This companion site to the 1999 PBS documentary on John Brown uses special features, a timeline, an interactive map, short biographies and histories, and a teacher's guide to explain the story of Brown's life and times. The site offers special features on the Maryland farmhouse where John Brown assembled his men before their raid on Harpers Ferry, the Harpers Ferry firehouse where Brown's raiders were captured, a history of the famous song "John Brown's Body," and a short essay on Brown's failures as a businessman before he became a radical abolitionist. The timeline traces the major events of Brown's life from 1800 to 1865. An interactive map follows Brown's movements across the country from his birth in 1800 to his execution and burial in 1859. The "People and Events" section features short biographical essays on Brown, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, abolitionist newspaper editor James Redpath, writer Henry David Thoreau, 1859 Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise, and "The Secret Six"--the radical abolitionists who funded Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The section also features short histories of four events of Brown's radical abolitionist crusades: the Pottawatomie Massacre in Kansas, Brown's Missouri raid, the Harpers Ferry raid, and Brown's hanging. The teacher guide offers discussion questions and four classroom activities.

This site was created by Idaho State University professors Mike Trinklein and Steve Boettcher as a companion to their PBS documentary, The Oregon Trail. The website describes the history of the Trail and the settlers who used it to migrate to the Oregon Territory beginning in the early 1840s. It is divided into five sections: general information about the history of the Oregon Trail; historic sites along the Trail; facts and statistics; full-text archive; and "Shop the Oregon Trail." The archive includes full texts of seven diaries, two letters, nine memoirs, and five period books about journeys along the Trail.

The site also contains roughly 30 video clips of historians discussing the history of the Trail and a virtual field trip of the Trail's top sites. There is an online teacher's guide that was designed as a companion to the documentary video, but its discussion topics and activities can be adapted for classroom use. The site is easy to navigate and has a keyword search feature.

An examination of the life and work of cowboys (or "buckaroos") in the ranching community of Paradise Valley in northern Nevada, with a focus on the "family-run" Ninety-Six Ranch, a concern dating back to the mid-19th century. Features 42 motion pictures and 28 sound recordings of the Ranch, and approximately 2,400 photographs documenting "the people, sites, and traditions in the larger community of Paradise Valley, home to persons of Northern Paiute Indian, Anglo-American, Italian, German, Basque, Swiss, and Chinese heritage." Created for the most part with materials produced during a 1978-1982 ethnographic field research project by the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center. Includes a 2,500-word history of the Ninety-Six Ranch; a 15,000-word essay on ranching life by the project director, Howard W. "Rusty" Marshall; an extensive glossary of terms; four maps of the region; and a bibliography consisting of 60 entries. A well-designed site that introduces users to many aspects of ranch life and culture.

This site introduces the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (ASHP/CML), an organization located at the City University of New York (CUNY) that "seeks to revitalize interest in history by challenging the traditional ways that people learn about the past," with a particular emphasis on labor history and social history. The site includes information about ASHP/CML books, documentary films, CD-ROMs, Internet projects, and educational programs, as well as five articles by staff members and numerous links to history resources.

"Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl: Immigrant Women in the Turn-of-the-Century City" presents selected photographs, illustrations, and accompanying short explanatory texts intended for use with a ASHP/CML documentary of the same name. Among the Project's current endeavors is "an intellectual and spatial exploration of P. T. Barnum's American Museum," entitled The Lost Museum, which burned down under mysterious circumstances in 1865. With the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, ASHP/CML produces History Matters.

This site consists of hundreds of poems by major and minor figures--from Emily Dickinson to William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg to contemporary artists and writers--hundreds of links to poetry resources, and a "readings schedule" for a course in American poetry. Also offers materials as diverse as audio clips, newspaper articles, and television spots. Although the organization is haphazard, this is a rewarding and eclectic site packed with primary documents and leads for further work.

A syllabus and collection of documents for a course in American culture at the turn of the 20th century, exploring "two simultaneous tendencies in American life": fascination with "personal transformation—with self making, with economic mobility, and also the difference between the real and the fake"; and the emergence of detection "and the wide range of new techniques—like fingerprints, mug shots, and criminology generally—designed to pin down identity." Presents an array of primary material designed to examine these tendencies, organized in four excursions to an urban newsstand, a saloon, a theater, and a police station.

Includes the Horatio Alger novel Ragged Dick; 14 early motion pictures produced between 1897 and 1905; images depicting various "sciences" of detection used by urban police departments; photographs of saloons and crime scenes; an interview and audio file of pianist and composer Eubie Blake on ragtime music; an excerpt from the 1899 book Vitalogy, on achieving "vigorous manhood"; and posters from urban minstrel shows. Also gives a bibliography drawn from course readings.

Providing a host of resources on U.S. history survey, the three main features are: WWW.History, Many Pasts, and Making Sense of Evidence.

WWW.History provides an annotated guide to more than 1,000 high-quality websites covering all of U.S. history. Users can browse websites by time period or topic and can search by keyword.

Many Pasts offers more than 1,000 primary sources in text, image, and audio, from an exchange between Powhatan and Captain John Smith to comments by the director of the Arab American Family Support Center in Brooklyn after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Making Sense of Evidence offers eight guides with interactive exercises designed to help students learn to analyze various kinds of primary sources, including maps, early film, oral history, and popular song. These guides offer questions to ask and provide examples of how to analyze kinds of evidence. There are also eight multimedia modules that model strategies for analyzing primary sources, including political cartoons, blues, and abolitionist speeches.

Focusing on Operation Desert Storm, these materials emphasize the perspectives of those directly involved. There are 19 oral history interviews (up to 20 pages each) with eight "decision makers," seven commanders, two Iraqi officials, and two news analysts.

"War Stories" presents the personal reminiscences of five pilots, available in text and audio. "Weapons and Technology" details 10 ground, aircraft, and space weapons systems and munitions. A seven-minute video excerpt from the "Frontline" program is available as well as four 15-minute episodes of a BBC radio program in text and audio. The site includes a chronology, 10 maps, a bibliography, facts and statistics, and brief essays on press coverage and Iraqi war deaths. Links are available to five sites produced to accompany more recent "Frontline" reports on Iraq.

The September 11, 2001, Documentary Project represents the "shortly after" reaction of U.S. citizens and others regarding the World Trade Center, Flight 93, and Pentagon attacks of the 11th of September 2001, as gathered by ethnographers at the request of the American Folklife Center. The collection of responses started the 12th of September and continued for several months.

Here, you can listen to and/or watch nearly 200 audio and visual oral histories, access 21 written narratives—such as that of one woman who missed her train the morning of the attack and, as a result, was not in the WTC as she normally would have been—and view 45 photographs and drawings, many of the latter of which display children's perspectives. The videos are all from Naples, Italy, providing a look at 9/11 from outside of the country.

Sources can be browsed by type, title, or subject, as well as keyword searched.

Classroom Connection offers a list of Library of Congress and external related resources, as well as a grade level, state, and subject search which can show you how the collection relates to your particular curriculum standards.

Over more than 15 years, Rocky Gap High School of Rocky Gap, VA, has offered students the opportunity to participate in a history and technology project. While working on the project, students conduct oral history interviews, and archive these interviews and related photographs in a database and, in many cases, online.

The main page can be somewhat difficult to navigate. However, the largest portion of content can be found under Stories of the People. This section contains roughly 90 oral history transcripts on the lives of Bland County residents. Topics range from train rides and farm life to working in a World War II aircraft factory and religious practices. Some of the transcripts are also accompanied by photographs of the interviewee throughout his or her life.

Yet other transcripts link to collection pages which bring together related oral histories, as well as narration written by students. In some cases, video and audio versions are available in addition to the text transcripts. Topics include the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), church, death practices, farming, logging, the railroad, school life, tunnel building, and Bland County residents at war.

For more information on the project and its facilities, try the links under "Mountain Home Project."

This website is excellent as inspiration for beginning your own local history projects, as well as a fantastic resource for anyone looking for information on life in rural Virginia.

Note: The site is frequently unavailable for short bursts of time. Try again later if you reach a 404 error page.