Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps, 1885-1992

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This website presents 638 images of the buildings and neighborhoods of Milwaukee that together document the development of the city of Milwaukee from the mid-1880s to the early 1990s. The collection brings together images from two rare books, the photograph collections of the American Geographical Society Library and the Archives Department at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Libraries, and two extensive photograph collections. Image subjects include residential and industrial facilities, local businesses, historic buildings, churches, and numerous Milwaukee parks.

An essay by professor Judith Kenny entitled Picturing Milwaukee makes use of images from the collection to examine the growth and development of Milwaukee and its 75 neighborhoods in the larger context of economic and social change. Topics addressed include early commercial development, industrialization, suburban development, and the post-World War II city. Additionally, there are 12 maps of Milwaukee that can be browsed separately. Each is accompanied by a descriptive record and a link to a larger image.

The collection can be searched by neighborhood, subject terms, or place/businesses. In addition to those interested in the history of Milwaukee, this site will be of interest to those studying urban development or historical architecture.

With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty

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This exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the pivotal 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. It offers 116 images, including book covers, letters, political cartoons, and photographs. Exhibition Overview is a 300-word introduction to the exhibit and its significance.

The website is divided into three sections: A Century of Racial Segregation, Brown v. Board of Education, and The Aftermath, all of which consist of links to documents, detailed paragraphs on selected documents, and events related to that section. "Discover" buttons are dispersed throughout these exhibit sections; and, when clicked, reveal more information and answer a particular question, such as "What is 'separate but equal?'"

The Exhibition Checklist includes links to all images used on the site. The site is an ideal resource for students interested in the historical developments that led to the Brown v. Board decision.

Women Working, 1800-1930

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This site offers textual and visual historical resources for teaching, learning, and researching the history of women working in the United States. It currently includes almost 3,500 digitized books, 7,500 manuscript pages, and 1,200 photographs. Holdings include letters, diaries, scrapbooks, magazines, catalogs, photographs, books, and pamphlets (both non-fiction and fiction).

Visitors may browse through the "New Additions" area, look through materials by topic (such as home labor, arts, or business), search catalog keywords, or perform a full text search.

Spalding Base Ball Guides, 1889-1939

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This site features an online selection of Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide (1889–1939) and the Official Indoor Base Ball Guide (1903–1926). The collection reproduces 35 of the guides, which were published by the Spalding Athletic Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The guides featured statistics, photographs, editorials from baseball writers on the state of the game, and analysis of the previous season for all the Major League teams and for many of the so-called minor leagues across the nation.

Highlights include a host of World Series statistics. For example, the 1939 World Series saw attendance of 200,833 in four games. Total receipts totaled $851,168, and each member of the winning New York team received $5,782.76, while members of the runner-up Chicago team received $4,674.86.

Visitors can access the full text of each edition. The collection is searchable by keyword and browsable by title. Of interest to sports historians or historians of leisure or American culture.

The New Georgia Encyclopedia

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A web-based reference work, this site provides authoritative and accurate information on people, places, institutions, and events for many aspects of Georgia's life, history, and culture. The encyclopedia offers close to 2,000 articles and 8,000 multimedia files on a range of categories, including art, business, education, politics, history, religion, and sports with specific articles on topics such as architecture: building types (houses, public schools, roadside, and vernacular), military bases, folklife projects, and gymnastics at the University of Georgia.

Within the essays, there are links to related essays and external websites. There are also video and audio clips as well as images and some maps. New material is added regularly and the site also offers basic stats on the state, features and destinations, and galleries.

The United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures

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Designed to explore the historical similarities and contrasts, ethnic diversity, and interactions between Brazil and the United States, this site contains almost 1,000 images from the rare book, manuscript, map, print, and photographic collections of the Library of Congress and the National Library of Brazil.

The site includes letters (including letters from Thomas Jefferson concerning the independence of Brazil), illustrations, 18th-century maps, and other textual items, including poetry.

The sources are available in five categories: "Historical Foundations," "Ethnic Diversity," "Culture and Literature," "Mutual Impressions," and "Biodiversity" (right now, only the Historical Foundations section is completed). The site is viewable in both English and Portuguese, and is appropriate for high school and college students, as well as teachers and researchers.

The Vietnam Project

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This site presents nearly 1 million pages of Vietnam War-related research materials. It includes the full text of more than 80,000 documents, 60,000 photos and slides, hundreds of interviews with veterans and other participants, streaming audio and video recordings, and much more. The more than 685,000 pages of documents include official government and military records, unit and operation action reports, unit rosters, staff journals and morning reports, personal letters, and diaries. The collection grows by some 20,000 pages of new material each month.

Visitors may find useful the Acronym Database (to help with those mysterious and persistent military acronyms). The search engine has been recently updated, and no longer supports simple searches; all searches are advanced. The archive limits the number of users at any one time, due to licensing issues, so the site may be unavailable during times of heavy use.

Convenient, powerful, and massive, this site is invaluable for research into Vietnam units, individuals, and operations.

Women of Valor

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This site introduces Emma Goldman—an immigrant, an advocate of free love, a promoter of birth control, and an anarchist. The designers have done a splendid job in tying the many facets of Goldman's public life together into one set of interrelated narratives. An "Introduction" is divided into 13 thematically coherent sections, such as Early Years, Anarchism, Use of Violence, and Deportation. Each runs approximately 500 words. A Timeline is useful for placing Goldman into historical and cultural context.

There are several dozen artifacts, including the full text of two books, six cartoons, four historical documents, an analytical essay, two personal letters, 12 news clippings, and 16 photographs. The information is well documented, and includes a detailed bibliography.

The care that the producers took in explaining potentially confusing or problematic terms (like feminism and suffrage) makes the site particularly appropriate for high school and undergraduate students. Although not a comprehensive archive, this site nonetheless provides an informative introduction to Goldman and her role in American history.

TUPPERWARE!

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This site explores the invention and rise of Tupperware products in the 1950s, as well as its impact on women's issues, and its connection to the 20th-century consumer culture revolution. The site focuses on Earl Tupper, the inventor of Tupperware, and Brownie Wise, the woman who created the Tupperware party concept and built a Tupperware empire. Included are short (500-word) biographies of each.

In the Gallery, visitors can see 12 of Tupper's invention notebooks to examine some of his inventions that were not as successful as Tupperware, like his no-drip ice cream cone and his necktie shaper.

The Teacher's Guide offers two learning activities in each of four academic areas: civics, economics, geography, and history. A timeline spans from the 1850s to 2003 and includes events such as the invention of plastic.

Primary Sources includes transcripts of interviews with Tupper and Wise, six video clips from the late 1950s and early 1960s (documenting the annual Tupperware Homecoming Jubilees, which were large gatherings of Tupperware dealers), as well as excerpts from the first Tupperware handbook. Also included are six documents, including a 1960s training manual, How to Sell Tupperware, and a collection of Wise's Aphorisms.

Visitors can share their experiences with Tupperware, either as consumers or as Tupperware dealers, in the Share Your Story section.

Finally, the site features an interview with a noted historian of women's issues who discusses the realities of married women's employment in the 1950s, as well as the impact Tupperware had on women's opportunities.

WRA Photographs of Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement

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This site contains 6,834 digital images related to Japanese American internment during World War II. The War Relocation Authority exhibited these photographs to present the camps in a positive light.

Users can view the site three ways: "Standard" provides a collection summary; "Entire Finding Aid" lists the series descriptions in more detail; "Online Items" lists all 6,834 images complete with a thumbnail and brief description for each image.

Visitors can also search by keyword, though the search works differently depending on which view is being used. The easiest way to use the search is to choose the "Online Items" view, in which a search for "school" will list images with "school" in the description.

Images in the collection come from a number of relocation centers throughout the country, including ones in Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, and Arkansas.

"Scope and Content" is a 250-word explanation of the site's contents with a brief paragraph about the historical significance of the photographs.