The Ashbrook Center at Ohio's Ashland University seeks to educate students, teachers, and citizens about the intricacies of American history and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship using conversation and primary source documents. Consider this list of 50 Core Documents of historical importance. Beginning with the Declaration of Independence, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom...

The Library of Congress presents this seasonal collection of field recordings of over 200 ordinary Americans' reactions to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Made between December 8, 1941, and February 1942, the original recordings used a technology called direct-to-disk, which created fragile, lacquer-coated, aluminum disks that could be played at 33 1/3 or 78 RPMs. The...

Students, teachers, and just about anyone with an interest in American history will find helpful resources at the Memorial Hall Museum Online, a village museum of 300-year-old Deerfield, Massachusetts. Features of the site include: the Digital Collection, a searchable database of over 1,000 artifacts selected from 70,000 in the Museum's holdings; In the Classroom, a collection of curriculum ideas...

Drawing on the holdings of the New York Public Library (in particular the Lawrence H. Slaughter Collection), and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this online exhibit is devoted to offering a number of historically significant maps of the Mid-Atlantic region up to 1850. The site begins with a brief essay on the nature of the items featured on the site and continues with three...

Created by Ken Middleton, reference librarian and graduate student in American Women's History at Middle Tennessee State University, this site is an excellent resource for researchers, especially graduate students or advanced undergraduates, interested in US women's history. At the site, users will find a large number of citations of print and online reference materials and primary resources....

Released in conjunction with a PBS television series dealing with the Chinese experience in America (hosted by Bill Moyers), this site provides a host of information, video clips, personal recollections, and other materials that serve as an excellent complement to the series. Visitors may want to start by examining the Portraits section, which highlights some first-person narratives of what their...

British Pathe, one of the oldest media companies in the world, recently made available its entire 3500-hour film archive, covering "news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970." At the Web site, users can search by keyword or try out advanced search, if details such as reel numbers or exact titles are known. Casual users may prefer the "Lucky Dip" search, which provides a...

Sometimes referred to as "the borough of homes and churches," Brooklyn has long been an urban community that has captured the attention of the United States and the rest of the world. For over a century, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle chronicled the community's history while under the reins of a host of well-regarded editors, including Walt Whitman. This Web site, which is a collaboration between the...

Developed through a partnership between the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Oklahoma State University Library Electronic Publishing Center, this site makes 20 volumes of the Chronicles of Oklahoma available for researchers and the general public. Originally published by the Oklahoma State Historical Society, the available volumes range in date from 1921 to 1942. Users may search the volumes...

If you've ever dreamed of reading the January 2, 1900 edition of Paris, Kentucky's "Bourbon News", this site will offer a form of wish fulfillment. This newspaper (and many others) are part of the Chronicling America website, which was produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program. The program is the result of a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of...