For historians researching New Jersey, this site's main interest will be its "state archives." "Catalog" provides access to nearly 200 pre-established searches on the archive's manuscript series, genealogical holdings, business and corporate records, cultural resources, and maps. Topics include military conflicts, society and economics, transportation, public works agencies, and photographic collections, as well as state, county, municipal, and federal government records. The other major feature consists of eight image collections with themes that include New Jersey Civil War soldiers, Spanish-American War Infantry Officers, Spanish-American War Naval Officers, Gettysburg Monuments, and views of the Morris Canal. The archives site also includes a searchable index of New Jersey Supreme Court cases, a transcription of New Jersey's 1776 constitution, and a table summarizing the holdings of the state archives. This site is a useful aid for researching the history and culture of New Jersey.

Focused on the Gilded Age in Illinois, this website offers 287 primary source documents. These include political speeches, pamphlets, songs, audio recordings, and maps that deal with such issues as politics, farming, law, labor, religion, and economic development. Visitors can browse all 287 items or search by author, title, date, theme, or genre. Visitors can search text documents, images, or audio files separately. The site also offers 26 video lectures from college professors interpreting the major issues of the period. Lecture topics include John Dewey, Dwight Moody, Chicago Gilded Age culture, women's suffrage, government and reform, the People's Party, William Jennings Bryan, William Mckinley, and the election of 1896.

The site can also be explored through eight historical themes, each with an interpretive essay, a bibliography, a search feature for related primary documents, and a list of related video lectures. The themes are: economic development and labor, labor, law and society, political development, race and ethnicity, religion and culture, settlement and immigration, and women's experience and gender roles. In addition, eight essays cover important periods: 1866-1868 (war's aftermath), 1869-1872 (the Chicago Fire), 1873-1876 (the Panic of 1873), 1877 (The Great Strike), 1878-1884 (Immigration, Labor, and Politics), 1884-1891 (Haymarket and Hull House), 1892-1895 (1893 Chicago's World Fair), and 1896 (The Cross of Gold). The "Teacher's Parlor" has nine lesson plans, including the WCTU and the lynching controversy, civil service reform, bimetallism, and free trade.

This database is the most essential collection of written materials for historical research in American history from 1801-1819. It provides full-text access to nearly 4.5 million pages of 36,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints published in the U.S. during this period. Gazetteers, almanacs, juvenile literature, chapbooks, hymnals, campaign literature, novels, slave narratives, spelling books, school readers, treaties, maps, atlases, advertisements, diaries, autobiographies, and much more are all included. Most of these materials were originally detailed in the bibliography compiled by Ralph Shaw and Richard Shoemaker. This collection, long available on microfiche, is made available here as a digital, fully searchable online database. It complements Readex's other Early American Imprints series of material from the period of 1639-1800.

The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

In 1851, Massachusetts passed the first law recognizing adoption as a legal and social operation. Since then, adoption has had a rich history in the United States, documented at this website through close to 200 reports, writings, letters, adoption narratives, and other documents. Users unfamiliar with adoption history might begin by exploring the detailed timeline that traces adoption history from 1851 to 2000, when Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 eliminating the process of naturalization for international adoptions. Moving on to the Topics in Adoption History section, with in-depth explanations of orphan trains, proxy adoptions, infertility, child welfare, and eugenics, will help build historical context. The Document Archive and Adoption Science sections boast documents from the late 1800s to the present by notables such as Pearl Buck, adoptees searching for information on their biological parents, and court decisions on adoption throughout the 20th century.

Comprised of 15 essays, ranging from 700 to 1,800 words, and about 120 images, this exhibit is drawn from the black history and culture collections of the Library of Congress. The materials cover four areas: colonization, abolition, migrations, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA)--a New Deal program of the 1930s. Specific subjects include Liberia and the American Colonization Society; prominent abolitionists; Western migration, homesteading, and Chicago as the "promised land" for Southern blacks; and ex-slave narratives gathered by WPA writers. No primary texts are available here, but the essays are well-illustrated with historical photos and images.

This site contains facsimiles of four of Walt Whitman's original notebooks—ranging in length from 24 to 210 pages—and two color photographs of a cardboard butterfly—with words from a poem by John Mason Neale printed on its ventral side—photographed on the poet's finger. These items disappeared from the Library of Congress in 1942 but were returned in 1995.

The notebooks contain both prose and poetry, and include ideas for prospective journal articles, early versions of poems that were used in Leaves of Grass, and notes taken during hospital visits to wounded Civil War soldiers. The site also includes articles on the preservation of these items.

This is an ambitious project that details the history of the World Trade Centers and September 11th through sound. Originally started by NPR_s Kitchen Sisters who host the radio program "Lost and Found Sound," this site harnesses the strengths of many organizations involved in image, audio, and video archiving such as Picture Projects and the September 11th Digital Archive. To date they have received more than 1,000 contributions from individuals and organizations that describe not just the thoughts or memories of September 11th survivors, but also narrations of events, such as weddings, that took place in the Towers. The site also contains a section for educators with six curriculum modules of two to three lessons each. In sum, this is an multi-sensory site that engages modern history and its impact on modern America.

This site is designed to preserve and disseminate the history of the Supreme Court, from its first session in 1789 to the present. The main section presents the history of the Court, including a detailed timeline with biographical sketches of the chief and associate justices and the history of major decisions during the tenure of each Chief Justice. "How the Court Works" includes 17 short essays (150-700 words each) on the term of the justices, the types of cases they hear, and the role of the Chief Justice. In this section, users will find the text of opinions from 411 cases (130 from the Warren Court, 160 from the Burger Court, and 121 from the first seven years of the Rehnquist Court) heard by the Supreme Court between 1955 and 1993. There are also recordings of 10 sample cases, including Roe v. Wade. "Publications" features four articles, Historical Society yearbooks from 1976 to 1990, and six digitized volumes that include the memoirs of Henry Billings Brown. For students and instructors, the "Learning Center" is an excellent resource. It presents three cases for and about students and four landmark cases that illustrate the development of the Court's gender discrimination doctrine. There are also activities and lesson plans on key Supreme Court cases, for example Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. The site provides several quizzes, along with a multimedia presentation about President Franklin Roosevelt and the 1937 Supreme Court controversy. This material will be useful to anyone interested in studying the Supreme Court, the court's history, and various justices.

The heart of this collection about President Lyndon Baines Johnson is a group of 77 oral history interviews (up to 200 pages each) with members of Johnson's administration, Congressional colleagues, journalists, civil rights leaders, and a historian. The website provides 14 audio files, including telephone conversations, State of the Union addresses, Johnson's speech to Congress following the Kennedy assassination, and an excerpt of his television address announcing his decision not to run for a second term.

Also available are transcripts of 25 speeches; 50 "days of" diary entries; and the 99 National Security Action memoranda issued during Johnson's presidency relaying foreign policy directives and initiating actions. There are 150 photographs and one campaign advertisement. Biographical information is furnished in two chronologies. An exhibit from the Johnson museum provides an essay about events in Johnson's lifetime.