France in America

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This bilingual website (English and French) explores the history of the French presence in North America from the early 16th century to the end of the 19th century through more than 360 manuscripts, books, maps, and other documents. Each thematic presentation—"Exploration and Knowledge," "The Colonies," "Franco-Indian Alliances," "Imperial Struggles," and "The French and North America after the Treaty of Paris"—includes a title exhibit and additional exhibits that highlight particular items in the collection. Materials can also be browsed in the collections section.

A timeline (1515–1804) organizes events in French America by explorations, colonization and development, and conflicts and diplomacy, and places them in the context of events in France. Additionally, there are eight descriptive maps that show various Indian groups in contact with the French and the changes in political boundaries in North America from before 1763 to the era of the Louisiana Purchase.

Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey and Engineering

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Image for Built in America:
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These facsimile images of measured drawings, photographs, and written documentation cover 35,000 significant historic sites dating from the 17th to the 20th century. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) started in 1933 as a work relief program and became a permanent part of the National Park Service the following year to document "our architectural heritage of buildings," in the words of project founder Charles E. Peterson. The Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) was established in 1969 to similarly survey engineering works and industrial sites.

For each structure, the site provides from one to ten drawings, from one to 30 photographs, and from one to 50 pages of HABS text detailing the structure's history, significance, and current physical condition. The collection displays building types and engineering technologies from a farmhouse to a pickle factory, from churches to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Anti-Saloon League, 1893-1933

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Image for Anti-Saloon League, 1893-1933
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These printed materials are representative of the public campaigns of the Anti-Saloon League from 1893 to 1933. A six-page history of the League and the Temperance movement and six biographical essays of movement leaders provide context. Facsimiles of 89 fliers produced by the League advocate temperance with arguments that include the effect of alcohol on puppies and German Emperor William II's opinion of drinking. A periodical section reproduces three covers, three sample articles, and one complete 1912 issue of American Patriot, a temperance magazine, and one cover of American Issue.

Other material includes 14 wet and dry maps of the U.S. produced by the League, three temperance anthems, transcriptions of nine anti-alcohol stories, and 12 pro-temperance cartoons. In addition, six entries from the Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, published between 1925 and 1930, offer the Temperance perspective on communion wine, whiskey production, and alcohol use in China.

First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820

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Image for First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820
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Significant European migration into the Ohio River Valley occurred from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century and this website presents approximately 15,000 pages of related materials. Resources include books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, journals, letters, legal documents, images, maps, and ledgers. The site includes a special presentation with a 6,500-word essay on contested lands, peoples and migration, empires and politics, Western life and culture, and the construction of a Western past.

Materials address encounters between Europeans and native peoples, the lives of African American slaves, the role of institutions such as churches and schools, the position of women, the thoughts of naturalists and other scientists, and activities of the migrants, including travel, land acquisition, planting, navigation of rivers, and trade. These are valuable resources for studying early American history, cross-cultural encounters, frontier history, and the construction of the nation's past.

Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas

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Texts about the Americas produced in Europe from the 15th through the 19th centuries are examined in this well-organized online exhibit. Over 100 images of printed texts, drawings, artwork, and maps from published and unpublished sources are arranged into six thematic categories. Categories are named: "Promotion and Possession," "Viewers and the Viewed," "Print and Native Cultures," "Religion and Print," "New World Lands in Print," and "Colonial Fictions, Colonial Histories."

Five scholarly essays (5,000 to 7,000 words each) contextualize the documents. A bibliography and list of links accompany the presentation. A visually attractive, thoughtfully arranged site that explores connections between colonization and representation.

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

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This massive collection presents more than 550,000 images relevant to both U.S. and world history, from the earliest days of print culture to the present. Resources consist primarily of historical maps, posters, prints and photographs, illuminated manuscript pages, and images drawn from published books.

For browsing, the materials are divided by subject heading, library of origin, and the name of the item's creator and/or publisher. They are also sorted by collection: Arts & Literature; Cities & Building; Culture & Society; History & Geography; Industry & Technology; Nature & Science; and Printing & Graphics. Within these broad headings, images are further subdivided into more specific groupings, for example, Indonesian dance, dress and fashion, Civil War medical care, and New York City apartment buildings. All images can be downloaded and are accompanied by detailed source information, but users will have to turn elsewhere for historical context.

Alexander Street Press

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logo, alexander street press
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Offering 16 separate databases of digitized materials, this website provides firsthand accounts (diaries, letters, and memoirs) and literary efforts (poetry, drama, and fiction). Twelve databases pertain to American history and culture.

"Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment" offers primary sources documenting cultural interactions from 1534 to 1850. "The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries" draws on more than 400 sources and supplies a day-by-day chronology with links to documents. "Black Thought and Culture" furnishes monographs, speeches, essays, articles, and interviews. "North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories" covers 1840 to the present. "North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950" provides full-text letters and diaries from more than 1,000 women—totaling more than 21,000 documents and approximately 120,000 pages—written between 1675 and 1950.

Five databases present American literary writings: "Latino Literature"; "Black Drama"; "Asian American Drama"; "North American Women's Drama"; and "American Film Scripts Online." In addition, "Oral History Online" provides a reference work with links to texts, audio, and video files. While the databases include previously published documents, many also contain thousands of pages of unpublished material. In addition to keyword searching, the databases provide "semantic indexing"—extensive categorical search capabilities.

Archive of Early American Images Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2008 - 22:21
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Buffalo, Archive of Early American Images
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The images in this collection, focusing on the Americas, come from books printed or created in Europe between about 1492 and 1825. Images include woodcuts, copper engravings, and paintings. The database, still being compiled, currently contains 6,685 images and will eventually contain some 7,500 images. Image viewing software is available from the site.

The visitor can browse the entire archive or search by time period, geographical area, keyword, or subject, including indigenous peoples, flora and fauna, artifacts, industry, human activities, geography, maps, city views and plans, and portraits. Some images, such as Ptolemy's map of the world, may be familiar. Others are reproduced for the first time. Navigation requires some practice, but is worth the effort.

Coin & Conscience: Popular Views of Money, Credit and Speculation

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Photo, Money, Hanging On, February 8, 2007, cobalt123, Flickr
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This collection of 70 woodcuts, engravings, etchings, and lithographs depicts a range of subjects surrounding money and credit from 16th through the 19th centuries. These images trace changing attitudes toward money from the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution, showing the transition from the Church's position against the amassing of individual wealth to the emergence of capitalism in Europe.

Prints include views of stock exchanges, banks, mints, and treasuries; portraits of bankers, statesmen, financiers, and money lenders; and depictions of taxation, corruption, poverty, charity, anti-Semitism, speculation, credit, and the relationship between religion and money.

More than 75 individual artists are represented in the collection, including prominent artists such as Goltzius, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Dürer, and Breughel. A bibliography of selected works on the history of art and capitalism provides opportunities for further research.

Picturing United States History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence

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Photo, The Statue of Freedom, 1857, Architect of the Capitol
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This website presents tools to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms.

Users may want to begin with the Lessons in Looking section, which includes four essays, each authored by a scholar of art/visual culture and a historian, offering methods for analyzing visual materials and demonstrating the effectiveness of visual evidence for illuminating important themes in U.S. history. Topics include: race in Antebellum America, identity in colonial America, American identity in the Gilded Age, and African American visual culture in the mid-20th century.

The website also includes an annotated guide to the most useful visual resources available online, 13 essays by educators on their favorite image to use in the classroom; eight reviews of recent books, online exhibits, and articles that have provided new perspectives on teaching and learning about visual culture; and three archived and three ongoing forums on using visual evidence to teach colonial America, slavery, Jacksonian America, the Civil War, the American West, and the Great Depression and New Deal.