a brief (75-100 word) introduction. A 30-50 word caption contextualizes each image and provides information on the photographer, if known.

A portfolio section contains another 48 images taken from the works of Walter Lubken, Lewis Hine, George Ackerman, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Charles Fenno Jacobs, and Danny Lyon. Each image in the portfolio is accompanied by a 5-10 word title, notes on the photographer, and the date and place the photograph was taken. All photographs are printable. This site is ideal for students and teachers of American culture, society, and historical events in the 20th century.

This site is designed to serve as a memorial to the four students killed at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, by National Guardsmen. Visitors will find 93 transcripts of oral history interviews taken at May 4th commemorations in 1990, 1995, and 2000. The oral histories, ranging from two and 35 minutes, are part of a larger collection. The site provides a 780-word chronology of events and a bibliography of 18 books, 90 articles, four complete issues of journals dedicated to May 4th events, and 25 websites about the tragedy. Exhibits include images of 11 memorials to the four slain students, three poems, and annual commemoration programs and photographs from 1971 to 1995. The site also includes finding aids for 71 offline collections and will be interesting for research in the 1960s, protest, and American education.

In October 1962 the United States and Soviet Union came very close to war over Soviet plans to place missiles on Cuban soil. A recent movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, Thirteen Days, inspired the National Security Archive to make a group of declassified documents relating to the tense incident available. The site includes 17 full-text images of declassified documents, such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff's suggestions on American response to the construction of missile sites in Cuba, a CIA Intelligence Estimate, correspondence, memoranda, and a post-mortem on the crisis. Eight audio clips of White House security briefings, two of which are partially transcribed, are also available, along with 12 U-2 spyplane photographs of missile launch sites.

The site also offers a chronology of events from a characterization of relations between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in 1959, to the 13 days of crisis in October, 1962, and through 1992, when the last of five meetings on the crisis took place in Havana, Cuba.

A 1,000-word essay critical of the film Thirteen Days, a 1,500-word essay looking back on the Cold War, and excerpts from seven other documents and accounts of the crisis are also included.

The site provides the introduction (about 1,500 words) and the table of contents to The Cuban Missile Crisis, a documents reader edited by historians Lawrence Chang and Peter Kornbluh. This site is a good resource for students and teachers interested in Cold War relations.

This project provides a collection of more than 280 digitized materials documenting the history of Florida from pre-contact to the present. It includes materials relating to Florida history, culture, arts, literature, and social sciences in a number of major thematic areas, including Native American and minority populations, exploration and development, tourism, natural environment, and regional interests. These materials are drawn from the archives, special collections, and libraries of the 10 state universities in the Florida system.

Items include family papers, local history books and booklets, diaries, advertising materials, and Civil War letters, business records, maps, and photographs. Many of the materials are regional or local in scope.

The site also includes an extensive (5000-word) Florida history narrative timeline from pre-contact (before 1492) to the present. A user guide and tutorial are provided, and the documents are searchable by county name, keyword, subject, author, or title. The search engine has an option for listing either electronic holdings only or all collection holdings under a particular subject. Entries in the electronic catalog include the archive in which the original is located as well as a 20-word description of the item and its contents.

Note that a few links are still under construction with no completion date indicated. The site is ideal for researching Florida's state and local history.

Designed to document the presence of Belgian immigrants in three Wisconsin counties, this site contains a variety of primary and secondary sources. Legal documents, diaries, letters, photographs, and oral histories are included, totaling some 1,500 resources. The site includes 400 architectural surveys, 54 oral histories (many given in Walloon, a primarily oral French patois spoken by generations of Belgian immigrants to Wisconsin), and approximately 500 pages of Immigration Histories.

The entire collection (with the exception of a few documents that have defied OCR translation) is searchable by keyword and can be browsed. This is a unique collection of primary sources, easily accessed, and usable by students, teachers, or researchers.

A companion site to the four-part PBS series that began airing in October 2001 "to explore the roots of American music . . . Blues, Country, Bluegrass, Gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Tejano, and Native American." Includes excerpts (from 1,500 to 6,000 words) from eight oral histories with important artists, including James Cotton, Bela Fleck, Arlo Guthrie, Buddy Guy, Flaco Jimenez, B. B. King, Alan Lomax, and Willie Nelson. Also provides profiles of up to 1,000 words each of 96 artists, 15 songs, and 5 instruments.

A Teacher's Guide includes four lessons geared to middle and high school social studies and history courses on "Finding the Story in the Song," "Desegregating the Airwaves: Blues on the Radio," "Gospel Music Meets a Wide Audience," and "The Strength of Native American Music."

This guide offers photos of some of the artists (but no audio files), a 120-title bibliography, and links to 28 related sites, but in its 2,000-word introduction fails to explain the reason that these particular types of music—and not other musical styles—have been defined as comprising the "roots of American music." Despite this vagueness of definition, the site will be valuable to students of American music and 20th-century cultural history for what it does include.

This website uses photographs, historical maps and atlases, and city directories to contextualize "the people, places, and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal." The site has four exhibits, each accompanied by an introduction. Moments is a searchable collection of more than 2,500 historic maps and photographs that includes some of the earliest urban photography in the country. Places presents three historic atlases of the city, from 1874, 1898, and 1928. Each of the 94 plates in the atlases can be viewed individually. People offers nine city directories from 1845 to 1925 and five examples of how people's histories can be traced in the directories and how the directories can be combined with the images and maps from the site to "contextualize in time and place a single history or the history of millions."

Cowpaths allows users to plot information gathered from the images and directories on a map as an aid to tracing the history of the city and its people. Users can define their own data layers, query the data, and have results mapped on historical maps. An illustrated primer on how to use "Cowpaths" is available.

Each exhibit is individually searchable with basic or advanced searches. This site is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Boston and is also of interest to those studying urban history.

This website is devoted solely to the study of 8th Ward from Harrisburg, PA, in the 19th century, with essays, images, maps, and directory lists. A virtual walking tour offers more than 70 pictures of 8th Ward buildings and a Then and Now tour pairs views of streets and buildings in the 19th century with views of the same areas today.

The site has three informational directories on businesses, institutions, and residents. The business directory lists businesses found in the Old 8th Ward organized by goods or services and provides the owner's name, dates of operation, and links to photographs. The institutions directory lists charitable organizations, churches, fire companies, market houses, and schools with links to photographs and a brief description. The extensive resident directory is organized by streets and lists residents with their occupation, ethnicity, years of residence, and other available information.

A guide to student research on the Old 8th Ward includes 16 scholarly essays on such topics as business and industry, churches and synagogues, newspaper accounts, politics, residents, and saloons. Additionally, there are six period maps and a miscellanea section with advertisements, newspaper articles, postcards, and real estate listings. There is no search capability. In addition to those interested in Harrisburg itself, the site is of interest to anyone studying urban development in the 19th century.

A companion to the series Frontier House, this site documents the five months that 26 American volunteers spent in a Maine wilderness recreating life in 1628 New England. The site provides short biographies of all 26 participants, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show, and a series of short activities designed to highlight colonial American history. Teachers will find most useful the four lesson plans (for grades five to eight) that discuss the settling of America.

In addition, an online scavenger hunt allows students to learn about day-to-day colonial life (teachers may tape broadcasts and show them in class for 12 months after airing). The site also includes 14 video clips, 12 audio clips, and more than 90 photographs of the cast and village.

Visitors should not miss the Myth-Conceptions quiz, or the language tutorial, where they can test their knowledge of colonial America and compare 17th-century English to 20th-century English.

Visitors will not find document collections or historical maps; the site's primary value is in the anecdotes that reveal little bits of information about 17th-century life in New England.

This site, designed as a companion to the PBS film, is quite useful in its own right. Among other themes, the site explores the role of photography in American history, beginning with the role of photography as a relative newcomer to art.

In addition, the site examines the ways in which photography has impacted warfare, politics, and advertising. Moreover, the site raises important questions about whether photographs portray a subjective reality and whether photographers influence viewers' perceptions through cropping or digital manipulation. An Image Lab allows visitors to explore the ways that camera perspective and cropping can change the meaning of a photograph. Visitors can use the tool to manipulate stock photographs and view the results.

A Teacher's Guide provides five lesson plans, asking students to decide whether censorship is a worthwhile practice and to consider ethical issues related to altering photographs.

Not a particularly deep collection of images, this site's strength is the way it teaches how to evaluate and understand photographs, especially historical photographs.