U.S. History Digital Library - Academic Info - American History Online Publications
Digital Library > History > U.S.
This list includes only general U.S. History online publications or collections covering more than one era. For resources on specific eras or topics see:
- Colonial America Digital Library (~ -18th Century)
- New Republic Digital Library (~ 19th Century)
- Modern America Digital Library (~ 20th- Century)
- American West Digital Library
- African American History Digital Library
- American Women's History Digital Library
Start with:
American Memory from the Library of Congress
Historical Collections for the National Digital Library.
The premier national collection of historic photos, prints,
documents, motion pictures, maps, and sound records.
A true national treasure and a must visit for all educational
levels.
Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web
"This site features links to online exhibitions that have been created by libraries, archives, and historical societies, as well as to museum online exhibitions with a significant focus on library and archival materials."
- A Project of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Continue on with:
African Americans - See our separate African American History section.
American Centuries...view from New England
"...features a digital collection of approximately 1,800 objects and transcribed document pages from Memorial Hall Museum and Library...One section of the American Centuries site is an interactive exhibit that focusses [sic] on three past 'turns of the centuries'ó1700, 1800 and 1900...This site includes an array of classroom lessons on the elementary, middle, and secondary levels written and tested by classroom teachers under the direction of curriculum specialists."
Sections include: Digital Collection ; Turns Exhibit ; Activities ; In The Classroom ; Chronology ; My Collection ; People & Places.
Memorial Hall Museum, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association
American Heritage Virtual Archive Project
A Prototype "Virtual Archive" of Encoded Finding Aids
"will investigate one of the most serious problems facing knowledge seekers everywhere, the geographic distribution of both collections of primary source material and the written guides describing and providing access to them. We propose to solve this problem by creating a prototype 'virtual archive', integrating into a single source, hundreds of archival finding aids describing and providing access to a large body of primary source materials from collections documenting American culture and history held by four major academic research libraries [Duke University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Virginia]. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of providing both scholars and average American citizens with user-friendly, universal Internet access to the research collections of the world."
A Biography of America
"...is a telecourse and video series that presents American history as a living narrative. This series web site lets you delve further into the topics of the 26 video programs...For each program you'll find an interactive feature related to the subject or the time period of the program. In addition, you'll find a listing of key events of the period, a map relevant to the period, the transcript of the video program, and a "Webography" - a set of annotated web links. You will most likely want to watch the video program before using its related web segments, but you can use either independently."
Produced by WGBH Interactive for Annenberg/CPB.
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation
"In its final form A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation will consist of a linked set of published congressional records of the United States of America from the Continental Congress through the Forty-second Congress. This first release of the collection offers the records of the first two federal congresses, 1789-1793."
The Library of Congress
Documenting the American South
The Southern Experience in 19th Century America
"provides digitized primary materials that offer Southern perspectives on American history and culture. It supplies teachers, students, and researchers at every educational level with a wide array of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research."
Includes Slave Narrative, First-Person Narratives, and Southern Literature
- University of North Carolina
Cultural Landscapes
"Cultural Landscapes geography is documented in this category by large-scale maps such as individual land surveys, county land ownership maps and atlases, large-scale topographic maps, and thematic maps showing economic activity. These maps show the cultural modification of a physical landscape as settlers established their farmsteads and villages, constructed the connecting transportation systems, and named their surroundings. Some maps show areas occupied by Native Americans, especially after their resettlement by the United States government."
American Memory, Library of Congress
Historical New York Times Project
"The Historical New York Times Project is the first of a series of projects undertaken by the Universal Library at Carnegie Mellon University, to provide everyone with a glimpse into the actual events as they were seen by the people of the day. You will see the rich tapestry of lives, so like ours today, in which now famous events were actually understood, and misunderstood...What we present is not for the historian, who has access to the microfilms and who has the time to study them, but for the general public, worldwide."
Internet Archive
"...was founded to build an ëInternet library,í with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."
Marchand Collection
Major sections include: US Primary Source Lessons (University, High School, Middle School) ; US History Image Database.
By Rolland Marchand for the History Project.
New York Public Library Digital Collection
Includes the Digital Schomerg collections of Images of African Americans from the 19th Century, and African American Women Writers of the 19th Century. The site also contains a very diverse collection of Online Exhibits detailing the social history of New York and the United States.
Private Passions, Public Legacy:
Paul Mellon's Personal Library at the University of Virginia
"...447 rare books, manuscripts, and maps from the estate of Paul Mellon. Celebrated as a philanthropist, art collector, and breeder of thoroughbred horses, Mellon was also a passionate book collector and amassed one of the greatest libraries of original documents of American history..."
Online exhibit from the Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Perspectives
"...portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections. Among the topics it highlights are the land and its resources, relations with Spain, the competition among political parties, reform efforts, and recollections by veterans of the Spanish-American War. The materials in the collection were published between 1831 and 1929 and consist of 39 political pamphlets, 18 monographs, and 1 journal."
American Memory, Library of Congress
Selected Historic Decisions of the US Supreme Court
"From the LII's CD-ROM Collection of 624 Historic Decisions (2000 ed.)" and "Additional Focused Collections"
From Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute's Supreme Court Collection.
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
"This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica."
Data and Program Library Service (DPLS), University of Wisconsin
Teaching the Journal of American History
"Teaching the JAH uses online tools to bridge the gap between the latest scholarly research in U.S. history and the practice of classroom teaching. JAH authors demonstrate how featured articles might be taught in a U.S. history survey course."
U.S. Historical Documents Archive
"Here you will find several famous historical documents from the United States history, and famous speeches and presidential inaugural addresses. Searching through all documents is also available.
Maintained by Matthew Weiler
University of Michigan Documents Center
"...is a central reference and referral point for government information, whether local, state, federal, foreign or international. Its web pages are a reference and instructional tool for government, political science, statistical data, and news."
One of the most extensive collection of resources available online
Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World
"This exhibition traces how women and men have, over the space of several thousand years of Western culture, imagined, depicted, described, and created new versions of ideal societies. It seeks to show as well that the history of these places is inseparable from the histories of the people, cultures, and periods that gave birth to them. For each individual dream is really the refracted image of a specific moment in time, an imaginary construct in which specific problems of the concrete world are resolved and happiness ó that most elusive of goals ó is attained...Utopia is the result of a collaborative effort between two of the worldís great libraries, the BibliothËque nationale de France and The New York Public Library.
Women - See our separate History of American Women page.
Online Degree Information
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