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Specific Topics
Encyclopedia Titanica
“A comprehensive site about the RMS Titanic and its passengers and crew. Includes lists of passengers and crew, survivor stories, with biographies and pictures. Also includes passenger and crew lists of the Carpathia and the Californian, sheet music written about the Titanic with recordings, timeline, ship design, culture of the time, forum discussions, film clips and more. Site has many ads interspersed with the information.” [Middletown Thrall Library’s Impart Update Summer 2011]
Umbra Search African American History
685,857 items from more than 1,000 U.S. archives, libraries, and museums.
Timelines
Infoplease Timeline Archive
Infoplease offers timelines on World, Country, and United States History as well as topical timelines in categories such as Biography, Disasters, Sports, Entertainment, Society & Culture, and Health & Science. This webpage also offers access to the Inforplease 1900-2008 Year-by-Year search.
Web Chronologies
WebChron presents chronologies in outline form to show the relationship between long-term and short-term events and then interweaves chronologies to more readily see the relation between events in one field to events in another. Created for use in survey history courses, these chronologies are not intended to be exhaustive.
History Channel.com This Day in History
As many similar sites do, This Day in History shows the visitor major events on any selected day of the year. Rather than compile a long list of events, however, History Channel selects a few from a variety of subject areas and offers a short discussion of each event.
OurTimeLines.com
If you would like to see a more personal timeline, visit Our Timelines where you can create a timeline of historical events and add in a few of your own--your birthday, your wedding day, or the day you won a major award. You can also try the Peers and Contemporaries section and find our who was born the same year as you.
On This Day in History
Enter a date from 1800 to 2002 and click on Quick Page, and this website will generate a Time Capsule of headlines, birthdays, songs, books, and consumer prices for that date. (Check out the price of gasoline!) The Advanced Page features allows you to customize your page--including the option of adding your own personal information.
Timelines: Sources from History
"This British Library timeline allows you to explore collection items chronologically, from medieval times to the present day. It includes a diverse combination of texts: those that allow glimpses of everyday life (handbills, posters, letters, diaries), remnants of political events (charters, speeches, campaign leaflets), and the writings of some of our best known historical and literary figures. Launch the interactive Flash timeline above, or explore each of the historical sources in the centuries" [by clicking on any Century listed down the page]. From the British Library.
Primary Source History
Eyewitness to History
“Your ringside seat to history - from the Ancient World to the present. History through the eyes of those who lived it, presented by Ibis Communications, Inc. a digital publisher of educational programming.” Each article includes source information and clear “How to Cite” instructions.
Picture History
Picture History is an on-line archive of images and film footage illuminating more than 200 years of American history. Included in its holdings is the acclaimed Meserve-Kunhardt Collection of 19th century photography as well as thousands of images that have been researched and acquired by Kunhardt Productions for use in historical documentaries over the past fifteen years. Picture History is intended for the personal use of students, educators, scholars, and the general public curious about the past. High-resolution images and film footage are available for professional and personal licensing. Original photographs, limited editions, and unlimited editions of historical images, some signed by the photographer, are available for sale at the Picture History Store.
Making of America
Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA. Making of America is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
100 Milestone Documents
The following is a list of 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965.
Digital Collections
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an Internet library founded in 1996 with the purpose of offering permanent access to scholarly historical collections that exist in digital format. In late 1999, the library began to include more well-rounded collections, until now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in its many varied collections.
Visitors can search globally by keyword or by one format such as Moving Images or even more narrowly by one category under that medium such as Ephemeral Films or Sports Videos. Search for “Classic Television Commercials” for a nostalgic look at TV commercials from decades ago. Click on one of the media categories and you’ll find sub-collections and popular downloads to browse. The Education page offers Open Educational Resources and university lectures—a library containing hundreds of free courses, video lectures, and supplemental
Online Exhibitions
Library of Congress Online Exhibitions
The Library of Congress offers a wide variety of online materials, both text and images, from its enormous treasure trove of resources. Thile the exhibitions at the Library change over time, their on-line counterparts are still available through the LOC website. Here you can still explore "From the Home Front and the Front Lines" from the Veteran's History Project; "Stagestruck!: Performing Arts Caricatures at the LOC"; or "Bob Hope & American Variety." One exhibition, "The American Treasures of the Library of Congress," displays "the rarest, most interesting or significant items relating to America's past, drawn from every corner of the world's largest library." The exhibit at the library closed in 2007 but will remain a permanent online fixture of the Library's website.
