Guampedia

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Illustration, Landing Place at Guam, Jan-July 1863, T. Coghlan, Flickr Commons
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Don't let Guam be forgotten in your classroom! After all, it is one of only 16 non-self-governing territories worldwide that are recognized by the UN. As such, leaving Guam out of history is to ignore a rather remarkable political exception.

Guampedia offers a range of short articles on everything from architecture to World War II. These pages also feature relevant photographs and further resource listings. Additional sections offer basic facts on Guam (motto, population, etc.) and its major villages. Be sure to check out the history lesson plans to see if there's any ready-made content appropriate for you to introduce to your classroom.

Additional ways to explore include a selection of media collections including photographs, illustrations, soundbites, and video; MARC Publications, including issues of the Guam Recorder, lectures, and additional e-publications on topics such as archaeology and stonework; and traditional recipes.

Digital Library of Georgia Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2008 - 22:21
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Postcard, 270 Peachtree Building, Historic Postcard Coll., Digital Library of Ga
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Bringing together a wealth of material from libraries, archives, and museums, this website examines the history and culture of the state of Georgia. Legal materials include more than 17,000 state government documents from 1994 to the present, updated daily, and a complete set of Acts and Resolutions from 1799 to 1995. "Southeastern Native American Documents" provides approximately 2,000 letters, legal documents, military orders, financial papers, and archaeological images from 1730–1842. Materials from the Civil War era include a soldier's diary and two collections of letters.

The site provides a collection of 80 full-text, word-searchable versions of books from the early 19th century to the 1920s and three historic newspapers. There are approximately 2,500 political cartoons from 1946-1982; Jimmy Carter's diaries; photographs of African Americans from Augusta during the late 19th century; and 1,500 architectural and landscape photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s.

Library of Virginia Digital Library Program

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Image for Library of Virginia Digital Library Program
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More than 1.2 million items on Virginia and life in the South are available on this website, including 40,000 photographs and maps, 350,000 court documents, and 800,000 manuscripts. Manuscripts include governors' letters, land office grants, Revolutionary War bounty land warrants, Confederate pensions, and disability applications. Several complete collections are available, as well as 25 exhibits on Virginia history.

Users can find photographs that document buildings and people; patents and grants submitted to the Virginia Land Office between 1623 and 1992; Northern Neck Grants and Survey forms filed between 1692 and 1892; military records, including Revolutionary War state pensions material and World War I History Commission Questionnaires; WPA Life Histories; and Virginia Religious Petitions from 1774 to 1802. Exhibits deal with topics including the legacy of the New Deal in Virginia; resistance to slavery; Virginia roots music (with seven audio selections); Thomas Jefferson; John Marshall; Virginia's coal towns; and political life in the state.

Carnegie Libraries of California

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Library, San Francisco, Richmond Branch, Bliss and Faville, 1914
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Designed to document the many thousands of dollars Andrew Carnegie donated to establish public libraries in California, this site includes modern and contemporary photographs of each of the 144 libraries built between 1889 and 1923. San Diego was the first to receive a Carnegie grant, receiving $60,000 in 1889. Although many of the libraries have been demolished, this site includes photographs and short (250-word) descriptions of each. The date and amount of each grant is documented, as is the style of architecture and the architect. The site also features three essays: a 1,000-word history of the California library building boom; a 3,000-word analysis of the California Carnegie Libraries' different architectural styles; and a 2,000-word biography of Carnegie. Particular emphasis is paid to Carnegie's philanthropy, and the site points out that he donated money to 1,681 public libraries across the United States. The 144 library photographs are the only primary sources included on the site.

DocsTeach

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Screenshot, Lewis & Clark's Expedition to the Complex West, DocsTeach
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DocsTeach, a National Archives and Records Administration project, recognizes the need to bring primary sources into your classroom. To assist in the effort, NARA has pulled together thousands of primary sources, as well as a selection of pre-made activities and tools for building your own primary-source-centric activities.

Documents offers exactly what it sounds like it would—primary sources. The sources are divided into chronological categories—Revolution and the New Nation, Expansion and Reform, Civil War and Reconstruction, Development of the Industrial United States, Emergence of Modern America, Great Depression and World War II, Postwar United States, and Contemporary United States. Results can then be narrowed further by selecting audio/visual, charts/graphics/data, image, map, or written document. If you prefer, you can use a keyword search. All search results are shown with thumbnails to give you a small preview of the sources for your consideration.

Activities provides pre-made classroom activities. These require access to a computer, and are based on the same tools which the site provides for making your own activities. You can also sort them by historical thinking skill—chronological thinking, comprehension, analysis and interpretation, research capabilities, and issues-analysis and decision-making. Registering gives you access to a much larger collection, many of which are created by other educators. There is no registration cost.

If you're registered, consider making your own activity for use by yourself and others. There are tools which help students to create sequences, participate in analytical discussion, connect documents, geographically map documents, use documents to gain an understanding of the bigger picture, weigh evidence, and examine source context.

Take a moment to peruse the Teacher Resources as well. Here, you can find information on national history standards, using DocsTeach activities in the classroom, Bloom's taxonomy, and the National Council of Social Studies.

Read our Digital Classroom article on DocsTeach for more detailed information on using the site.

1939 World's Fair Photograph Collection

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Photo, "The Old Dominion's youngest M.F.H. " c. 1939
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For the Court of States exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce prepared a collection of albums containing more than 3,000 photographs on "twelve aspects of Virginia life: scenic tours; recreation; historic homes; culture; history; colonial archaeology; scenery and natural wonders; physiography; agriculture; education; government and the people; and industry, commerce, and transportation." These photographs are accessible according to 10 Library of Congress subject headings: geographic location, personal name, building name, historic subjects, and keywords appearing in bibliographic records. Useful for those interested in Virginia history or studying practices of historical memory.

Taking the Mystery out of Copyright

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Screenshot, Taking the Mystery out of Copyright
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Taking the Mystery out of Copyright provides a very brief introduction to copyright and the history of intellectual property. If you need anything beyond the very basics, unless you are interested in the major historical milestones leading to current copyright protection, this site probably will not meet your needs. However, if all you want to do is introduce the idea of copyright to very young students, you may find the site useful.

Visitors can select one of four sections. Copyright Exposed is a short animated video set to funk music which provides the basic idea that copyright "has got your back" when you produce a creative work. Files on Record provides a timeline of intellectual property history. Each milestone is accompanied by a primary source from the Library of Congress's collections. Here, you can read a few sentences on the Licensing Act of 1662 or the 1990 Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act. Reading the Fine Print offers two- to five-sentence answers on applications of copyright—protection of ideas, copyright on items you find, copyright on the Internet, when people can use your work without asking, the right to use a small sample of another work, and the reasons for registration. Steps to Copyright informs readers on how to register copyright (make something, fill out the form, pay the appropriate fee, and send nonreturnable copies).

Digital Archive of American Architecture

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Sears House, Boston, A. Parris, 1818
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Provides nearly 1,500 images of 280 architecturally significant American buildings from the colonial era to the present, compiled by Professor Jeffery Howe for classroom use. Images are arranged according to period, location, architect, building type, and style. The site offers examples of houses, churches, public buildings, commercial buildings, and skyscrapers. It includes images from three World's Fairs, as well as sections on urban planning and comparative materials. Professor Howe also has digitized images and text from two mid-19th century books on design and ornament. Although image annotations are minimal, in conjunction with other materials, the images in this site will be useful to those studying American architectural history and urban history.

Belgian-American Research Collection

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Photo, Alex Parins farm, Woman displaying lay of the bricks, 1976
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Designed to document the presence of Belgian immigrants in three Wisconsin counties, this site contains a variety of primary and secondary sources. Legal documents, diaries, letters, photographs, and oral histories are included, totaling some 1,500 resources. The site includes 400 architectural surveys, 54 oral histories (many given in Walloon, a primarily oral French patois spoken by generations of Belgian immigrants to Wisconsin), and approximately 500 pages of Immigration Histories.

The entire collection (with the exception of a few documents that have defied OCR translation) is searchable by keyword and can be browsed. This is a unique collection of primary sources, easily accessed, and usable by students, teachers, or researchers.

Boston Streets: Mapping Directory Data

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Photo, MacJannet student up a lamp post as Emory Foster, ca. 1930, 1930
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This website uses photographs, historical maps and atlases, and city directories to contextualize "the people, places, and events that have shaped the city from the years before the American Civil War through 20th-century urban renewal." The site has four exhibits, each accompanied by an introduction. Moments is a searchable collection of more than 2,500 historic maps and photographs that includes some of the earliest urban photography in the country. Places presents three historic atlases of the city, from 1874, 1898, and 1928. Each of the 94 plates in the atlases can be viewed individually. People offers nine city directories from 1845 to 1925 and five examples of how people's histories can be traced in the directories and how the directories can be combined with the images and maps from the site to "contextualize in time and place a single history or the history of millions."

Cowpaths allows users to plot information gathered from the images and directories on a map as an aid to tracing the history of the city and its people. Users can define their own data layers, query the data, and have results mapped on historical maps. An illustrated primer on how to use "Cowpaths" is available.

Each exhibit is individually searchable with basic or advanced searches. This site is a useful resource for those interested in the history of Boston and is also of interest to those studying urban history.