Encyclopedia of Alabama aharmon Fri, 09/09/2011 - 22:07
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Photo, Mobile 1932, Erik Overbey, University of South Alabama Archives
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If you're looking for information on Alabama, you've found a good place to start. This website is a compilation of informative articles on the state of Alabama—current and historical information.

To access the articles, you can choose a category subset (agriculture, arts and literature, business and industry, education, folklife, geography and environment, government and politics, history, peoples, religion, science and technology, or sports and recreation), and browse. Another option is to select "indexes" from the main menu, and then choose another means of browsing (titles, authors, people, places, events, or organizations). As of the time of writing, the encyclopedia offers 1,400 entries, and new articles are added weekly.

Other sections worth exploring on the site include "features" which groups together articles on Alabama musicians and "galleries" where you can find image collections of John Kelly Fitzpatrick and Dale Kennington's paintings, photos by Erik Overbey and Mary Morgan Keipp, Magnolia Cemetery, the Ava Maria Grotto, folk pottery, barbecue, and far more.

Don't forget to explore the Beta version of the For Teacher's Section. Here, you will discover a wide variety of articles organized in accordance with Alabama teaching standards.

Labor Arts

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Lithograph, "John Henry," William Gropper, Between 1897 and 1977
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A modestly-sized exhibition of visual materials from a variety of labor-related organizations that focuses on ways in which artists and others have celebrated working people and labor unions in 20th-century America. Includes 44 photographs, 19 images of leaflets and pamphlets, 13 buttons, badges, and ribbons, 25 examples of cartoon art, eight songbook and sheet music covers, six images from murals, and nine covers from the journal Labor Defender. Covers themes of workers at work, strikes, parades, demonstrations, and the civil rights movement. Provides exhibits on original art depicting labor, the New York City "culture of solidarity," and the early struggles of the Hotel and Motel Trades Council. Materials are identified with short descriptions of up to 100 words. Offers links to 61 related sites. Useful for those studying political uses of visual culture in 20th-century America.

Bisbee Deportation of 1917

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Logo, Bisbee Deportation of 1917
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In 1917, a labor dispute between copper mining companies and workers in Bisbee, Arizona, escalated into vigilante action against suspected members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This site provides primary and secondary sources on the strike and subsequent deportation of over 1000 striking miners from Bisbee. It offers a roughly 500-word essay on the incident's historical context, and provides online access to materials such as personal narratives, witness interviews, government reports, newspaper articles, correspondence, and images selected from the University of Arizona Library, the Arizona Historical Society, and the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, Arizona. There are 26 mining and deportation photographs, three maps, 19 IWW publications with color images of the covers, and six images of IWW stickers on the site, along with a bibliography of 34 scholarly works, 11 of which offer links to online, full-text versions. The site provides a partial finding aid that lists items with links to the document texts featured on the site. The site is ideal for studying labor action and labor/management relations in the early 20th century.

Brooklyn's Eighteenth-Century Lott House jmccartney Wed, 10/07/2009 - 15:00
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Photo, The Lott House
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An archaeological exploration of a farmhouse built in early 18th-century Brooklyn that allows visitors to participate in a "virtual dig" to examine artifacts and documents relating to the lives of a Dutch family and their descendants. Chronicles the work done by Brooklyn College archaeologists and students, who have turned up evidence of slave rituals that originated in Africa and the existence of a secret garret room believed to have been used to hide slaves as part of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s. Provides family documents, including wills, probates, and deeds; oral histories of family members (including one audio file); old family recipes; field notes; student journals; an analysis of animal remains; a lesson in stratigraphy (study of rock strata); and approximately 30 photographs. Valuable for those studying family history and the use of material culture in determining ways of life in earlier periods of time. Links to The Lott House Restoration Project, which provides a tour of the house and additional information about the Lott family.

IWitness aharmon Tue, 02/28/2012 - 16:37
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Film still, Ellis Lewin, 4 December 1996, IWitness
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IWitness is an incredible resource for educators intent on bringing awareness and analysis of the Holocaust to their classroom. The site offers more than 1,000 video testimony clips from Holocaust survivors, liberators, and others. These videos can be browsed by topic (from "Anti-Jewish Laws" to "Warsaw Ghetto Uprising") or searched by name or topic. Searching provides a few benefits for lesson planning. For one, video search results will play the portion of a clip containing information related to your search, making it easy to decide if the result is actually relevant to your classroom plans. In addition, searches may reveal related materials such as photographs of artifacts in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum collection or encyclopedia articles providing additional information and context.

You can also register as an educator or a student. Educators can assign activities and view student work (only viewable by the specific student and the teacher). Students can watch videos on items such as understanding testimony and archives or editing video interviews in an ethical manner. Activities that call for video editing allow students to save clips into a library for future use in their projects and prepare their own videos using video-editing tools which are part of the website—no download needed.

For a quick introduction to the site, consider watching the six-minute demonstration video linked at the top of the About Us page.

Interested in learning more about IWitness? Read teacher Brandon Haas's Tech for Teachers article.

Online Archive of California Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/25/2008 - 22:21
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Photo, Joseph Sharp, 1849 gold miner of Sharp's Flats, Online Archive of CA
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This archive provides more than 81,000 images and 1,000 texts on the history and culture of California. Images may be searched by keyword or browsed according to six categories: history, nature, people, places, society, and technology. Topics include exploration, Native Americans, gold rushes, and California events.

Three collections of texts are also available. Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive furnishes 309 documents and 67 oral histories. Free Speech Movement: Student Protest, U.C. Berkeley, 1964–1965 provides 541 documents, including books, letters, press releases, oral histories, photographs, and trial transcripts.

UC Berkeley Regional Oral History Office offers full-text transcripts of 139 interviews organized into 14 topics including agriculture, arts, California government, society and family life, wine industry, disability rights, Earl Warren, Jewish community leaders, medicine (including AIDS), suffragists, and UC Black alumni.

Japanese American National Museum Collections

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Drawing, Playing Go K5-BA, 8-24-42, George Hoshida, Japanese American Nat. Muse.
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This site provides access to the digitized resources of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Collections include more than 300 letters sent to Clara Breed, a San Diego librarian, by her former patrons after their relocation to internment camps; panoramic photos from Buddhist Churches of America events; artwork by Hideo Date, Hisako Hibi, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugomoto, and Benji Okubo; the diary of Stanley Hayami, a high school student during the internment years, later killed in combat at age 19; sketches and watercolors from the diary of George Hoshida; photographs of Manzanar and Tule Lake by Jack Iwata, as well as other photographs of daily life in the internment camps; a major collection of issei immigrant artifacts and plantation clothing; and photographs for the Rafu Shimpo, one of the oldest Japanese American newspapers in the U.S.

This is an excellent source for anyone seeking primary sources related to Japanese American experience in the U.S., particularly with an emphasis on the years of internment.

Gold Rush!

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Painting, Sunday Morning in the Mines, Charles Nahl
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In commemoration of the 1848 California Gold Rush, the Oakland Museum opened a series of exhibitions and created this online companion site. Sponsored by Kaiser Permanente, this virtual tour of the museum's exhibition offers an extensive (roughly 5,000-word) narrative of the Gold Rush and its history, illustrated with over 50 images of posters, photographs, artifacts, and art related to the Gold Rush. Three audio narratives discuss details of the discovery of gold and the resulting massive westward migration. Also included on the site are 28 images of artwork and 22 photographs of related subjects.

Site visitors can explore the experiences of Chinese, Latino/Californio, Native American, and African American peoples who participated in the Rush. Links to three curriculum sites and sample curriculum materials are available for grades 4, 5, 8, and 11; five curriculum units and 18 lesson plans can be purchased from the museum. The site is ideal for researching California history and westward expansion.

A More Perfect Union

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Photo, Tule Lake renunciant, November 23, 1945
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Based on a 1987 Smithsonian exhibition, this site allows visitors to click and drag through sections of text, music, personal accounts, and images that tell stories of the forced—and ultimately determined to be unconstitutional—internment during World War II of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Also provides searching capabilities to retrieve images of more than 800 artifacts relating to the lives of those interned.

Sections in the narrative cover immigration, removal, internment, loyalty, service, and justice. Provides a 5,000-word audio file of interview excerpts; 6,400-word accompanying text from the 1994 traveling exhibition; annotated timeline; 72-title bibliography; 20 links to related sites; and two classroom activities. Also invites visitors to share their responses and to read those of others. Of value to students of Asian American history, the homefront during World War II, and constitutional issues.

Maryland Historical Society Collections Online

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Painted tin hat shield, Maryland Historical Society, 1940.23.1
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The Maryland Historical Society owns millions of objects which could be key to bringing history to life for your class. A growing number of these items can be found in their digital collections.

The collections can be searched by title, creator, individual collection, or subject. At the time of writing, there are nine collections—the American Civil War; War of 1812; Paintings; African American History; Women's History; Mining the Museum (items on exhibit); Benjamin Henry Latrobe, an architect known for design the U.S. Capitol and the Baltimore Basilica; and works on paper. Artifacts include photographic images, engravings, broadsides, handwritten documents, a flag, a shadowbox, a knife, sketches, clothing, paintings, swords, a shield, a canteen, and more.

The original handwritten version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" may be of particular interest.