Representing the collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, this archive features records for more than 660,000 artifacts, ranging from sources worldwide.

Visitors may browse objects by featured collection or theme (themes include California/Nevada baskets, animals, faces, feathers, hair and makeup, and more) or by collection highlights (featuring notable artifacts divided into sections by geography). Under "Highlights by Section," visitors may also choose "Physical Anthropology" to explore the museum's collection of human and primate remains. A downloadable PDF (30 pages) introduces this section. (Note: access to the searchable database for the physical anthropology collection was not available at the time of this review.)

Visitors may search the collections by keyword, object name/description, museum object number, period, place name, culture, maker, donor, and material/technique. Individual object records may include culture, country of origin, date created, media and techniques used, a two- to three-sentence description, and enlargeable images (if available).

Click "Add to My Finds" on an object's record page to add an object to a customizable list of bookmarked items, accessed by clicking the "My Finds" tab at the top right of the page. Collections of "finds" may be rearranged by dragging and dropping; click "Save/Share My Finds" to store a collection at a unique URL that may be revisited later and shared with others.

This is a useful site for exploring material culture. U.S. history teachers will find the Native American artifacts recovered on archaeological and ethnographic collecting expeditions particularly relevant. The lack of substantial annotations may make some artifacts difficult to contextualize. (Note that the museum specifically allows teachers to use images from the collection in their classrooms or on nonprofit educational websites.)

Textbooks often present a quick, uncomplicated overview of Reconstruction—a vast oversimplification of a time of social upheaval, tension, and violence. After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas, a joint project of Queen's University Belfast, the University of Memphis, and the University of London, provides primary sources that take a closer look at the time period.

Focusing on the themes of labor, race, and citizenship, After Slavery presents sources from North and South Carolina as examples of trends nationwide. A 2,500-word Introduction explores Reconstruction and the rationale for choosing the Carolinas as the project's focus. About the Project explains the structure and rationale behind the website's learning units.

The Learning Units form the heart of the site. Ten units cover topics including emancipation, mobilization, land and labor, black soldiers, conservative reactions, justice, gender, poverty and white supremacy, coercion and resistance, and the Republican Party. Each unit includes a 400-word introduction and six or more primary documents with three to eight discussion questions each. Units can be viewed online or downloaded as PDFs. An introductory essay explains the mission behind creation of the units, and Recommended Reading lists more than 80 books, 50 articles, and 15 primary sources.

As of December 7, 2012, other materials on the site are still content-light. Interactive Maps uses Google Maps to pinpoint only two events—the Hamburg Massacre and the Cainhoy Riot—with five to seven subevents included in each, as well as five-item lists of related sources.

Interactive Timelines includes three timelines with one-sentence descriptions on each item. Timelines look at general Reconstruction history as well as Reconstruction in North and South Carolina. Teacher Resources currently features links to more than 30 digital collections and exhibits, research tools, military records, audiovisual resources, and more. The section notes that lesson plans will be added in the future.

A valuable resource for teachers looking to complicate the textbook narrative on Reconstruction, and for teachers covering North or South Carolina history.

In this online exhibition from the Library of Congress you will find three primary source documents—the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—along with more than 350 other related sources including laws, acts, essays, letters, political cartoons, and more. The exhibit displays images of the documents in their original and in interactive forms.

Each of the three major documents appears on the home page. Clicking on a link that begins "Read more about the history of..." takes you to a collection of short (1-2 paragraph) essays on steps in the process of creating the document, with each step accompanied by related primary sources. By clicking on a link that begins “View all items from Creating the...” you are taken to a page where you can view all the available documents related to the major document.

Rather than presenting the documents as works that spontaneously came about, this site can be used to teach and learn about the steps that led to the writing of the documents. For example, if you are interested in documents that were written prior to the U.S. Constitution, you can find more than 50 primary sources related to and predating the U.S. Constitution, including the Articles of Confederation and Thomas Jefferson writing on black education. If you are overwhelmed by the number of sources, you can create a free myLoC account where you can download, save, and store the documents you are interested in.

The best part of the website is that you can interact with the documents, completely dissecting them. (In order to interact fully with the documents you need Microsoft Silverlight, free to download on the site.) Clicking on “Interactives” in the menu at the top of the screen takes you to the interactive documents. Once you choose a document, the screen splits in two; on the left an explanatory text overview appears and on the right the original handwritten primary source. By clicking the “Explore” icon and then "Show Themes" on the right-hand side, you can explore the many themes of the primary source. For example, if you click on "Explore" and "Show Themes," the exhibit highlights parts of the document related to “The Pursuit of Happiness,” "Consent of the Governed," or three other themes. Click on a section marked with "The Pursuit of Happiness" on the Declaration of Independence, and you will see an overview/explanation of the idea on the left. Then you have the option of clicking “Where does this idea come from?” Clicking on that brings up documents that are related to the theme, such as Two Treatises of Government by John Locke, with the related passage in each highlighted.

Clicking on "Explore" also lets you click on "Transcribe." "Transcribe" pops up a window that you can drag over the primary source. The window shows a transcription of the handwritten text beneath it, including any changes the writer made to the document.

Teachers as well as students in grades 6-12 will find this website useful in learning about the history of each of the three major primary sources and about where the ideas in these documents come from.

Teachinghistory.org Teacher Representative Karla Galdamez wrote this Website Review. Learn more about our Teacher Representatives.

American Turning Point is an online companion to a Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission exhibit examining the events and impact of the Civil War within the state of Virginia. The travel schedule may permit you to plan a field trip for your class to see the physical exhibit. If not, explore the website (or visit and use the website to reinforce the experience).

Characters gives faces to some of the people who lived through the war in Virginia, while Objects provides access to digital collections and curated items such as weapons, portraits, prints, military orders, and a pocket watch. Virginia Home Front divides the state into federal occupation, no-man's-land, Confederate Virginia, and the Confederate frontier. Each is mapped, and can be selected for additional information including personal accounts from the Civil War period.

Another section, Resources, is similarly worth exploring. The page offers links to lectures, websites, and articles on the Civil War and Civil War collections. The teacher resources largely consist of traveling trunks and outreach programming. Finally, if you're interested in the Confederate capital, consider listening to more than 10 one-minute history audio programs on Richmond.

During the Civil War, the Survey of the Coast found a new purpose—preparing secret reports on the waters along the Atlantic seaboard to improve Union blockades. This website collects and shares materials from the United States Coast Survey, 1861 through 1865.

You can, for example, read any of nine Notes on the Coast of the United States, prepared by the Blockade Strategy Board. These detail sailing conditions and geography for use by Union captains and generals. Summaries, located under the "Documents" heading, cover the process of creating these lengthy reports.

Additional features include a brief biography of Alexander Dallas Bache, U.S. Coast Survey supervisor; an 1861 map showing slave population density; short overviews of some of the other members of the survey team during the Civil War; and a 33-page PDF concerning the history of the Coast Survey between 1843 and 1867. The PDF contains several maps and photographs.

Using the search box on the main page will retrieve Civil War-era maps of cities, camps, works, battlefields, and more.

This website gathers together documents concerning the history of National Park Service properties.

Navigation is simple. Just select your park of interest from the drop-down list, and you will be brought to a list of all of the available documents for that particular location. Documents include structure reports, administrative histories, physical and cultural landscape reports, studies of historic resources available, management regulations, conference proceedings, notes, and more.

Note that these resources largely explore the history of preserving a historical site, rather than the importance of the site itself. This is the history of making history public. The documents are most likely to be of use in the later grades, as they lean towards official language. However, there are also images such as floor plans and photographs within documents which may be of use when introducing a park into your discussions.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 website covers precisely what it sounds as if it would—the famed debates between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

Navigation is simple, divided into sections by primary source type. Debate Text from Nicolay and Hay< includes "transcriptions" of the debates recreated by two of Lincoln's secretaries circa 1894, as well as debate-related publications by the same two individuals. The transcriptions are based on Lincoln's own writings and newspaper accounts of the debates. Debate Text from Newspapers provides links to newspaper versions of the debate. The website notes that newspapers were affiliated with a political party, and that it can be intriguing to compare Democratic and Republican accounts of the same speech. Debate Commentary from Newspapers is similar to the newspaper debate text section except that it covers period observations on the debates rather than the words spoken.

Additional sections contain video commentary on the debates, maps, relevant images, and two lesson plans. Note that the lesson plans do not specify appropriate grade levels.