Club Kaycee, Golden Age of Kansas City Jazz

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Photo, Lester Young
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These 43 audio files present Kansas City jazz recordings that span the years 1906–1954. Most were recorded during the city's "Golden Age"—from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. Provides 100- to 500-word profiles on 28 jazz artists including Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Big Joe Turner, Benny Moten, and Andy Kirk.

Also includes a 1,700-word article on the 18th and Vine district, "internationally recognized as one of the cradles of jazz"; a 1,500-word article on the first Kansas City jazz band to become known nationwide in the 1920s, the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawks Orchestra; shorter essays on Kansas City clubs and nightspots; a 26-title annotated bibliography; and a 45-title discography. Small photos of people and places accompany some of the essays. A good introduction to this important center of jazz creation that will be of interest not only to jazz aficionados, but to those studying 20th-century urban and cultural history.

Perfessor Bill Edwards Ragtime/Old-time Piano Gallery

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Sheet music cover, Chow Chow Rag, Andre C. De Takacs, 1909
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Provides more than 300 musical selections and sheet music covers, in addition to essays on ragtime music and related subjects. Music available as MIDI files, performed by site creator Bill Edwards, a professional musician and collector. Selections include descriptive annotations from 200 to 600 words, and many include lyrics. Biographical essays of 100-800 words each on 26 composers, including Scott Joplin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Artie Matthews, and Eubie Blake. Longer essays (2,000-6,000 words) on the histories of ragtime music, player pianos, sheet music cover art, and technique tips for playing ragtime. A section on ragtime nostalgia provides information on people, inventions, events, advertising, city life, and rural life during the ragtime era. Provides annotated links to approximately 80 related sites and a bibliography of 17 titles. Valuable to those studying music history and turn-of-the-century American culture.

Democracy in America: Alexis de Tocqueville

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Map, Tocqueville's America
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A product of the American Studies program at the University of Virginia, this site attempts to "construct a virtual American ca. 1831-32"—the period that Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States—in order to illuminate Democracy in America, his classic examination of political and social life in the young nation. The book is still regarded by some scholars as the greatest ever written about the United States.

The site presents a hypertext version of the book—one translation among many—accompanied by 13 projects on topics such as Tocqueville's sources and the 1840 Census, race relations, fashion, religion, women, art, navigation, and humor. These projects are uneven in quality, though a few—such as the navigation projects—provide useful primary material and worthwhile background texts. Overall, the character of the site seems somewhat ad hoc.

New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939

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Photo, New York production of "Macbeth," 1936
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Offers more than 13,000 images of items relating to the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal program designed to provide work for unemployed theater professionals. The collection contains 71 playscripts and 168 documents from the FTP's Administration Records. Extensive materials, including photographs, scripts, posters, and set and costume designs, have been selected from three significant productions: Macbeth and The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus, directed by Orson Welles, and Arthur Arent's Power, an example of the Project's innovative "Living Newspaper" series of topical plays. The site includes a 3,500-word background essay, as well as four illustrated articles about the Project. A FTP Collection finding aid describing more than 525,000 offline items may be downloaded, but is not currently searchable.

Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words

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Mezzotint, Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia, 1763, Edward Fisher, LoC
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This exhibition "indicates the depth and breadth of Franklin's public, professional, and scientific accomplishments," offering documents, letters, books, broadsides, and cartoons. Eight sections exploring periods or aspects of Franklin's life are focused around items from the Library's collections with accompanying explanatory text.

Topics include Franklin's role in events prior to the Revolution, his role in the Continental Congress, his role as a diplomat in Paris and in negotiating the Treaty of Paris, his role in the early republic as President of Pennsylvania and delegate to the Constitutional Convention, his life as a scientist and inventor, and his activities as a printer and writer. There are more than 60 documents and other items available in the exhibition. There is also a Benjamin Franklin chronology from 1706 to 1790, a bibliography with 11 books and seven books for young readers, and four links to related websites. A good starting point for researching Franklin's life or the political and diplomatic history of colonial America or the early United States.

Florida Folklife Collection

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Photo, Tampa tobacco industry, 1920s, Florida Folklife Collection
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This extensive archive offers more than 10,300 photographs of Florida folklife from the 1930s through 2001. The archive can be browsed or searched by keyword. The site also makes available 17 interviews with folklorists and folk artists and 24 recordings of performances by Florida blues, gospel, shape-note, and folk singers. Additionally there are also 10 "voices of Florida" collections that include recordings of performances by or interviews with folk musicians, crafters, storytellers, and folklife interpreters on subjects such as children's lore, religious traditions, Seminole culture, maritime traditions, ethnic folk culture, material culture, and occupational lore. There are also 29 brief profiles of prominent Florida folklorists.

For teachers, the site offers five educational units that offer a history section with an interview, documents and audio, photographs, and lesson plans. Unit subjects include Zora Neale Hurston's 1939 recording expedition to the turpentine camps in Cross City, the history and practices of the net-making trade, the tradition of white oak basket making, and Seminole doll making. The visitor can also search the full catalog of photos and audio recordings (46,000 photographs and 5,000 audio recordings). Also available are five film clips from early Florida Folk Festivals and the Florida Folk Arts Conference. And the website provides 30 links to related websites on folklife programs and collections.

Virtual Museum and Archive of the SEC and Securities History

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Photo, Placing Orders, Early 1920s, Library of Congress
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This archive and virtual museum offers papers, photographs, and oral histories on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its role in U.S. and international markets from 1929 to the present. There are 742 papers, reports, letters, notes, memoranda, transcripts of Congressional subcommittee hearings, and other documents organized chronologically by decade. Also available are 761 photographs arranged alphabetically. These include portraits, group photos, and photos of important events in the history of the SEC. There are edited transcripts and audio recordings of 33 oral history interviews and seven SEC roundtable discussions (some include essays and video). An interactive timeline allows visitors to explore important events in the history of the SEC.

A galleries section combines text and images in narratives exploring themes or important periods in the SEC's history. Each includes an introductory essay by the exhibit curator and primary materials, including papers, images or video clips, and oral histories. There are edited transcripts and audio of 21 original programs broadcast from the site as well as links to 38 related websites. Search is limited to keyword searches across the entire site. This site provides useful resources for studying the history of business and is an excellent starting point for those interested in the history of the SEC or those studying the history of business, businesspeople, or corporations

Automobile in American Life and Society

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Hartford Auto-Jack advertisement, 1911, Automobile in American. . . site
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This website was designed as an academic resource for courses focused on the automobile and the automobile industry. Each section—design, environment, gender, labor, and race—has a short introduction and two illustrated scholarly essays (often including annotated bibliographies). The complete text of each essay can be viewed in a separate window and each essay is accompanied by a student and teacher resources section with one or more questions for reading, discussion, writing, and research, as well as questions making connections between the essays. "Design" also offers a list of 110 "automotive oral histories" available in the Benson Ford research center, but only 17 are available on the site. Visitors can search the site by keyword but no advanced search is available. This site is a useful resource for students and educators studying the role of the automobile in American culture and society.

California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties

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Photo, John Stone playing fiddle, 1939
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This site features 35 hours of folk and popular music sound recordings from several European, Slavic, Middle Eastern, and English- and Spanish-speaking communities. The Work Projects Administration California Folk Music Project collected these 817 songs, in 12 languages and representing 185 musicians, in Northern California between 1938 and 1940. The collection also includes 168 photographs of musicians, 45 scale drawings and sketches of instruments, and numerous written documents, including ethnographic field reports and notes, song transcriptions, published articles, and project correspondence.

Organized by folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell, sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, and cosponsored by the Archive of the American Folk Song, this was one of the earliest ethnographic field projects to document folk and popular music of such diverse origin in one region. In addition to folk music of indigenous and immigrant groups, the collection includes popular songs from the Gold Rush and Barbary Coast eras, medicine show tunes, and ragtime numbers. In addition, short essays describe the California Folk Music Project and the ethnographic work of Sidney Robertson Cowell. This collection is an excellent resource for learning about ethnographic research practices as well as about cultures of various California ethnic groups.

Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923

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Image for Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923
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A selection of more than 16,000 items relating to the performing arts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is offered on this website. Materials include books, clippings, photographs, drawings, music, manuscripts, moving images, posters and lobby cards, programs, and recorded sound.

Diverse types of material on specific performers—such as Ruth St. Denis, Loie Fuller, and Isadora Duncan—have been selected to allow focused study. More than 2,400 entries are available for photographs (entries often contain multiple images) as well as 21 large format clippings scrapbooks, each with more than 100 pages. The website also presents 16 full-text books and video clips from nine early motion pictures, including a nine-minute clip featuring renowned dancer Anna Pavlowa in Lois Weber's The Dumb Girl of Portici (1914).