An experimental presentation of 450 items in the Smithsonian Institution's American History collections, many of which are not on public display. Visitors to this virtual tour will find a map divided into regions representing broad subject categories that contain smaller rectangles standing for individual objects. Moving a mouse to a particular square results in the appearance of the name of the object, a thumbnail image, a date projected onto a timeline, and lines emanating out to relevant subject areas. Users can then click to learn more, finding a 100-200 word description, an option to zoom in closer, and often links to further information in other Smithsonian sites. Also searchable by keyword and category. Objects selected by curators "include famous, unusual, and everyday items with interesting stories to tell. They are not intended to be representative of the Museum's entire collection."

Categories reflect the wide range of the Institution's holdings, including clothing, arts/entertainment, business, science/medicine, photography, home, print/communications, transportation, military, computers, and sports. Includes audio and video items. Users can submit ratings for each object that will affect the future relative size of each square. Although innovative in design, the site may be disappointing to those searching for in-depth information about American history and culture; this is history-lite, with bells and whistles given more prominence than context and meaning.

Part of the Library of Congress American Memory project, this site features 26 films of San Francisco, produced from 1897 to 1916, both before and after the Great Earthquake and fire. Seventeen of the films depict life in San Francisco before the 1906 disaster, including an arrest in Chinatown, a panoramic view of the city from a balloon, and various other scenes of buildings and special attractions in the city.

Seven films describe the earthquake and fire, and two films show a rebuilt city and give a tour of the Panama Pacific Exposition of 1915. Each film includes a roughly 500-word descriptive summary of the contents of the film. The site also includes a 250-word descriptive essay on pre-earthquake San Francisco and an approximately 750-word essay on America at the turn of the 20th century. A selected bibliography notes 32 scholarly works on San Francisco's earthquake.

This site is keyword searchable and contains a subject index and an alphabetical list of film titles. For those exploring San Francisco's history, urban history, or natural disasters, this is a useful site.

A companion to the series Frontier House, this site documents the five months that 26 American volunteers spent in a Maine wilderness recreating life in 1628 New England. The site provides short biographies of all 26 participants, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show, and a series of short activities designed to highlight colonial American history. Teachers will find most useful the four lesson plans (for grades five to eight) that discuss the settling of America.

In addition, an online scavenger hunt allows students to learn about day-to-day colonial life (teachers may tape broadcasts and show them in class for 12 months after airing). The site also includes 14 video clips, 12 audio clips, and more than 90 photographs of the cast and village.

Visitors should not miss the Myth-Conceptions quiz, or the language tutorial, where they can test their knowledge of colonial America and compare 17th-century English to 20th-century English.

Visitors will not find document collections or historical maps; the site's primary value is in the anecdotes that reveal little bits of information about 17th-century life in New England.

Charts the institutional history of George Mason University from its beginnings in 1949–50 as an adult education extension of the University of Virginia located in northern Virginia, through its formal separation from UVA in 1960, to its present-day existence as a multi-campus university.

Offers more than 30 documents and nearly 50 photographs related to the history, a 400-word biography of George Mason, an annotated chronology, and a current 108-page fact book. Of interest to those studying the history of education and Virginia history.

Features more than 200 "social dance manuals" and related materials in western dance history, from Burgundian dances of the Late Middle Ages to Ragtime dances in vogue between 1890 and World War I. The site offers a rich selection of manuals--including the rare document, Les basses danses de Marguerite d'Autriche, published around 490--as well as histories, theoretical studies, treatises on etiquette, antidance literature, and other items. Designed to "illuminate the manner in which people have joyfully expressed themselves as they dance for and with one another," the site also provides a 13,000-word introductory essay, "Western Social Dance: An Overview of the Collection," which is illustrated with 44 images, 75 video clips demonstrating selected dances from the manuals, and a bibliography of 77 titles. A well-organized presentation that will interest students of dance and of the cultural history of Europe and the U.S.

This project was designed to teach U.S. history through New Jersey history. Currently, materials are organized under two themes. "American Revolution" contains 10 lectures and nine lesson plans, seven images of New Jersey historic sites such as Liberty Hall and Morven, 47 primary source documents on topics such as women, African Americans, the state constitution, the Quakers, and the Lenape, seven video clips on topics such as republican motherhood, the Great Awakening, and the battles of Trenton and Princeton, and an interactive exercise on the 1776-1777 campaign in New Jersey. Lesson plan topics include revolutionary heroes, African American quest for freedom, and the Battle of Trenton. A timeline integrating U.S. and state history events from 1734 to 1807 is also included.

A less extensive thematic section "Market Revolution" offers a lecture, a lesson plan, and a video clip on New Jersey's transportation revolution, seven primary source documents that include an 1839 map of New Jersey and a map of the Morris Canal, and a timeline. Links are provided to three partner institutions, eight history centers or organizations, and 30 New Jersey history centers, organizations, or historic sites. This website provides useful resources for those teaching the 18th- or early 19th-century history of New Jersey.

This website offers access to the digital collections of six Alaska universities and museums. The more than 3,700 historical images of Alaska can be browsed in their entirety or by selecting specific thematic collections organized under the two broad themes. "Alaska Native History and Cultures" has 12 collections with themes that include ceremonial life, education, native leadership and politics, making a living, and health care facilities. "Movement to Statehood" has seven collections with themes such as government, business and commerce, natural resources, transportation, and society and daily life.

Both "Alaska Native History" and "Movement to Statehood" can be browsed by region or time period. Bibliographic data accompanies each image. The user can also search the collection by phrase or keyword. Future stages of the project will add oral histories, maps, documents, and film clips in multiple formats. Alaska's Digital archive is an outstanding resource for those seeking images of Alaska's history.

This video archive assembles Library of Congress webcasts in one easily accessible location. The biography and history section offers 159 webcasts of talks by historians, writers, commentators, and political figures, including historians Joseph J. Ellis, John Hope Franklin, Jill Lepore, Lawrence W. Levine, David McCullough, and Robin Shields and writers and commentators David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell. The wide variety of subjects discussed include Vietnam, Iraq, Abraham Lincoln, early American printers and the Declaration of Independence, Pearl Harbor, the national character, early African American life, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The section on government has 67 webcasts by current and former government officials, such as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, George Shultz, and David Weinberger. Subjects include intellectual freedom, global democratic governance, and guardianship and the First Amendment. Moreover, the site offers 56 webcasts on culture and the performing arts and 305 webcasts on poetry and literature. There are also sections on religion, science and technology, and education. This website is a useful resource for information on historical subjects from the historians and authors who have written about them.

An extensive site covering the history of NASA's aeronautical and space programs. Materials include photographs, flight communications transcripts, essays, timelines and chronologies, policy documents, biographies, and much more. "Aeronautics" includes flight research centers, flight research projects (such as the lifting body program and the X-1 that first broke the sound barrier), and the X-15 project. "Biographies" includes all present and former astronauts. "Human spaceflight" offers extensive material, including essays, technical information, and other material on the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and Space Shuttle projects. The Apollo Program includes the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, an extensive site that provides corrected transcripts of recorded conversations between lunar surface crews and mission control with commentary from the site editor and 10 of the astronauts who walked on the moon. The same is available for Apollo 12, 15, and 16 Flight Journals. Reference material includes more than 50 historical policy documents including NASA's 1959 Long Range Plan and the 1986 Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. There are more than 30 timelines and chronologies.

The photo and video section has video clips from the Apollo missions including lunar surface exploration. The massive Johnson Space Center Digital Image Collection has a searchable database of more than 9,000 NASA press release photos from the manned space program (Project Mercury to the Space Shuttle). "Space science" includes descriptive information and technical data on all planetary exploration projects from Mariner and Pioneer to Voyager and Galileo, as well as the lunar probe series Ranger and Surveyor. "NASA History for Kids" includes more than 25 links to sites for elementary and middle school students' research. With a wealth of both primary source material and secondary source information this site is an outstanding resource for teaching or researching the history of aeronautics and astronautics and the history of U.S. science and technology in the 20th century.

The declared mission of this film archive "is to build a national preserve of documentary films about American folk or roots culture." The archive contains more than 50 independent films and videos "depicting American folk, traditional, regional, and vernacular culture." Films include Dry Wood, a "glimpse into the life, food, and Mardi Gras celebrations of black Creoles in French Louisiana, featuring the stories and music of 'Bois Sec' Ardoin and Canray Fontenot" and New England Fiddles, presenting seven "traditional musicians as they play in their homes and at dances and contests, passing their styles to younger fiddlers, and commenting on their music."

All films are available in streaming video and can viewed with Quicktime or Realplayer. The site also provides background material on each film, explaining the subject and aesthetic importance. Transcripts are available for some films. Visitors can browse the collection by title, filmmaker, subject, region, or people. They can also search for films or search the available transcripts of films as well as essays about the films. This site should be of interest to those studying the history of American folk culture or the history of documentary film.