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 exhibit from the Library of Congress is dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the speech by Secretary of State George Marshall that led to the formation of the Economic Recovery Program [ERP] of United States economic aid to post-World War II Western Europe. The site features more than 30 documents, including photographs and cartoons from the Prints and Photographs Division and photographs, letters, memos, and printed material from the papers of Averell Harriman, the ERP special representative in Europe from 1948 to 1950. These materials, accompanied by brief commentary and a list of key dates, document the origins and effects of this successful international initiative. A useful introduction to the subject.

Using contemporary newspaper accounts, eyewitness testimonies, photographs, maps, drawings, and later texts, this site presents "narrative threads" linking the events leading up to John Brown's raid in 1859 on the Harper's Ferry arsenal to "the latent history of life in the two Shenandoah Valley towns of Staunton, Virginia, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania." Includes 13 issues of newspapers from the towns; five eyewitness accounts ranging from 2,500 to 9,800 words in length; 30 images of the Brown family members and conspirators; approximately 25 additional photos, published drawings, and maps; a brief listing of Brown's day-to-day movements during the latter half of 1859; and short biographical entries of up to 500 words on each conspirator. This site, parts of which are presently under construction, will be of special interest to teachers who want to use contemporary images and written accounts in their classes on Brown and abolitionism, and for those looking to investigate local history perspectives on events of national importance.

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.

Presents 108 sound recordings produced in the mid- to late 1890s by pioneer recording manufacturer and inventor Emile Berliner (1851-1929) as well as more than 400 additional items from the inventor's papers. Berliner, based in Washington, D.C., developed the microphone, the gramophone player, and the flat recording disc. The recordings on the site—each averaging about two minutes in length and available in Real Audio, MP3, and WAV formats—include Western music (band and orchestra, instrumentalists, popular music vocalists and vocal groups, classical and opera, and foreign language songs), spoken word selections (comedy, speeches, addresses), and a variety of ghost songs and dances of Native American peoples recorded by ethnologist James Mooney. Selections include Buffalo Bill Cody's "Sentiments on the Cuban Question," recorded in April 1898; John Philip Sousa's band; humorist Cal Stewart relating one of his popular "Uncle Josh" stories; and Victor Herbert's 22nd Regiment Band.

Most of the other items—articles, books, catalogs, clippings, correspondence, diaries, lectures, notes, pamphlets, patents, photographs, scrapbooks, and speeches—are from the 1870s to the early 1930s. Also includes a 23-title bibliography, links to eight related sites, a timeline, a family tree, and three informative essays (2,000-4,000 words) on Berliner's life, the history of the gramophone, and the Library's collection of Berliner recordings. A valuable site for those studying the beginnings of the recording industry, turn-of-the-century popular culture, and the milieu of American inventors in the period from the 1870s to the Great Depression.

This is a selection of some of the more than 4,300 items in the papers of conductor and composer Irving Fine (1900-1962). Material includes a 700-word biographical sketch and illustrated timeline of Fine's life. There are 57 photographs of Fine, including six with Aaron Copland, and six of Fine conducting at Tanglewood. Visitors may listen to the first and second movements of Fine's 1952 String Quartet, about eight minutes each, and may observe the composer at work by looking at five facsimiles of sketches for the score. These include a full 53-page score, a 43-page sketchbook, a 41-page pencil sketch, a 3-page draft of an incomplete and abandoned third movement, and a one-page row chart. A finding aid describes the rest of the collection, which includes personal and business correspondence, additional sketchbooks, press clippings, programs, and recordings. Visitors may search by keyword, browse photographs, or browse the five musical sketches. A bibliography lists seven articles by Fine, as well as two books, six articles, and seven dissertations about him. Useful for researchers interested in American classical music and cultural history.

Visitors can explore family life in Illinois from 1700 to the present in this site based on a 1992 museum exhibit. The site is divided into six time periods, each featuring biographical sketches providing "glimpses into the lifestyles and domestic situations of real people" at critical moments in Illinois and American history.

In addition, each period contains audio components; timelines; maps; examples of material culture; exercises comparing the lifestyles and experiences of various racial, ethnic, and economic groups; methodological explanations; and teaching aides such as grade-specific lesson plans, discussion ideas, classroom activities, and links to related sites.

Activities can be accessed at three levels of difficulty: Level I (grades 3-5), Level II (grades 6-9), and Level III (grades 10-12). A valuable resource for teachers interested in exposing students social history.

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.

Gilded Age Plains City: The Great Sheedy Murder Trial and the Booster Ethos of Lincoln, Nebraska tackles the issue of urban development through the lens of a nationally-followed murder case.

A document archive provides a rich variety of related primary sources—39 legal documents, 225 newspaper articles, 39 newspaper illustrations, 129 photographs, and 42 postcards. Documents range from items directly related to the Sheedy murder trial to sources depicting parts of the city or describing Lincoln culture and society.

One practice worth applauding on this site is it's loyalty to the concept of scaffolding. The first page offers links to vocabulary, an extensive list of Lincoln personages, and a similarly detailed timeline.

Selecting "Explore the City" brings up an introductory essay on Lincoln, Nebraska in the 1890s, as well as an interactive map. The map shows many buildings in red or yellow. Yellow buildings offer period images of the structure, as well as a description of its purpose. Red buildings only have the explanation. The most fascinating feature of the map is that it allows you to select a subsection of the city, such as "demimonde," "physician," "boosters," or "transportation." Each of these options alters the map so that only buildings within that particular subcategory are shown in red or yellow. This lets you see how food distribution and transportation, for example, are grouped in different parts of the city. Each subcategory also has an accompanying essay offering more on the social clime of 1890s Lincoln, Nebraska.

"Spatial Narratives" offers a series of texts on the location and nature of various city subcultures—practitioners of law, boosters, men, African Americans, women, the working class, and university students. Obviously, these subcultures overlapped both in body and in spatial terms within the city.

At this point, one might wonder where the Sheedy case comes into the picture. The third major site section "Interpretation and Narrative" introduces the murder. The narrative includes links to relevant newspaper articles.

Taken as a whole, the site is likely not particularly useful in the K-12 classroom. However, when used in pieces, it can be seen as an example of the ways in which cities develop, racial and moral tensions of the 1890s, or media "spin" of the period versus that of today.