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...

Developed by the Illinois State Museum, this site examines the history of the Midwest from 1700 to the present. The site divides the history of the Midwest into five periods corresponding roughly with recognized periods in the history of the American Republic: 1700-1800, 1800-1850, 1850-1890, 1890-1920, 1920-1950, and 1950 to the present. The exhibit for each period includes timelines, maps, oral...

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...

The National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute hosted by George Washington University (reviewed in the September 20, 1996 Scout Report), has collected and placed online another invaluable collection of previously classified US foreign policy documents. This time, the Archive has turned its attention to US involvement in Guatemala, creating an Electronic Briefing Book of 32...

The Free Speech Movement that began on the Berkeley campus of the University of California in 1964 began a groundswell of student protests and campus-based social activism that would later spread across the United States for the remainder of the decade. With a substantial gift from Stephen M. Silberstein in the late 1990s, the University of California Berkeley Library began an ambitious program to...

Born in Stonewall, Texas in 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson would later become president of the United States after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and oversee one of the most turbulent periods in recent American history. Located on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, the Johnson Library and Museum was dedicated in 1971 and is part of the system of presidential libraries administered...

The National Security Agency's (NSA) Web site provides information about NSA's mission and activities. NSA is the nation's cryptologic organization and employs this country's premier codemakers and codebreakers. Under its two national missions, NSA collects and processes foreign signals intelligence and it is also responsible for providing leadership, products and services to protect classified...

This site is a new addition to the excellent online Documenting the American South collections maintained and designed by the staff of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries. This particular thematic collection examines "how World War I shaped the lives of different North Carolinians on the battlefield and on the home front." Drawing on a number of primary and secondary sources,...

Begun in 1994 by the history department of Rutgers University, the Oral History Archive of World War II site (last mentioned in the April 7, 1998 Scout Report for Social Sciences) features transcriptions of interviews with 238 veterans (both men and women) of the war. While the project began with members of the Rutgers class of 1942, it was later expanded to involve many more alumni. The...

This site, developed by the Chicago Historical Society, is a tribute to Studs Terkel, the noted oral historian, author, and radio host for over fifty years. Organized into galleries that are largely centered around the extensive interviews that Mr. Terkel did for each of one of his books, each section contains dozens of audio clips of these long-form interviews. A biography section of Mr. Terkel...