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Databases for history and culture research.

• General History andCulture Resources

Historic Newspaper Resources

• Biography and Genealogy Resources

This list highlights some of the history and culture databases available to researchers from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. A complete listing of electronic resources is located on the Libraries and Archives'  E-journals, E-books, and Databases . Databases that require SI network for access are indicated by "SI staff." For information about remote access see  Off-Site Access to Electronic Resources​ .

General History and Culture Resources

• Archives Unbound  (SI Staff): Presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries  (SI Staff): Contains  over 2,000 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs, presenting viewpoints and first-hand accounts from people on both sides of the conflict.
• Gale Cengage Databases  (SI Staff): Search across more than 30 Gale databases at the same time, including American and foreign newspapers (some historical, some current), as well as a variety of U.S. and international history sources.
• JSTOR  (SI Staff): Full-text searchable articles from more than 500 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, economics and politics, mathematics and other fields of study. 
• North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories  (SI Staff):  Includes over 2,100 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950.
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries  (SI Staff):  I ncludes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
• Project Muse  (SI Staff): Provides full-text access to hundreds of high quality, peer-reviewed journals from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies, covering a wide variety of disciplines.
• ProQuest  (SI Staff): Search across all available ProQuest different databases at once or select specific ones to search, including American Periodicals, Ethnic NewsWatch, Women's Magazine Archive, and historical newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times , Los Angeles Times , and Chicago Defender .
• Smithsonian Collections Online (Gale Cengage) (SI Staff):  Online archive of  Smithsonian  and Air & Space Magazine  issues, as well as online access to selected trade catalogs and World's Fair materials from Smithsonian collections.
• African American Newspapers (1827-1998)   (SI Staff) :  Covers life in the Antebellum South through the Civil Rights movement and more.
• Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers :  This resource from the Library of Congress lets you search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1924 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
• Ethnic NewsWatch   (SI Staff) :  Coverage: 1959-present. Included are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
• Google News Archive :  A list of U.S. and foreign digitized newspapers, arranged alphabetically by title. Coverage varies widely.
• Harper's Weekly 1857-1912   (SI Staff) :  America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper.
• Atlanta Constitution   (SI Staff) :  Coverage: 1868- 1984
• Atlanta Daily World   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1931- 2010
• Baltimore Afro-American   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1893- 1988
• Boston Globe   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1872- 1989
• Chicago Defender   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1909- 2010
• Chicago Tribune   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1849- 1997
• Hartford Courant   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1764- 1995
• Los Angeles Times   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1881- 1996
• New York Amsterdam News   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1922- 1993
• New York Times   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1851- 2017
• New York Tribune   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1841- 1922
• Pittsburgh Courier   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1911- 2010
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1874- 1922
• Washington Post   (SI Staff) :   Coverage: 1877-2004 (Smithsonian employees can register for a free current digital subscription at  https://wapo.st/34iLbRs )
• Wikipedia List of Online Newspaper Archives :   A listing of both free and pay wall blocked digital newspaper archives from the U.S. and foreign countries.

Biography and Genealogy Resources

• Ancestry Library Edition  (SI Staff): Powered by Ancestry.com, this resource offers access to billions of records for genealogical research.
• American National Biography Online  (SI Staff): Offers portraits of more than 19,000 men and women, from all eras and walks of life, whose lives have shaped the nation. 
• Biography and Genealogy Master Index  (SI Staff):   Indexes current, easily accessible references sources to help find biographical material on people from all time periods, geographic locations, and fields of endeavor.
•   FamilySearch : For over 100 years, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide.
•   Fold3  (SI Staff): Provides access to military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents of the men and women who served. Also includes some census records and selected other non-military materials.

The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet.

Don’t Blame Billy the Kid’s Mom for His Outlaw Lifestyle—He Was Always Going to Be Bad

Catherine McCarty Antrim did all she could to protect and raise both of her sons—Billy, the future outlaw, and Joe, the future forgotten brother.

Killer Instinct: How One Man Taught U.S. Rangers to Fight Dirty in WWII

How This Subterranean Logistics Base in Afghanistan Bedeviled Soviet Invaders

Yes, Buzz Aldrin Walked on the Moon But We Asked Him About His Fighter Jock Days

If You Like the B-17s in Masters of the Air, You’ll Love These Movies

Our podcast, this week in history, what if….

What If the Nazis Had Actually Built the Horten HO-229 Jet Flying Wing?

The Horten Ho-229 has been the subject of more speculation and myths than any other World War II airplane.

What If Britain Had Made Peace With Hitler?

What If the Marines Had Skipped Iwo Jima?

What If Hitler Had Defeated the Soviet Union?

What If the U.S. Had Invaded a Japanese Home Island?

Weapons & gear.

Buffalo Bill’s Tours of Italy and the ‘Spaghetti Western’ Inspired Replica Old West Firearms

Rifles and revolvers made by Uberti, Pietta, Pedersoli and other Italian firms remain popular.

How to Build Royce Williams’ MiG-Killing Panther

The Workhorse of the Berlin Airlift, the Douglas C-47 Saw Service Through Vietnam

The FADAC Was Used to Calculate Artillery Firing Data. Was it One of the First Personal Computers?

Bullard Rifles Were Popular, But Were Too Expensive and Took Too Long to Make

Historynet archives: best u.s. general.

The Man Who Saved Korea

Matthew B. Ridgway, who brought a beaten Eighth Army back from disaster in 1951, was a thinking—and fighting—man’s soldier.

Omar Bradley, the General’s General

Admiral Raymond A. Spruance: Modest Victor of Midway

Patton and the Battle of the Bulge: ‘As soon as you’re through with me, I can attack the day after tomorrow morning’

George Washington Needed to Keep His Spies Hidden. So He Financed a Secret Lab For Invisible Ink.

EDITORS’ PICKS

In 1807 a French Officer Field-Tested an Artillery Tactic That Remained Decisive for More Than a Century

The breakthrough came during the Battle of Friedland, the victory that decided the War of the Fourth Coalition in Napoleon’s favor.

Embattled Banner: The True History of the Confederate Flag

What If Hitler Had Won World War II?

Sid Cotton’s Air Force was an early ‘eye in the sky’ for Britain’s Intelligence Service

Haunted by the Dead: Grave Digging in WWII was a Job No Soldier Wanted

American History Central

Encyclopedia of United States History

New on American History Central

Fur Trade Factory System

The Fur Trade Factory System was a program that established a series of Trading Posts on the Western Frontier so Native American Indians could trade furs to the United States Government.

Suffolk Resolves

Explanation of the Suffolk Resolves, which were issued in September 1774, in protest of the Intolerable Acts.

Battles of Lexington and Concord

A comprehensive look at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which were fought between Massachusetts Militia and British forces on April 19, 1775. The battles followed the Midnight Rides and the Lexington Alarm, which alerted the countryside to British troops marching to Concord.

What’s New

Lexington and Concord, Depositions

Lexington and Concord, Roxbury Militia

Salem Witch Trials, APUSH

Siege of Boston, APUSH

Boston tea party, apush.

Lexington and Concord, Needham Militia

Sylvanus Wood

City Point Wharf Explosion

Revere Letter to Belknap

Sugar Act Guide

Queen Anne’s War

Queen Anne’s War was the second war fought between England and France for control of North America.

Daniel Boone, APUSH

APUSH study guide for Daniel Boone, who blazed the Wilderness Road and opened Kentucky for settlement.

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Sons of Liberty

Green Mountain Boys

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Ethan Allen

Dominion of New England

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 – Facts

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Abigail Adams

Short Hints and Stubborn Things

Read the Best of AHC

How did the Nullification Crisis Lead to the Civil War?

247 Years Ago, Bloody Ban Captures the Treacherous Charles Lee at Basking Ridge

Before Trenton, the True Story of Washington’s Retreat from White Plains Across New Jersey

Trappers Point, Wyoming, and the Green River Rendezvous

British Colonies in North America

• 13 Original Colonies

A guide to the British Colonies in North America provides essential facts about each colony, along with links to related content on American History Central

• New England Colonies

The New England Colonies in Colonial America were Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

• Middle Colonies

The Middle Colonies in Colonial America were New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

• Southern Colonies

The Southern Colonies in Colonial America were Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

Colonial America and the French and Indian War

Salem Witch Trials (1692–1693)

The famous Witchcraft Crisis took place in Salem Village in 1692–1693.

Separatists (Pilgrims)

Puritan Separatists — the Pilgrims — left Europe and sailed to America for Religious Freedom.

Battle of Lake George (1755)

Learn about the intense battle from the French and Indian war that included the Bloody Morning Scout, the Bloody Pond, and the death of King Hendrick.

Most Popular

Mercantilism

Albany Congress

Albany Plan of Union

Connecticut Colony

Rhode Island Colony

Robert Rogers

Beaver Wars

AmericaN Revolution and the Revolutionary war

APUSH study guide for the Siege of Boston.

APUSH study guide for the Boston Tea Party, the incident that led to the passage of the Intolerable Acts

Battle of Trenton

Intolerable Acts

Siege of Boston

Parker’s Revenge

Concord Battle, 1775

Lexington Battle, 1775

Virginia Gunpowder Incident

Battle of Valcour Island

Quartering Act of 1765, Summary

Boston Tea Party

American Civil War

The American Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865.

Civil War Battles A to Z

Browse the Battles of the Civil War, from A to Z.

• Lincoln Assassination

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth struck a blow for the Confederacy when he shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.

The Battle of Gettysburg took place from July 1 to July 3, 1863. It ended with a Union victory and changed the trajectory of the war.

Top Content American History Central

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OpenHistoricalMap

Welcome to OpenHistoricalMap!

OpenHistoricalMap is an interactive map of the world throughout history, created by people like you and dedicated to the public domain.

You are either using a browser that does not support JavaScript, or you have disabled JavaScript.

OpenHistoricalMap uses JavaScript for its slippy map.

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Best History Websites and Resources

These great history websites help make the past and present relevant and accessible to students. There are research resources students can explore including firsthand accounts, images, videos, audio, and scholarly work. Many of these sites feature expertly curated museum and archival collections that help students step into history. Driven by their burning questions about the past, students can use these sites to analyze primary documents, artifacts, historical figures, and significant time periods. Teachers will also find a few picks on this list aimed specifically at them, featuring lesson plans and resources informed by the latest historical research.

Asian Art Museum

Inventive lessons and activities integrate Asian history, art, and more

Bottom Line : It offers an in-depth look at Asia’s influence on art and history and provides lots of creative tools for educators.

Easily accessible, kid-friendly database for the littlest researchers

Bottom Line : Delightful, safe introduction to the world of research, databases, and reporting, with interesting content and stellar supports.

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Powerful stories and media centralize African-American history

Bottom Line : While there aren't ready-to-go curricular materials, this modern, well-curated, and well-contextualized digital collection is sure to inspire compelling lessons.

Smithsonian's History Explorer

Browse and use American history artifacts and activities

Bottom Line : This is a handy resource that, with some effort, will uncover resources for kick-starting curious learning.

History's Mysteries

Scrappy, smart elementary history curriculum builds inquiry skills

Bottom Line : The free and adaptable nature of these intriguing history lessons makes them easy additions to just about any elementary history curriculum.

Library of Congress

Dig into famed library's collection of research goodies

Bottom Line : The Library of Congress delivers the best of America's past and present, and with teacher support it could be a reliable research resource for students.

PebbleGo Next

Safe nonfiction database develops students' research skills

Bottom Line : Student-centric research site gives kids a just-right amount of information to build foundational research skills.

Extensive humanities resource offers deep well of great content

Bottom Line : The National Endowment for the Humanities has put together an outstanding place for art, history, language, and literature.

Ken Burns in the Classroom

Critically acclaimed documentaries repackaged meaningfully for classrooms

Bottom Line : Top-notch documentary clips offer opportunities to expand students' perspectives, but some lesson materials might be underwhelming.

National Archives

Access U.S. history with treasure trove of docs, genealogy, and other resources

Bottom Line : NARA's website wasn't designed for kids, but they can definitely use it to research and learn about history, genealogy, and the U.S. population and government.

Digital Public Library of America

Organized digital library features piles of useful primary resources

Bottom Line : DPLA is at the top of the list of high-grade, online primary source collections if teachers make effective use of what's on offer.

Ford's Theatre

Site famous for its Lincoln assassination resources has more to offer

Bottom Line : This site can support meaningful, primary source-driven examination of some of the most important events in U.S. history, but educators will need to dig a little.

Track progress, differentiate instruction with vast content library

Bottom Line : Though it's not perfect, it's a great portal for supplementing classroom instruction and supporting personalized learning.

Students think like detectives to gather evidence, explore civics

Bottom Line : Makes the case for middle schoolers using primary sources, but this isn't gonna be a grab-and-go experience.

SweetSearch

Search engine with filtered results leaves room for critical thinking

Bottom Line : SweetSearch supplies valid, reputable websites that can help kids learn about a variety of topics.

Facing History and Ourselves

A wealth of resources explore racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism

Bottom Line : These valuable materials empower students to understand and address difficult ethical choices -- past and present.

Google Arts & Culture

Well-curated art and history site inspires curious learning

Bottom Line : A beautifully presented one-stop shop for compellingly curated and contextualized art, history, and culture resources, but it's lacking educator supports.

Historical texts, interactive activities can promote critical thinking

Bottom Line : This text-rich app encourages students to conduct their own analysis of history, but the formats and graphics may prevent them from making a thorough analysis.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Extensive resource collection supports teaching about the Holocaust

Bottom Line : As a valuable resource for anyone teaching or learning about the Holocaust, time to explore and plan is necessary in order to make the materials effective.

Zinn Education Project

Resources, lessons help teach a more inclusive version of U.S. history

Bottom Line : Free downloadable resources encourage critical thinking and active learning in search of a more accurate picture of American history.

World History Encyclopedia

Crowd-sourced ancient history site features extensive, varied resources

Bottom Line : It's free, web-based, and regularly updated with vetted info, so classrooms can turn to this site often to kick off research projects.

The National WWII Museum - New Orleans

High-quality resources and activities offer an in-depth study

Bottom Line : Materials and activities support a thorough study of World War II, making this a valuable resource for both teachers and students.

Stanford History Education Group

High-quality, document-based lessons spark stellar historical inquiry

Bottom Line : A gold mine of cross-curricular literacy lessons that encourage sound, research-backed strategies for reading, analysis, and critical thinking.

A History of Ideas

Philosophy podcast makes heady concepts accessible

Bottom Line : These philosophy podcasts and videos offer entertaining introductions to key concepts and thinkers, but require some smart lesson planning for deeper learning.

Extensive, highly searchable collection of the world's constitutions

Bottom Line : Quickly and easily access almost any country's constitution, locate an excerpt, or compare governments.

Google Scholar

Academic search engine, an excellent source for credible research info

Bottom Line : This smart tool can help teens locate credible material for paper and report writing, general research, and other school projects.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

History and art intersect on the Met's vast, reading-centric site

Bottom Line : This resource from the Metropolitan Museum of Art beautifully illustrates art's evolution and is great for research, but more interactivity would help balance out the text-heavy content.

OER Project

Expansive world history courses powered by great open-source materials

Bottom Line : A stellar program for exploring foundational concepts in history, humanities, critical thinking, and science with tons of support for teachers.

The Living New Deal | Still Working for America

Archival site is a treasure trove for New Deal researchers

Bottom Line : While it doesn't offer much specifically for teachers or students, it's a must-use site for primary source material if you have a unit on the New Deal or Great Depression.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Deep, complex database is challenging but a peerless research tool

Bottom Line : This is a highly academic site for better and for worse; it's filled with deep, research-backed resources and primary sources but is intimidating without clear guidance.

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World History Foundation

We are a non-profit organization publishing World History Encyclopedia , the world's most-read history encyclopedia. Our mission is to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide. Every month, millions of students, teachers, history enthusiasts, and travelers use the website to learn about history.

Studying history helps us gain a more nuanced understanding of the world we live in today. Our knowledge and interpretation of history shape how we define ourselves as nations and as cultures, and it influences how we see and interact with other cultures. We help people across the globe gain a deeper, fundamental knowledge of our interconnected human past in order to create curious, open-minded, and tolerant societies in the future.  

Non-Profit Organization

World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization registered in both the United Kingdom and Canada .

We help teachers, students, and schools by providing them with reliable, easy-to-read, and high-quality resources entirely for free. By creating an engaging and exciting encyclopedia, we have inspired millions to learn more about human civilization and our shared past.

We live in an age where xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise, both of which only serve to separate people of different nations and cultures through suspicion, fear, and even hate. We can help people understand other cultures and reduce their fears by encouraging them to better understand world history , each culture’s heritage, and how cultures relate to each other.

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The Islamic World

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We know how challenging teaching history can be. We've gathered and created resources that you can trust – you can run with them as they are or easily adapt them to your students. Explore our resources below to make your teaching easier.

Search Education Materials

Link database, teaching materials, classroom posters, media library, primary sources, curated collections, institutional subscriptions.

U.S. History

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Free Websites A-E

Free websites f-l, free websites m-r, free websites s-z.

These are websites outside of New York University. In parentheses are the creator (if needed) and the date it was checked.

• Ad*Access (Duke U., 2020/09) "Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955."
• AFRO American Newspapers "The AFRO American Newspapers, in cooperation with Google, are proud to present an extensive collection of digitally archived issues spanning over 100 years of history. The AFRO Archives feature various AFRO editions covering an impressive span of change, division and progress in African American History. Over the Following months this extensive collection will be expanded to encompass additional archived AFRO editions currently being processed which will enhance your digital experience of the scope and magnitude of the AFRO’s reporting of 20th Century Black History. We hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to learn and share the complex and enjoyable ;levels of the phenomena often referred to as the Black Experience."
• Alcohol, Temperance & Prohibition (Brown University, 2020/06) "The temperance movement in the United States gained steam in the late 19th century, and by the early 20th century, many political candidates would be asked "Are you 'dry' or 'wet?'" This single issue led to the creation of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which effectively prohibited the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors. After fourteen years, the 21st Amendment was passed, and the country went back to imbibing beer and spirits (legally, anyway). This fine collection from the Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship brings together over 1,600 pieces of ephemera, such as broadsides and pamphlets, that document the quest to make prohibition a reality during this period in American history."
• American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement (2020/06) "American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later."
• American President: Resources on the U.S. Presidents (University of Virginia, 2020/06) "The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia is "a national meeting place to research, reflect and report on issues of national importance to the governance of the United States, with special attention to the central role and history of the presidency." With that in mind, staff members at the Center have created this excellent site containing in-depth information reviewed by prominent scholars on each president and their administration." From the Scout Report
• American Social History Project "ASHP/CML challenges traditional ways that people learn about the past with its print, visual, and multimedia materials that explore the diverse social and cultural histories of the nation. Our professional development seminars help teachers use the latest scholarship, technology, and active learning methods."
• American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 (2020/06) "American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765ˆ1915 presents the history of American vernacular painting from the Colonial era until the early 20th century. Most of the pictures in the earliest section, "Inventing American Stories, 1765ˆ1830", are portraits of individuals or family groups, reflecting the taste of the time for commissioned portraits." From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/
• Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (2020/06) "The mission of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is to document "the lives of women of the past and present for the future." The library is part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and interested parties can peruse the Library's announcements, scholarship opportunities, and digital collections here. The Picks & Finds area is a great place to start, as it contains a range of interesting posts and essays like "Dining with Dissent: Politics and Protest in Vegetarian Cookbooks." Visitors shouldn't miss the selections from the Kip Tiernan papers. Mary Jane "Kip" Tiernan was known for her work with organizations that aided the poor, homeless, and socially oppressed. One of her most notable accomplishments was the creation of Rosie's Place, which was the first emergency drop-in shelter for women in the United States."
• Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (U, of Richmond 12/2020) "Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century."
• By Popular Demand: "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920 (2020/06) "This remarkable collection brings together a plethora of printed materials related to the struggle for woman suffrage in the United States. Created as part of the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress, the materials here include photographs of suffrage parades, picketing suffragists, an anti-suffrage display, as well as a number of cartoons. The site includes a special timeline which profiles the long struggle for woman suffrage, through Abigail Adams' admonition to her husband to "Remember the Ladies" all the way up to the first proposal of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. Visitors can browse the subject index for items ranging from Allegories to Women-Political Activity-Washington (D.C.). The site is rounded out by a selected bibliography and information on how to order photographic reproductions. [KMG]" From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
• Chinese in California, 1850-1925 (2020/06) "On this website, the Bancroft Library and the Ethnic Studies Library at the University of California Berkeley, along with the California Historical Library, present a collection of the Chinese in California digital archive in a topical format. This approach is meant to help gather the diverse resources available in the archive in a more manageable manner. The collection is comprised of books, pamphlets, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and sheet music." (Blurb from the Internet Scout, Archives .)
• A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War (U. Texas 2020/12) "THE U.S. - MEXICO WAR (1846-1848) is the largest and most significant armed struggle between two nations in the western hemisphere. In Mexico, the war left a legacy of bitterness that can be seen to this day. In the United States, tensions between North and South soon eclipsed the clash with Mexico in the national imagination. Abraham Lincoln alluded to these tensions when he described the United States in 1858 as "a house divided," A decade earlier, however, North America was a divided continent, the site of conflict between two republics that had forged two very different destinies since winning their independence from European powers."
• Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (2020/07) The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is primarily a collection of landmark agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. These full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science, forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. Teams of scholars selected the titles in this collection for their historical and scientific importance. Their evaluations and 4,500 core titles are detailed in the seven volume series The Literature of the Agricultural Sciences, Wallace C. Olsen, series editor.
• Cornell Law School: Legal Information Institute (2020/06) The Legal Information Institute (LII) is a research and electronic publishing activity of the Cornell Law School. Popular collections include: the U.S. Code, Supreme Court opinions, and more.
• Crisis, The (NAACP 2020/06) "The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and it was founded by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1910. The title of the magazine is taken from a poem by James Russell Lowell titled "The Present Crisis"."From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/
• Digital Harlem (U. Sydney 12/2020) "The Digital Harlem website presents information, drawn from legal records, newspapers and other archival and published sources, about everyday life in New York City's Harlem neighborhood in the years 1915-1930. Most of the material relates to the years 1920, 1925, and 1930."
• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA 12/2020)"Discover 41,598,372 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States "Discover 41,598,372 images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States."
• eHistory - Center for Virtual History (U. of Georgia, 12/2020) "eHistory was founded at the University of Georgia in 2011 by historians Claudio Saunt and Stephen Berry. The first project we launched was IndianNation, a crowdsource/mapping application that geolocates the 237,000 Native Americans captured in the 1900 census (the historic low point of the native population). Since then, eHistory has become a sort of digital collective -- a diverse group of scholars seeking to learn from each other as we experiment and rally on certain forms and formats of digital scholarship. eHistory projects have received positive press from the New York Times, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Vox, London Daily Mail, and a host of other online venues. eHistory projects have been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2016, the eHistory USNewsMap project won a prize from the Library of Congress."
• Erudit (Université de Montréal, the Université Laval and the Université du Québec á Montréal 2020/06) Érudit is a multi-institutional publishing consortium comprising the Université de Montréal, the Université Laval and the Université du Québec á Montréal. Érudit is the largest disseminator of French-language resources in North America. Through its research platform, Érudit offers a centralized access to the majority of francophone publications in the social sciences and humanities from North America, including scholarly and cultural journals, books, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations, as well as various research documents and data. In all, more than 200,000 documents are made available from a single point of access.
• FamilySearch.org — Free Family History and Genealogy Records (2020/07) A free site offered by the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints
• Farber Gravestone Collection (2020/06) "The Farber Gravestone Collection is an unusual resource containing over 13,500 images documenting the sculpture on more than 9,000 gravestones, most of which were made prior to 1800, in the Northeastern part of the United States."
• Founders Online (U.S. government 2020/06) "Correspondence and major other writings of the six major shapers of the United States: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Over 150,000 searchable documents, fully annotated, from the authoritative Founding Fathers Papers projects."
• Frances Perkins Center (2020/06) "The Frances Perkins Center is named after Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve on a presidential cabinet. During her time as the U.S. secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Perkins worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of workers across the country. The mission of the Center is to "fulfill the legacy of Frances Perkins...by continuing her work for social and economic justice and preserving for future generations her nationally significant family homestead." The materials on the site are divided into sections that include Frances Perkins, The Center, Projects, and Virtual Tour. The first section contains a photo gallery of Perkins, along with information about her life and times. In the Center area, visitors can read about the Center's mission and staff or scan the blog."
• G.I. Roundtable Series (American Historical association 2020/07) From the site's introduction: "This site provides access to an experiment in text and design. As texts, the AHA’s G.I. Roundtable series provides a unique insight into a particular moment in time. The American Historical Association produced the G.I. Roundtable Series to help win World War II. Or so they were led to believe. In fact the U.S. Army sought the pamphlets as part of a larger effort to prepare for the transition to the postwar world, and represent a novel effort at social control."
• Geography of Slavery in Virginia: Virginia Runaways, Slave Advertisements, Runaway Advertisements (U. of Virginia 2020/12) "The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers. Building on the rich descriptions of individual slaves and servants in the ads, the project offers a personal, geographical and documentary context for the study of slavery in Virginia, from colonial times to the Civil War."
• Geography of the Post: U.S. Post Offices in the Nineteenth-Century West (2021 05) The U.S. postal system was the nation's largest communications network in the nineteenth century. By the close of the century the U.S. Post had extended its reach into nearly every city, town, and hamlet in the country. No other public institution was so ubiquitous and so central to everyday life; dropping off a letter or checking for mail at the local post office was a ritual shared by millions of Americans from Connecticut to Colorado. This visualization maps the spread of the postal network on its western periphery by charting the opening and closing of more than 14,000 post offices west of the hundredth meridian.""
• Historic Mexican & Mexican American Press (U. of Arizona 12/2020) "The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s."
• Historical Thinking Matters (James mason U. 2021 05) ""a website focused on key topics in U.S. history, that is designed to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives. Read how to use this site.
• History of Medicine: Online Syllabus Archive (2020/07) "the world's largest online collection of syllabi in the history of medicine"
• History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium (2020/07) "a discovery tool providing keyword search services across a union catalog of finding aids describing archival collections broadly related to the history of medicine and its allied sciences. We currently index over 11,000 finding aids from more than 100 special collections and archival repositories throughout the U.S."
• History of the Health Sciences World Wide Web Links (2020/06) Reputedly the “best one-stop shopping for history of medicine on the web.”
• IMDB (2020/06) One of the best free sources for information on cinema.
• Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present (2020/06) "Immigration and entrepreneurship are two central themes in the history of the United States. The topics are closely interrelated, since the U.S. developed a strong culture of entrepreneurship as it became the quintessential immigration country in the nineteenth century. While entrepreneurship is still a key component of American culture and its value is essentially undisputed, the way in which immigration is viewed has changed considerably. In the course of the twentieth century, especially during the interwar period, immigration policies became more restrictive. However, the nexus between immigration and economic growth created by immigrant businesspeople is still strong. Immigration has long been recognized as a rich source of entrepreneurship. Empirical studies confirm that self-employment exerts a strong appeal for immigrants, as other avenues of social integration and advancement are often barred or more difficult to access. ..."
• Indiana Farm Security Administration Photographs (2020/06) During the 1930s, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) worked to transform and document the lives of farmers across the United States who were affected by the Great Depression. During the 10 years of its existence, the Indiana office of the FSA worked to document economic and social conditions in Indiana, including rural resettlement and rehabilitation programs and planned communities. Visitors can explore the work of the nine photographers assigned to the project here captured in over 670 photos. It's worth noting that users can browse by county, photographer, or by keyword search. Additionally, the site contains a study guide for teachers and students who wish to learn more about the historical and cultural context of these rather unique items. [KMG] Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
• International Coalition on Newspapers ICON (CRL 2021 05) This page highlights and links to past, present, and prospective digitization projects of historic newspapers. The focus is primarily on digital conversion efforts, not full-text collections of current news sources.""
• IsisCB Explore (2020/06) IsisCB Explore opens up bibliographical research in the history of science, technology, and medicine. It is designed for students, scholars, librarians, and the general public. Users will find the data architecture intuitive and powerful, and librarians can trust that it will guide researchers to the best literature in the discipline. Based on the 100-year-old Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science—the largest and most comprehensive in its field—it is supported by the discipline's flagship society, the History of Science Society. It will be expanded and updated annually.
• IWW History Project (U. of Washington 2020/12) "This project explores the history of the IWW in its first two decades. We have compiled a database of hundreds of strikes, campaigns, arrests, and other incidents involving IWW members and present this information in both yearbook format and in elaborate interactive maps. Here you will also find accounts of important events and a wealth of primary sources, including pages from the Industrial Worker, the IWW monthly published in Spokane and Seattle."
• The Labor Film Database (2021/01) "The Labor Film Database lists thousands of films and videos, searchable by title, director, actors and/or keywords (see search window at right). We’ve also categorized the database (at right, below “Categories”) and you can check out our tag cloud (also at right) to make it easier to find films and videos about the topics you’re interested in. Many of the entries also include trailers, film stills and distributor contact info. Categories include: Highly Recommended Labor Films; Labor Film Festivals; New/Just Added; Available Online; Genre; Occupation/Type of Work; Themes."
• Library of Congress Digital Collections (2020/06) Extensive digital collections held by the Library of Congress.
• Living New Deal (2020/12) "The Living New Deal has its roots in a book project by Dr. Gray Brechin on the WPA in California, but quickly outgrew the original intent as the vast extent of New Deal public works projects became clear. In 2005, the project became a team effort to inventory, map, and interpret how the New Deal radically modernized California. After two years as a strictly volunteer operation, the California Living New Deal Project was officially launched in 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, under the direction of Professor Richard Walker. This was done in partnership with the California Historical Society (CHS), which helped provide visibility around the state, and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) at UC Berkeley, where the technical side of the project was developed. Financial support came from grants by the Columbia Foundation and IRLE."
• Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD) (McNeil Center for Early American Studies 2020/12) "The Magazine of Early American Datasets (MEAD) is an online repository of datasets compiled by historians of early North America. MEAD preserves and makes available these datasets in their original format and as comma-separated-value files (.csv). Each body of data is also accompanied by a codebook. MEAD provides sweet, intoxicating data for your investigations of early North America and the Atlantic World."
• Making of America (2020/06) 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.
• Mapping Early American Elections ( Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media 2020/12) "Explore how Americans voted for their legislators during the formative era of American politics, 1788–1825. Mapping Early American Elections provides interactive maps and tables of U.S. Congressional elections during the First Party System, contextual essays, open access data, and tutorials."
• Mapping Social Movements (U. of Washington 2020/12) "This project produces and displays free interactive maps showing the historical geography of dozens of social movements that have influenced American life and politics since the late 19th century, including radical movements, civil rights movements, labor movements, women's movements, and more. Until now historians and social scientists have mostly studied social movements in isolation and often with little attention to geography. This project allows us to see where social movements were active and where not, helping us better understand patterns of influence and endurance. It exposes new dimensions of American political geography, showing how locales that in one era fostered certain kinds of social movements often changed political colors over time."
• Measuring Worth (2020/12) "Measuring Worth is a place where you can ask questions of comparative value covering prices, purchasing power, earnings, GDP, interest rates, exchange rates and other economic variables. The comparators allow you to convert past values into current values (and vice versa)."
• Medical Heritage Library (Internet Archive 2020/07) "The Medical Heritage Library (MHL), a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Our goal is to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and strengthen understanding of the world in which we live. "
• National Archives (U.S.): DocsTeach (2020/06) The National Archives have selected thousands of primary source documents to bring the past to life as classroom teaching tools from the billions preserved at the National Archives. Use the search field above to find written documents, images, maps, charts, graphs, audio and video in our ever-expanding collection that spans the course of American history.
• National Archives (U.S.) Access to Archival Databases (2020/06) You will find in the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) resource online access to records in a small selection of historic databases preserved permanently in NARA.
• National Digital Newspaper Program (2020/06) Ultimately, over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers from all the states and U.S. territories published between 1836 and 1922. This searchable database will be permanentl
• National Library of Medicine's Directory of History of Medicine Collections (2020/07)
• National Library of Medicine's IndexCat (2020/07) "IndexCat™ is a database containing the bibliographic citations of all five printed series of the Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office; with direct access to the NLM online catalog, LocatorPlus. It also contains eTK for citations to medieval Latin texts and eVK2 for medieval English texts."
• National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division (2020/07)
• National Parks Service Series: LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (2020/07) "LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History is an extensive and comprehensive look at LGBTQ heritage in the United States. Each chapter provides an expert summary of a particular topic."
• New Deal Artwork: GSA's Inventory Project (US government 2020/06) "New Deal Art Stewardship During the New Deal era, the U.S. Government administered four separate art projects that operated from 1933 to 1943. The projects produced thousands of paintings, sculpture, and works on paper."
• New Nation Votes 1787-1825 (Tufts, 2020/06) A New Nation Votes is a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy. The data were compiled by Philip Lampi. The American Antiquarian Society and Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives have mounted it online for you with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
• New Netherland Institute (2020/06) The New Netherland Project was established under the sponsorship of the New York State Library and the Holland Society of New York. Its primary objective is to complete the transcription, translation, and publication of all Dutch documents in New York repNew York repositories relating to the seventeenth-century colony of New Netherland.
• 19th Century Schoolbooks (U. of Pittsburgh 2021/01) The 19th Century Schoolbooks Collection contains schoolbooks from the Nietz Old Textbook Collection. In addition, this online collection also contains two works by Dr. John Nietz, which survey historic American schoolbooks in the context of the history of education.
• Open Secrets (Center for Responsible Politics 2020/07) From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/ "The Center for Responsive Politics has been around for over 25 years and they are primarily focused on "tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy." The Scout Report last profiled the site in 1999, and it remains a very useful place for anyone with an interest in political action committees (PACs), congressional races, and industry profiles."
• Papers of the War Department 1784-1800 (202/07) Fire destroyed the War Department office in 1800. For decades historians believed that its files, and the window they provide into the early federal government, had been lost forever. This collection unites copies of the lost files in a digital archive that reconstitutes this invaluable historical resource.
• Photogrammar (Yale, 2020/12) "Photogrammar is a web-based platform for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI)."
• Picturing U.S. History (2020/06) "Picturing United States History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence is a digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. This website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms."
• Presidential Recordings Digital Edition (PRDE, University of Virginia, 2020/07) "the online portal for annotated transcripts of the White House tapes published by the Presidential Recordings Program (PRP). Created by a team of scholars and researchers at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, these transcripts are presented in PRDE alongside the corresponding audio, enabling users to read and listen to these conversations simultaneously. This effort at deciphering the presidential recordings and decoding their meaning allows these extraordinary documents, many of which would remain otherwise inaccessible, to come alive, providing an intimate view of life inside the Oval Office."
• Probing the Past (2020/06) Guide to digital probate inventories form the Center for History and Media at George Mason.
• Public Health Film Goes to War (National Library of Medicine, 2020/06) features eighteen rare films on public health from the World War II era. They range from Private McGillicuddy cartoons promoting personal cleanliness to documentaries on public health issues such as tropical diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, and the stress of war. All of the films have searchable transcripts and commentaries as well as complete bibliographic data. All are in the public domain
• Pullman State Historic Site (2020/07) Pullman is located in south Chicago. "The Pullman State Historic Site webpage provides information about visiting what remains of this community, along with their research facilities and their virtual museum. The site includes sections dedicated to the town's founder, George Pullman ("The Man"), "The Town", "The People", "The Company", and "Labor & Race". "The Pullman Company" area provides a detailed essay on the company's history and on some of its key products, like the legendary Pullman sleeping car. The "House Histories" area provides information on who lived or worked in the town of Pullman during the early 20th century. Finally, the "Images" area provides historic photographs of the company plant, surrounding houses, and workers." From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009
• Repositories of Primary Sources (2020/06) Compiled by Terry Abraham, this list has not been updated since 2014. A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar.
• Resources for Genealogists and Family Historians (National Archives 2020/07) Extensive collection of resources from the National Archives
• New Deal Art During the Great Depression (2021 05) "On May 6, 1935, the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) was created to help provide economic relief to the citizens of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression. The artistic community had already become inspired during the 1920s and '30s by the revitalization of the Italian Renaissance fresco style by the inspired creations of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueriros. Certain visionary U.S. politicians decided to combine the creativity of the new art movements with the values of the American people. The Federal Art Project was one of the divisions of the W.P.A. created under Federal Project One. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had made several attempts prior to the F.A.P. to provide employment for artists on relief, namely the Public Works of Art Project (P.W.A.P.) which operated from 1933 to 1934 and the Treasury Department Section of Painting and Sculpture which was created in 1934 after the demise of the P.W.A.P. However, it was the F.A.P. which provided the widest reach, creating over 5,000 jobs for artists and producing over 225,000 works of art for the American people. It is this legacy of the thousands of workers who labored at their craft for little money but great pride which we have to inspire us today. Although many of these works of art have been destroyed or stolen, those that remain must be preserved. They stand as a reminder of a time in our country’s history when dreams were not allowed to be destroyed by economic disaster."
• People Not Property: Slavery in the Colonial North (2021 05 Historic Hudson Valley) "People Not Property is an interactive documentary about the history of Northern colonial enslavement produced by Historic Hudson Valley."
• Selected Digital Historical Documents from the Collections of the New York State Library (2020/06) "Since 1995, the New York State Library has been scanning New York State government documents and providing free access to these digital versions through the State Library online catalog. The State Library has expanded the types of materials being scanned to include historical materials. The items listed below have been scanned from paper copy volumes located in the New York State Library and are now freely available online as PDF documents. (Note: The links to digital documents below will open in a new window.)"
• SexBiblio: History of Western Sexuality (University of Vienna, Austria 2020/07) An online bibliography of the History of Western Sexuality. About 25.000 Citations of non fiction primary and secundary sources for the history of sexuality in Europea, the USA and Canada from 1700 through 2008. From the Department of Economic and Social
• Ship Index (2020/06) ShipIndex.org tells you which books, magazines, and online resources mention the vessels you're researching. With 142,804 entries in the free database and 1,513,325 entries available with premium access, you're bound to find useful information here.
• The Shop: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door "In October 1920, Frank Shay opened a tiny bookshop—so small he preferred to call it a "stall"—at 4 Christopher Street. Known as "Frank Shay's Bookshop," it sold books that would interest all audiences: popular novels, socialist weeklies, avant-garde poetry chapbooks, and childrens' books. Shay likely displayed a rich selection of his two favorite writers, Joseph Conrad and Walt Whitman. In April 1922, Christopher Morley noted in his journal that he had stopped by the shop and seen his first copy of the famous blue-covered first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, fresh from Shakespeare and Company in Paris."
• Slave Voyages (2020/06) "This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action."
• Slave Wrecks Project (National Museum of African American History and Culture 2021 11) "The Slave Wrecks Project is an international network of researchers and institutions hosted by the Museum. The Slave Wrecks Project uses maritime archaeology, historical research and the study of sunken slave ships to take a distinct approach to the study of the transatlantic slave trade."
• Social History for Every Classroom (ASHP, 2021/01) SHEC's classroom-ready primary documents and teaching activities engage students with deep historical questions and are designed to support learning at every level. Grounded in decades of work with history teachers in real classrooms, SHEC reflects ASHP/CML’s mission of making the past, and the working people and ordinary Americans who shaped it, vivid and meaningful. There are two ways to find what you need in SHEC. You can do a keyword search and then narrow your search results, or you can browse our collections, teaching activities, and historical eras.
• Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures (Library of Congress 2020/07) This collection from the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress brings together 68 motion pictures, produced between 1898 and 1901, of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Revolution. In a very real way, the Spanish-American War was the first United States war in which the motion picture camera played a role. Visitors can look over the "Featured Items" to get a flavor of the works here, which include Roosevelt's Rough Riders and Pack mules with ammunition on the Santiago Trail, Cuba. In Articles and Essays, visitors can read though thoughtful meditations such as, "The War in Cuba" and “‘Remember the Maine’: The Beginnings of War.” From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2014. https://www.scout.wisc.edu
• Strikes! Labor History Encyclopedia for the Pacific Northwest (2020/06) "The project assembles the most extensive online collection of materials about labor history for this, or any other, region. Here you will find detailed information and primary sources about key historical events, including the Seattle General Strike of 1919, the unemployed movements and labor crusades of the 1930s, farmworker campaigns from the 1930s to 1980s, timber worker unions, waterfront strikes, Filipino cannery worker unions, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the history-making WTO confrontation of 1999."
• Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen (Toougaloo 2021 05) This is an extensive listing of towns that forbade African Americans from being in the town "after sundown." Theer is a map and you click on state and see the list of towns. More infomration is presented
• Supreme Court Database (Washington University, St. Louis, 2020-07) "The Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2018 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices."
• Teaching History (2020/12) "Teachinghistory.org is designed to help K–12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom. With funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) has created Teachinghistory.org with the goal of making history content, teaching strategies, resources, and research accessible."
• Thomas Addis Emmet Collection (NYPL 2020/07) "Housed at the New York Public Library, the Thomas Addis Emmet Collection contains over 10,000 historical manuscripts relating chiefly to the periods prior to, during, and following the American Revolution. Over the past few years, a number of key documents have been digitized and are now available here. The materials are organized into 28 series, including "The Siege of Savannah, 1779," "The Articles of Confederation," and "Howe's Virginia." Each section contains a brief summary of each document, along with particulars on their provenance and related matters. Additionally, visitors can filter their search by keyword or year and they can also create their own collection of documents for future consultation. [KMG]" From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/"
• Travel Time Map (Michael Weaver, 2021 05) "This map presents shortest travel times between counties by land or railroad in 1880 and 1900. Railroad data and method for computing travel times come from Fernando Pérez-Cervantes."
• Umbra Search: African American History (U. of Minnesota 2020/12) "Umbra Search African American History makes African American history more broadly accessible through a freely available widget and search tool, umbrasearch.org; digitization of African American materials across University of Minnesota collections; and support of students, educators, artists, and the public through residencies, workshops, and events locally and around the country. umbrasearch.org brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country. Umbra Search celebrates the vital efforts of the individuals and institutions that have helped to preserve and make accessible online hundreds of thousands of pieces of African American history and culture, and we pay homage to the Umbra Society of the early 1960s, a renegade group of Black writers and poets who helped create the Black Arts Movement."
• Union Membership and Coverage Database (2020/12) "The Union Membership and Coverage Database is an Internet data resource providing private and public sector labor union membership, coverage, and density estimates compiled from the Current Population Survey (CPS)a monthly household survey, using BLS methods. Economy-wide estimates are provided beginning in 1973; estimates by state, detailed industry, and detailed occupation begin in 1983; and estimates by metropolitan area begin in 1986. The Database, constructed by Barry Hirsch (Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University) and David Macpherson (Department of Economics, Trinity University), is updated annually."
• University of Nebraska Libraries Digital Collections: Government Comics Collection (2020/07) From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2009. http://scout.wisc.edu/ "This digital collection of these works is the result of a two-year scanning and research project initiated by Richard Graham, assistant professor and digital media librarian at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. All told, the collection contains 180 comics, posters, and transcripts from congressional hearings on comics. Visitors can search through the entire collection and they will also quickly get a sense of the pedagogical function of these rather curious documents. There are a few "classics" here, including the legendary "Bert The Turtle Says Duck And Cover", which was intended to provide instruction on what to do in case of a nuclear weapon attack."
• University of North Carolina Greensboro: Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (2020/06) "The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Collection documents the female experience in the Armed Forces through letters, papers, photographs, published materials, uniforms, artifacts, and oral histories. It contains more than one hundred manuscripts collections and more than two hundred oral history interviews. Housed and maintained in the University Archives in Jackson Library, the materials are a research collection for scholars of military history as well as women's studies."
• US Courts (Federal Courts) "This site is maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the Federal Judiciary. The purpose of this site is to provide information from and about the Judicial Branch of the U.S. Government."
• Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War (U. of Virginia 2020/12) "The Valley of the Shadow is a digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War. Here you may explore thousands of original documents that allow you to see what life was like during the Civil War for the men and women of Augusta and Franklin.The Valley of the Shadow is different than many other history websites. It is more like a library than a single book. There is no "one" story in the Valley Project. Rather, what you'll find are thousands of letters and diaries, census and government records, newspapers and speeches, all of which record different aspects of daily life in these two counties at the time of the Civil War. As you explore the extensive archive and you'll find that you can flip through a Valley resident's Civil War diary, read what the county newspapers reported about the battle of Gettysburg, or even search the census records to see how much the average citizen owned in 1860 or 1870."
• Visualizing Emancipation (U. of Richmond 2020/12) "Visualizing Emancipation is a map of slavery’s end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks. It encourages scholars, students, and the public to examine the wartime end of slavery in place, allowing a rigorously geographic perspective on emancipation in the United States."
• VOCES Oral History Project (University of Texas 2020/12) "Voces Oral History Center is dedicated to recording and disseminating the stories of US Latinas and Latinos and weaving the many perspectives into our historical narrative at the national, state and local levels."
• Voting America: United States Politics, 1840 - 2008 (U. of Richmond, 2020/12) "Voting America encourages users to think about US political history by allowing two types of comparison. Animations of a single type of map--say, measuring the winner of presidential elections at the county level--allow for comparisons across time. Users can also explore a single election by looking at patterns across a number of variables, including the percentage of votes won by parties, the winner of a given district, or the distribution of votes across the United States."
• Women's Legal History (2020/06) The Women's Legal History website is the home of a searchable database of articles and papers on pioneering women lawyers in the United States. The site contains sections that include the WLH Biography Project and the index and bibliographic notes from "Woman Lawyer: The Trial of Clara Foltz" by Barbara Babcock. In the WLH Biography Project, visitors can look over the life stories of women in the legal profession, such as Agnes Sagebiel, Marge Wagner, and Julia Jennings. There are over 1,000 profiles that visitors can browse alphabetically or search by name, year, ethnicity, or law school. Additionally, the site contains detailed information about Babcock's recent work, along with media clips related to the subject of women lawyers. [KMG] From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 1994-2013. https://www.scout.wisc.edu/
• Visualizing Early Baltimore (UMBC 2021/01) "Since 2012 UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC) has worked to build a vivid recreation of how Baltimore would have looked between 1815 and 1820. This effort has resulted in the projects shown below, and the work continues."
• Village Preservation (GVSHP) Civil Rights & Social Justice Map (2021 05) "Village Preservation (GVSHP), www.gvshp.org -- guide to sites of significance in the history of civil rights and social justice movements in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo."
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Halloween 2024

When Is Halloween 2024? Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31. Halloween 2024 will take place on Thursday, October 31. Ancient History of Halloween Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow‑in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United […]

Rosh Hashanah

Celebrated in September or October, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is one of Judaism’s holiest days.

Columbus Day 2024

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus was an Italian‑born explorer who set sail in August 1492, bound for Asia with backing from the Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella aboard the ships the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. Columbus intended to chart a western sea route to China, India and the fabled gold and […]

HISPANIC HISTORY

Hispanic heritage month.

Hispanic Heritage Month is an annual celebration of the history and culture of the U.S. Latino and Hispanic communities. Hispanic Heritage Month 2023 will last from Friday, September 15, 2023 through Sunday, October 15, 2023. 

Hispanic History Milestones: Timeline

From early Spanish colonialism to civil and worker rights laws to famous firsts to Supreme Court decisions on immigration, see a timeline of notable events in U.S Hispanic and Latino history.

Cesar Chavez

Cesar Chavez, labor leader, civil rights activist and founder of the National Farm Workers Association, dedicated his life to the rights of farm workers.

COLONIAL AMERICA

The 13 colonies.

The 13 Colonies were a group of colonies of Great Britain that settled on the Atlantic coast of America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The colonies declared independence in 1776 to found the United States of America.

Salem Witch Trials

The infamous Salem witch trials were a series of prosecutions for witchcraft starting in 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts.

Jamestown Colony

English Settlement in the New World After Christopher Columbus’ historic voyage in 1492, Spain dominated the race to establish colonies in the Americas, while English efforts, such as the “lost colony” of Roanoke, met with failure. In 1606, King James I granted a charter to a new venture, the Virginia Company, to form a settlement […]

GREAT DEPRESSION

Stock market crash of 1929.

What Caused the 1929 Stock Market Crash? During the 1920s, the U.S. stock market underwent rapid expansion, reaching its peak in August 1929 after a period of wild speculation in the Roaring Twenties. By then, production had already declined and unemployment had risen, leaving stocks in great excess of their real value. Among the other […]

Great Depression History

The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world, lasting from 1929 to 1939.

The Dust Bowl refers to the drought‑stricken southern plains of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

WORLD WAR I

World war i battles: timeline.

For four years, from 1914 to 1918, World War I raged across Europe’s western and eastern fronts after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the war’s battles were devastatingly bloody, claiming an estimated 40 […]

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson’s Early Years Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia. (Because his mother said he arrived around midnight, some sources list Wilson’s birthday as December 29.) His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson (1822‑1903), was a Presbyterian minister, and his mother, Janet Woodrow Wilson (1826‑1888), was a minister’s daughter and originally […]

Battle of the Somme

Battle Begins – July 1, 1916 Prior to the attack, the Allies launched a week‑long heavy artillery bombardment, using some 1.75 million shells, which aimed to cut the barbed wire guarding German’s trench defenses and destroy the enemy’s positions. On the morning of July 1, 11 divisions of the British 4th Army—many of them volunteer […]

WORLD WAR II

D‑Day was the name given to the June 6, 1944, invasion of the beaches at Normandy in northern France by troops from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries during World War II.

Nazi Party Origins In 1919, army veteran Adolf Hitler, frustrated by Germany’s defeat in World War I—which had left the nation economically depressed and politically unstable—joined a fledgling political organization called the German Workers’ Party. Founded earlier that same year by a small group of men including locksmith Anton Drexler and journalist Karl Harrer, the […]

World War II Battles: Timeline

Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict took more lives and destroyed more land and property around the globe than any previous war.

The Red Scare was hysteria over the perceived threat posed by Communists in the U.S. during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, which intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Palmer Raids

Red Scare Following the Russian Revolution in 1917, America was on high alert, fearing Communist revolutionaries on their own shores. The Sedition Act of 1918, which was an expansion of the 1917 Espionage Act, was a direct result of the paranoia. Targeting those who criticized the government, the Sedition Act set into motion an effort […]

Khmer Rouge

Pol Pot Although Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge didn’t come to power until the mid‑1970s, the roots of their takeover can be traced to the 1960s, when a communist insurgency first became active in Cambodia, which was then ruled by a monarch. Throughout the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge operated as the armed wing of […]

IMMIGRATION

U.s. immigration timeline.

White People of ‘Good Character’ Granted Citizenship January 1776: Thomas Paine publishes a pamphlet, “Common Sense,” that argues for American independence. Most colonists consider themselves Britons, but Paine makes the case for a new American. “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted […]

Ellis Island

U.S. Immigration History When Ellis Island opened, a great change was taking place in U.S. immigration. Fewer arrivals were coming from northern and western Europe—Germany, Ireland, Britain and the Scandinavian countries—as more and more immigrants poured in from southern and eastern Europe. Among this new generation were Jews escaping from political and economic oppression in […]

The Rise of Tenement Housing In the first half of the 19th century, many of the more affluent residents of New York’s Lower East Side neighborhood began to move further north, leaving their low‑rise masonry row houses behind. At the same time, more and more immigrants began to flow into the city, many of them […]

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Genetic Genealogy: DNA and Family History

Introduction.

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Science & Technical Reports : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

Authors: Tomoko Y. Steen, Ph.D., Senior Reference & Research Specialist, Science Section, Science, Technology & Business Division

Candice Buchanan, Reference Librarian, History & Genealogy Section, Researcher & Reference Services Division

Sheree Budge, Reference Librarian, History & Genealogy Section, Researcher & Reference Services Division

Editors: Wanda Whitney, Head, History & Genealogy Section, Researcher & Reference Services Division

Created: June 11, 2021

Last Updated: September 11, 2021

Genetic genealogy creates family history profiles (biological relationships between or among individuals) by using DNA test results in combination with traditional genealogical methods. By using genealogical DNA testing, genetic genealogy can determine the levels and types of biological relationships between or among individuals.

This branch of genetics became popular in recent years, as costs were drastically reduced and genealogical studies using molecular techniques became accessible to the general public. Advantages of including DNA, as opposed to traditional genealogical research alone, include the ability for researchers to extend their ancestry beyond the paperwork of recent centuries, and to construct ancient pedigrees through molecular evolutionary studies. Genealogists also use DNA to solve mysteries in their immediate families, such as to discover biological parents of adoptees or to determine the accurate male ancestor in a non-paternity event (NPE).

Autosomal, Mitochondrial, and Y-DNA: The Three DNA Tests Used by Genealogists

There are three sources of information in a DNA sample. Y-chromosomal DNA (Y-DNA) is present only in samples from males and gives information on patrilineal descent. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), present in both male and females, gives information on matrilineal descent. Finally, autosomal DNA (atDNA) gives information on both matrilineal and patrilineal descent.

The signal of shared ancestry seen in autosomal DNA is highest in close relatives, but dilutes quickly so that by 5-7 generations of separation, it is difficult to distinguish exact relationships other than shared ethnic affinities. Thus, autosomal DNA (atDNA) is best to help identify ancestors within the most recent 5–7 generations of a family tree.

MtDNA and Y-DNA tests are limited to relationships along a strict female line and a strict male line, respectively. mtDNA evolves rapidly whereas Y-DNA (and atDNA) changes much more slowly. MtDNA and Y-DNA tests are utilized to identify archeological cultures and migration paths of a person's ancestors along a strict mother's line or a strict father's line. Based on MtDNA and Y-DNA, a person's haplogroup(s) can be identified. (A haplogroup is DNA or Chromosomal segments derived from a group of people who share a common genetic ancestor). The mtDNA test can be taken by both males and females, because everyone inherits their mtDNA from their mother, as the mitochondrial DNA is located in the egg cell. However, a Y-DNA test can only be taken by a male, as only males have a Y-chromosome.

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• Last Updated: Jul 3, 2024 11:51 AM
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More From Forbes

‘days gone’ creative director upset deacon is in ‘astro bot’.

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In one of the weirdest stories to come out of Astro Bot’s brilliant launch, which pays tribute to almost every major and minor PlayStation-centric game in history, one character’s creator is actually upset his hero made it into the game as a Bot.

That would be former Days Gone creative director John Garvin tweeting that he’s not amused that his game’s hero, Deacon St. John has been “reduced to a cartoon schill [sp] promoting some small game.” Seriously:

Garvin goes on to say he “doesn’t’ know” Astro Bot and while he wishes them well he doesn’t want it to be at the “expense” of Days Gone. And that something he’s created is used again, as a shill to “promote product.” He spends a number of other tweets fighting with people pushing back on that.

Best Nintendo Switch Games: It’s Mario’s World, We’re Just Visiting

It’s a truly bizarre take as Astro Bot is clearly meant to be a lighthearted tribute to the entire history of PlayStation, and acknowledging each game with Bots is an honor not stealing IP to promote itself.

Garvin has been upset about the cancellation of a Days Gone sequel for years now, at one point blaming “woke reviewers” for its not-amazing reception. The reasons he listed in a now-deleted tweet were, and I quote:

1. it had tech issues like bugs, streaming and frame rate;

2. it had reviewers who couldn’t be bothered to actually play the game

3. And three, it had woke reviewers who couldn’t handle a gruff white biker looking at his date’s ass

This sentiment was later totally disowned by Bend Studio, so much so they had to put out a statement:

The game got an okay 71 on Metacritic when it was released in 2019, but that put it far below so many other first party Sony hits which were usually in the upper 80s or 90s. According to sales numbers , Days Gone was the 13th best-selling game of the PS4 generation with 7.3 million sales, just a notch below Bloodborne at 7.46 million. But yes, the critical reception did seem to have something to do with the game not getting a sequel, not just sales.

This is just the latest in a long string of Garvin controversies, but easily one of the weirder takes we’ve seen from him. You can find Deacon in the game and unlock his trademark motorcycle. Him and 170+ other PlayStation themed bots. It’s a cool thing to be featured and it never even occurred to me it was possible to think otherwise.

Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , and Instagram .

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

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