September 11 Digital Archive

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This archive records the histories of people affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (9/11), including more than 150,000 stories and more than 40,000 emails from around the world. The site is constantly growing and the sources are viewable through galleries. Items include still images, with photographs, digital art, and artwork; moving images, with video files and digital animations; documents, including flyers, reports, and articles; and stories, emails, and voicemails.

The supporting information is strong as well. The FAQ section includes numerous links with information about the chronology and a timeline, including flight paths and building collapses; information about hijackers, victims, and rescuers; memorials and rebuilding efforts; and the 9/11 Commission Report. Visitors are invited to submit their own recollections.

Watergate Revisited

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This is a thorough introduction to the Watergate scandal. Created by the Washington Post, the newspaper whose investigative journalism led to President Richard M. Nixon's downfall, the website provides more than 80 relevant news stories. It also offers links to 20 documents—speeches, tape transcriptions, and Nixon's letter of resignation—in the National Archives and the Nixon Library. A detailed timeline links to Post stories, and brief biographies introduce 26 "key players" in various phases of the scandal.

Users may listen to eight audio clips and view 11 video clips, such as Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, announcement of his resignation, and farewell to his staff as well as John Dean's testimony. The Post's Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee discuss the scandal in the transcript of a 1997 interview and a video recording of a 2002 forum. The site also includes a link to 20 cartoons by the Post's Herblock, photographs, and an interactive quiz.

American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library

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This expansive archive of American history and culture features more than nine million items dating from 1490 to the present. Currently this site includes material from 120 collections, some from libraries and archives around the world.

Strengths include the early republic, with documents and papers on the Continental Congress, U.S. Congress, early Virginia religious petitions, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; the Civil War, including Abraham Lincoln's papers and Mathew Brady photographs; and exploration and settlement of the West. Collections offer papers of inventors, such as Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the Wright Brothers; and composers, such as Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.

The site also features New Deal-era documentation projects, such as Farm Security Administration photographs, Federal Writers' Project life histories, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and the Library's own "Man on the Street" interviews following the Pearl Harbor attack. Entertainment history is amply represented with collections on the American Variety Stage, Federal Theatre Project, early cinema, and early sound recordings. African American history, ethnic history, women's history, folk music, sheet music, maps, and photography also are well documented.

Digitized images from materials not included in specific American Memory sites may be searched using the Library's Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, where users can browse images by topic or search the Library's holdings.

Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934

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This archive contains primary and secondary sources relating to reclamation efforts of the Everglades and the history of south Florida from 1884 to 1934. Comprising nearly 10,000 pages and images, the compilation includes personal correspondence; government publications, reports, and memos; and images, such as photographs, maps, and postcards. Materials document issues relating to the creation of national parks, including conflicting interests—public, private individual, and corporate—and government accountability.

The website also presents a photo exhibit, "The Everglades: Exploitation and Conservation," accompanied by a 1,000-word essay. Two additional features, an interactive timeline and 31 biographies of South Florida's most notable personalities, complete this project. This site will be of interest for those exploring the establishment of the Everglades National Park, the conservation movement, and the treatment of Native Americans, particularly the Seminoles.

South Texas Border, 1900-1920: The Robert Runyon Collection

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These more than 8,000 images document the history and development of South Texas and the border. The collection features the life's work of commercial photographer Robert Runyon (1881–1968). Topics include the U.S. military presence in the area prior to and during World War I and the growth and development of the Rio Grande Valley in the early 1900s.

A special section presents nine of Runyon's 350 photographs of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) in Matamoros, Monterrey, Ciudad Victoria, and the Texas border area from 1913 through 1916. "Maps of the Lower Rio Grande" offers a number of topographical and military maps depicting the region. The website also offers essays on the revolution and on Runyon.

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire

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Created to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake, this exhibit and archive features an extensive collection of primary source material, an interactive map, and a 360-degree view of the damage to the city. The primary sources include thousands of images and text files available, offering more than 8,000 photographs, 500 cityscapes, and 500 letters, as well as a host of additional resources, such as broadsides, oral history texts, periodical articles, photomechanical prints, reports, and stereographs. Visitors can browse the archive by genre or subject or search by keyword, subject, genre, or geographic location.

The exhibit has five galleries, each with several text/photograph displays: San Francisco before the fire; the earthquake; the fire, including a map showing burned districts; the story of refugees and survivors; and reconstruction. The interactive map divides San Francisco into 10 regions, each of which can be browsed or searched for images taken in that region. It also includes 11 aerial cityscape views. The 360-degree panoramic view of San Francisco shortly after the disaster is composed of 11 separate photographs taken from the roof of the Fairmont Hotel.

The Great Depression to World War II: Photos from the FSA-OWI

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During the New Deal and World War II, a period marked by the impulse to capture in writing, sounds, and images significant aspects of American life and traditions, government photographers with the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and the Office of War Information (OWI) took hundreds of thousands of pictures. This website features more than 150,000 photographs from this project. The photographs document the ravages of the Great Depression, scenes of everyday life in small towns and cities, and mobilization campaigns for World War II.

This site also includes approximately 1,600 color photographs and selections from two popular collections: "'Migrant Mother' Photographs" and "Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination." The site also provides a bibliography, a background essay, portrait samples of 18 FSA-OWI photographers, and links to five related sites. This is a great source for studying the documentary expression of the 1930s and 1940s.

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Website

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Interactive exhibitions and resources address the Holocaust and related subjects. The site is composed of five sections: education, research, history, remembrance, and conscience.

"Education" introduces the subject of the Holocaust and provides extensive bibliographies. "Research" contains a survivor registry and an international directory of activities relating to Holocaust-era assets. Searchable catalogs pertaining to the Museum's collections and library are easy to navigate to find artworks, artifacts, documents, photographs, films, videos, oral histories, and music. "History" includes the Holocaust Learning Center, with images, essays, and documents on 75 subjects, such as anti-Semitism, refugees, pogroms, extermination camps, and resistance. "Committee on Conscience" contains information on current genocidal practices in Sudan.

Selected Civil War Photographs

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More than 1,000 photographs depict Civil War military personnel, preparations for battle, and the aftermath of battles in the main eastern theater and in the west in this collection. Photographs also include Federal Navy and Atlantic seaborne expeditions against the Confederacy, Confederate and Union officers and enlisted soldiers, and Washington, DC during the war. Most images were created under the supervision of photographer Mathew B. Brady. Additional photographs were taken by Alexander Gardner after leaving Brady's employment to start his own business.

The presentation "Timeline of the Civil War" places images in historical context. "Does the Camera Ever Lie" demonstrates the constructed nature of images, showing that photographers sometimes rearranged elements of their images to achieve a particular effect. This website is useful for studying 19th-century American photography and Civil War history.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War

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This massive, searchable archive compares two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period—Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, PA. These two counties were divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. The site furnishes timelines, bibliographies, and other materials intended to foster research into the Civil War and the lives of those affected by it. The website includes a section on John Brown and one entitled "Memory of the War," presenting postwar writings on battles, the lives of soldiers, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics.