Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama have delivered 214 State of the Union addresses, some delivered orally and many more only written. This website makes the full text of all addresses available and fully searchable, and has done some innovative work text-mining these speeches to examine "changes in the language of the State of the Union address over the past 200 years."

A good place to begin is the website's Essay section, which gives a brief history of the State of the Union address, and describes some of the project's most interesting findings. The website's most prominent feature is a series of graphical representations of the most frequently used words in each address, which allows users to compare those words to those of any other speech.

Another tool allows users to compare the usage of two words in all addresses delivered. Comparing "war" and "peace," for example, reveals that these words have been used in 206 of the addresses, and that the word "war" alone has been used more than 2,600 times, compared to 1,821 usages for "peace."

This website presents nine "Digital Collections" containing more than 10,000 primary sources on many aspects of Wyoming's 19th and 20th-century history.

The Palen Collection contains more than 200 programs, news clippings, brochures, and photographs surrounding Cheyenne's Frontier Days and rodeos from around the state.

Those interested in the history of studio photography will be particularly interested in the close to 3,000 photographs from a studio in Laramie, WY, in the Ludvig Svenson collection.

The Richard Throssel collection contains more than 550 early 20th-century photographs of Native American life and culture.

Other highlights include a small collection of journals, manuscripts, photographs, and articles surrounding the life of writer Owen Wister and his travels in the West; close to 500 photographs and more than 4,000 documents relating to ranch life in Wyoming; and a collection of photographs of Roscoe Turner and the early history of aviation.

The website also presents two collections of research projects conducted by University of Wyoming undergraduates, as well as a collection entitled Digital Herbaria, which contains high-resolution photographs and data for 6,014 vascular plant specimens found in the Grand Teton National Park.

Teachers will be especially interested in the website's Teacher Resources section, which includes links to a substantial number of lesson plans emphasizing critical analysis of primary sources.

More than 40 historical census reports, including decennial reports dating back to 1790, are available for download on this website as PDFs. Historical statistics address topics such as population totals by race, urban or rural status, educational attainment, and means of transportation to work, among others.

There are also histories of the 21 U.S. census questionnaires produced from 1790 to 2000, including instructions to census marshals dating back to 1820. Comparative tables show which censuses included specific questions on subjects, such as ancestry and mental disabilities, and whether respondents were deaf, blind, insane, feeble-minded, paupers, literate, or convicts. Additional information includes state and territorial censuses, mortality schedules produced for a number of 19th-century censuses, population at the time of each census, and supplemental censuses taken at various times on free and slave inhabitants, Indian populations, unemployment, and housing.

Because of the PDF format, the reports take a number of minutes to download. These materials are useful for those needing demographic information or researching the history of census taking and the development of census categories.

Beginning in 1919, the Virginia War History Commission compiled more than 14,900 surveys of World War I veterans in Virginia. Images of these four-page questionnaires—with additional material submitted by veterans or family members, including 1,046 photographs—have been digitized and made accessible on this site. The surveys provide basic demographic information on the soldiers and their families, as well as details of their war records, including descriptions of engagements, citations, injuries, and deaths.

In addition, the last page of the survey poses questions regarding the effect of the war and military service on states of mind and religious beliefs, as well as effects of disabilities on employment after the war. A valuable source for historians and students researching military history and the war experience.

Provides two exhibits on black history in Hartford, CT. "A Struggle from the Start" charts stages in the life of the Hartford African-American community from 1638 to 1920. Structured in five chronological sections, each with three-to-four thematic subsections, a text of 21,000 words is punctuated with approximately 60 images of documents, photographs, illustrations, newspaper clippings, tables, paintings, and maps. This exhibit covers slavery, black codes, free blacks, Black governors in the early Republic period, black soldiers, the black bourgeoisie, the formation of the black community, black labor, black society, black churches, the "Talented Tenth" in Hartford, black painters Charles Ethan Porter and Holdridge Primus, black migration from the South, mass politics, and black community institutions. A second exhibit presents approximately 80 photographs from Hartford's African-American community covering the years 1870 to the 1970s. Valuable for those interested in studying African-American history from a community perspective.

This site offers downloadable raw data and documentation on 11 topics related to the 18th- and 19th-century slave trade, including records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas 1817-1843, the 18th-century Virginia slave trade, and slave trade to Jamaica 1782-1788 and 1805-1808. Data sets contain information such as port of departure, vessel and owner information, number of slaves carried, origins of slaves, and ports of arrival.

Each data set includes a 250-word description explaining bibliographic information, file inventory, and methodology, as well as a codebook that guides users in reading the data. The data is provided without analysis, and the site carries a warning that data analysis is tedious, time-consuming work that requires specialized data sorting software. The site would be particularly useful in controlled assignments for college-level survey or advanced high school students' research into slavery and the slave trade.

Within this site—designed primarily to aide social science researchers and analysts to construct large quantitative studies that can produce analytic results quickly—historians can find studies of importance relating to trends and shifts in American attitudes and opinions. The site presents 12 surveys on race and politics, Italian prejudice, health issues, and voter attitudes since 1952, among other topics.

Perhaps the most useful to historians of the late 20th century will be the General Social Survey, an "almost annual" study since 1972 that has interviewed U.S. households to produce a set of variables covering attitudes on an eclectic range of topics—from abortion to zodiac signs—that have been chosen by experts as "strategic for social science research" and related to public policy. Since 1982, surveys in other countries have replicated questions so that cross-national analyses may be achieved.

Includes data on beliefs concerning welfare, free speech, gun control, class structure, pornography, race, media exposure, working mothers, and women's rights, among other topics. Contains links to eight additional sites that use SDA. Valuable for those studying American social history.

Presents statistic tables showing trends in crime and law enforcement operations at state, local, and national levels. Users can find tendencies in types of crimes, types of victims, and types of weapons based on figures voluntarily reported to the FBI by state law enforcement agencies from 1960-1999, and by local agencies from 1985. In addition, statistics concerning law enforcement operations for states and large local agencies are searchable according to variables such as demographic composition of police forces, function, salary, and employment and training requirements. Valuable for those studying American social history, urban history, and human geography, in addition to students of the U.S. criminal justice system.

This site features an online selection of Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide (1889–1939) and the Official Indoor Base Ball Guide (1903–1926). The collection reproduces 35 of the guides, which were published by the Spalding Athletic Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The guides featured statistics, photographs, editorials from baseball writers on the state of the game, and analysis of the previous season for all the Major League teams and for many of the so-called minor leagues across the nation.

Highlights include a host of World Series statistics. For example, the 1939 World Series saw attendance of 200,833 in four games. Total receipts totaled $851,168, and each member of the winning New York team received $5,782.76, while members of the runner-up Chicago team received $4,674.86.

Visitors can access the full text of each edition. The collection is searchable by keyword and browsable by title. Of interest to sports historians or historians of leisure or American culture.

An introduction to Seneca Village, a multi-ethnic community of African Americans and Irish and German immigrants destroyed by New York city officials in 1857 to clear land for Central Park.

Through a selection of materials, currently limited to maps, images, and secondary essays, the site furnishes background on both Seneca Village and Central Park more generally. Also suggests "classroom activities" and provides a list of 63 related titles.

Based on The Park and the People—an award-winning history of Central Park by Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar—the site promises to expand significantly (but, as of October 2000 had not changed significantly from when it was launched a few years earlier). "Primary documents will include the New York State Manuscript Census for 1855; birth and death records; church registers and records; newspaper articles; political cartoons, drawings, illustrations, photographs, and maps. Many of these will be interactive, so that students can query the data directly. "