How does one get students excited about the Great Depression? It can be done, and the National Archives' "Teaching With Documents" site offers a cornucopia of lesson plans on this and other periods of American history. Each lesson plan contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the National Archives holdings, and the plans are correlated to the National History Standards and National...

Originating from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, this fascinating online exhibit examines the folkways and culture of the people in southern West Virginia. As the project sought to examine the relationship between the people and their rugged physical surroundings, it is appropriate that the exhibit offers a host of materials that orient the visitor to this part of the...

While the annexation of Hawaii by the United States occurred on August 12, 1898, the subject held the attention of the US government for several years, and was fiercely debated in Congress and back on the islands themselves, with many claiming that the annexation was solely to benefit the financial interests of Sanford B. Dole, the legendary "Sugar King." To their credit, the University of Hawaii...

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, (last mentioned in the April 4, 1997 Scout Report) has recently added an African American biography, autobiography, and history section. The section contains complete copies of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 "I Have A Dream" speech, My Bondage and Freedom by Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, dictated by Sojourner Truth and edited by Olive...

Developed by the Archives and Special Collections Department of the University of Miami (in collaboration with Dartmouth University), this Web site offers transcriptions of letters composed by Calvin Shedd to his family during the Civil War. Mr. Shedd was a carpenter from New Hampshire who enlisted in the Union Army's Seventh Regiment in 1861, serving for several years, most of which he spent in...

A new addition to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Digital Classroom site (see the November 18, 199 Scout Report for Social Sciences), the Constitution Community is a partnership between classroom teachers and education specialists from the NARA. Like other Digital Classroom projects, the Constitution Community offers sample lesson plans, correlated to the National History...

Recipients of the 1999 LC/Ameritech Award, University of Chicago Library and Filson Historical Society of Louisville (KY) contributed this collection to American Memory in 2002. It consists of 15,000 pages of original historical material that documents European exploration and settlement of the Ohio River Valley. The majority of the collection is textual (i.e., choosing resource type "text"...

Researching and documenting local histories can be difficult work, as any genealogist or amateur historian can attest to. Barbara Stewart and her colleagues at the University of Massachusetts have created a valuable Web-based resource for people interested in researching Franklin County in Massachusetts. Essentially, the Archive Index allows users to search for articles (organized by subject) from...

The Library of Congress has indeed chronicled much of America, and this latest stellar effort will be of great interest to just about anyone with a penchant for learning about American history. Working with the National Digital Newspaper Program, the Library of Congress has created this prototype website to provide direct access to select newspapers from the period 1900 to 1910. Additionally, for...

The Oregon History Project is an online educational resource designed both for the general public and for students and educators to explore the history of Oregon through primary and secondary documents, photographs, and other ephemera. The site is divided into three main sections. The first, This Land: Oregon, is a narrative overview of Oregon's history, written and compiled by Professor William...