William Gedney Photographs and Writings

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This beautifully presented site features selections from Duke University's collection of photographer William Gedney's work and writings. From the mid-1950s to the 1980s, Gedney captured everyday life of people in places as diverse as Brooklyn, Kansas, India, and Europe. The site boasts more than 4,900 of his prints, workprints, and contact sheets. Photographs are arranged into 12 series: Composers; Cross Country; Europe; India; Kansas; Kentucky; New York; San Francisco; St. Joseph's School for the Deaf; The Farm; Night Series; and Miscellaneous. Each category offers a 35-50 word introduction to the series, and each image is accompanied by its title and a brief 5-10 word note on the subject matter and date taken.

Also on the site are selections from 33 of Gedney's manuscript books and notebooks, including ideas for book projects, descriptions of bookbinding methods and materials, and travel diaries. All of the writings are available in image form, and eight of the notebooks are also transcribed. Selected photographs, sketches, and dummies for nine book projects are also included, as well as a timeline of Gedney's life and work from his birth in 1932 to the San Francisco retrospective of his work in 2000. The site is keyword searchable and easy to navigate, making it an exceptional source of illustrations and images of American life, as well as an American's perspective on life in India and Europe.

A Maritime Perspective on American Expansion, 1820-1890

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Focusing on 19th-century American maritime history and westward expansion, this collection of more than 160 documents from the Mystic Seaport Museum and Library provides diverse materials to explore themes such as the California Gold Rush, whaling, maritime business, migration and immigration, women's role in the West, and interactions between European migrants and native inhabitants. This Ameritech Award-winning site includes more than 25 photographs, more than 20 letters, logbooks from ships, published travel narratives, paintings, maps, and nautical charts. Provides four essays published previously in a Mystic Seaport publication, including an 1866 newspaper essay assessing Honolulu as a whaling port by youthful journalist Mark Twain.

The site is searchable by subject, name, title, and keyword, and includes an annotated bibliography of hundreds of documents in the Seaport's collections, and of 65 secondary sources. Valuable for those studying the American West, maritime history, business history, and the history of coastal and island localities.

A Southern Mill Village: History of Old West Durham

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A collection of 18 essays and 90 photographs on the history of Old West Durham—one of the oldest neighborhoods within Durham, NC—which began as a traveler's rest stop prior to the city's establishment in the 1850s as a railroad town. Traces the neighborhood's numerous incarnations as a hangout for "the shiftless of society" in the mid-19th century to a factory town following the establishment of Erwin Mills in 1892 to the site for Duke University's west campus in the 1920s. A period of rapid decline occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by its present-day renaissance as a neighborhood community.

The site includes seven Works Progress Administration oral histories from 1938, ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 words each, of people living in the mill village; seven newspaper articles from 1913 about the growing "suburb"; a 3,400-word essay on the history of the cotton mill and mill village; a 4,000-word reminiscence of a child growing up in the neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s; and a 550-word essay on "Preservation North Carolina," an organization interested in preserving industrial heritage sites. The Old West Durham Neighborhood Association was formed in 1995 with the credo "Diversity, Harmony, Community." A well-designed local history presentation useful to those studying urban history and labor history.

Korean American Digital Archive

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Thousands of primary materials, including documents compiled by Korean American organizations, personal papers, more than 1,900 photographs, and around 180 interviews, address the experiences of Koreans in the United States between 1903 and 1965 on this website. The materials run the gamut from organizational memos and other official documents to personal letters, wedding programs, birth certificates, and social security check stubs.

This material allows users to piece together the life histories of individual Korean Americans. They will find individuals like Soon Hyun, an activist in the Korean resistance movement against Japanese colonialism in 1919, who later moved to the United States and became a minister in Hawaii. Or Florence Ahn, a Korean American who became a prominent singer in Los Angeles. These personal biographies, in turn, allow users to examine the human dimension of the history of Asian Americans, and place individuals within a larger history.

Camping With the Sioux—Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher

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This site presents two fieldwork journals written by anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher during her six-week stay with a group of Dakota Sioux women in 1881. The journals are indexed by date and can be searched or read as a narrative.

Visitors will find a 1,000-word biographical essay about Fletcher and a bibliography of sources, including three books, three Smithsonian collections of related materials, five collections of papers, and six links to sites about Sioux Indians and 19th-century anthropology of the Sioux. A gallery of 36 photographs contains pictures of Fletcher, her two travelling companions, scenes of Sioux life, and portraits of Sioux Indians, including Sitting Bull.

In her journals, Fletcher transcribed 14 folk tales related by her Sioux hosts. These tales are indexed by title and presented separately as well as in the journals. The site offers unique sources particularly useful for students of Native American history, women's history, and the history of anthropology and ethnography.

Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Rare Books c. 1820-1910

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This American Memory website traces the history of the Upper Midwest (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) from the 17th century to the early 20th century, through 138 volumes drawn from the Library of Congress General Collection and the Rare Books and Special Collection Division. Selected works include first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, and colonial archival documents that depict the region's land and resources, cross-cultural encounters, experiences of pioneers and missionaries, soldiers, immigrants, reformers, growth of communities, and development of local culture and society. Each work is available in full-text transcription or page image, and is accompanied by notes giving the title, author, publication information, and a 300–350 word summary of the contents.

The site also offers a 2,000-word essay on the history of the Upper Midwest that covers the discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the region from pre-contact to the early 20th century; a regional map dated 1873; links to more than 40 related websites; and a bibliography of nine related works, three of which are ideal for younger readers. The site can be searched by keyword and browsed by author, subject, and title. For those interested in the history of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region, this site offers some informative resources.

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age

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This Library of Congress American Memory site, a collaborative effort of the Library of Congress Hispanic Division and the National Digital Library Program, was created to help commemorate the centennial of the Spanish American War (1898). It traces the early history of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories.

The selections consist of 39 Spanish-language political pamphlets, 13 monographs, and one journal that highlight topics such as land, natural resources, relations with Spain, political rivalries, and reform efforts. A brief (200–250 word) summary of the item and notes about the author, publication date and place, and repository information accompany each item. The Spanish-language pamphlets are not translated into English.

The online exhibit also features reminiscences of 12 soldiers who fought in the Spanish American War. A special presentation of downloadable cartographic items from the Library's Geography and Map Division includes two maps of the West Indies dating from 1806 and 1898; seven maps of Puerto Rico (1886–1915); maps of the cities of Bayamon, Mayaguez, and San Juan, Puerto Rico; and three Puerto Rican maps from the Spanish American War era.

The site also offers links to nine other American Memory sites on related topics and a bibliography lists more than 50 related works, approximately 20 of which are suitable for younger readers. This site will appeal to a small audience because of the number of untranslated Spanish documents; additionally, the selected documents only depict a narrow slice of Puerto Rican culture and society, primarily that of political, military, and foreign relations history. But for students interested in Puerto Rican history or the history of Spanish and American relations, this is a useful site.

Presidential Elections and the Electoral College

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This website is part of the Library of Congress exhibit, "A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: United States Congressional Documents and Debates 1774–1873." It provides links to the Library's extensive holdings on American presidential elections and the electoral college.

Ten links to resources from the Library's feature "Today in History" provide 250-word discussions of noted events and include links to 20–30 online documents for each feature. These documents include presidential campaign and inauguration speeches, government documents such as the certification in Congress of the first electoral college's balloting, controversies regarding the electoral college, and journals from late-18th and early-19th century political figures like William McLay.

Keyword searches make all of the Library's digitized documents on any given subject available through this site as well. This site is ideal for researching America's first century of political history.

Web de Anza

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Web de Anza presents material relating to Juan Bautista de Anza's two expeditions into Alta California that resulted in the settlement of San Francisco in 1776. The site is under development, but it is easy to navigate. Visitors will find a 700-word background essay on the historical context of the expeditions and links to seven other sites about de Anza and California history. Primary source material currently includes eight diaries and two letters, available in English and Spanish and indexed by date. This material is supplemented by a gallery of 11 portraits, 14 images of scenery relevant to De Anza's expeditions, and drawings and photographs of nine objects such as a musket of the kind that De Anza probably used.

The site also includes six photographs of re-enactments of events in de Anza's expedition. An Atlas section provides 10 trail route maps, and 20 maps of the area of de Anza's expedition. The site provides useful material for students of California history, religion, and Native Americans at every level, from elementary to graduate school.

The American Experience

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Visitors may browse these "website archives" to access the transcripts of 60 American Experience documentaries broadcast on PBS. In addition, the site offers transcribed interviews with the filmmakers, a timeline of events of each the of the film topic's era, and teaching guides.

Documentaries cover a wide range of topics including Harry Houdini, the Donner Party, the advent of television, and the Wright brothers. Primary source material includes pages from a colonial woman's diary, public documents from Truman's presidency, video clips of female pilots, and real audio files of three hobo songs. The site will be especially useful for teachers contemplating using films in the classroom.