HNN Website of the Month
Website of the Month
Website selections are made by Kelly Schrum at the Center for History and New Media and are based on reviews from History Matters and World History Matters. We welcome suggestions of websites to review.
Wet with Blood: The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln's Cloak
New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
Other Women's Voices: Translations of Women's Writing Before 1700
The Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-19
Early Canadiana Online
Source: Canadiana.org (2-26-10)
This vast collection of Canadian periodicals, official publications, parliamentary debates, records of early governors general, and documents on the Hudson Bay Company, is one of the most exhaustive online resources for studying Canada’s early political history.
Though buried within the Search the Collections section, the website also includes a substantial amount of information on women's history in 19th-century Canada. It provides access to nearly 700 texts, including diaries, novels, travel writings, recipe books, histories, parliamentary acts and debates, medical and religious tracts, and sermons, allowing users to reconstruct the types of experiences that (largely middle-class) women underwent during this period of Canada's national development. Materials could be used to study the construction of both feminine virtue and vice within a particular historical context. Also accessible through the Search section is information on Canadian literature, French Canada, and native studies. A subscription is required to access the browse list and several other collection features, but many resources are available at no cost.
Read a more in-depth review of Canadian Women's History and Early Canadiana Online written by Nora Jaffary of Concordia University.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Matters.
Wet with Blood: The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln's Cloak
Source: http://www.chicagohistory.org/wetwithblood (1-2-09)
Sometime after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's Theater in April 1865, Elizabeth Keckly, the former slave and personal confidante of Mary Todd Lincoln, acquired the opera cloak she was wearing that night. In 1890, Keckly sold it to an antiquities dealer, describing it as "wet with blood stains" on the night of the assassination.
This cloak is the centerpiece of this website devoted to the forensic drama surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. More than 100 images of artifacts, documents, photographs, and lithographs, in addition to more than 50 quotes from contemporary testimonies, illustrate how examining of a variety of types of evidence can help to illuminate this event. The website also includes two videos on techniques for examining material evidence; audio recordings of tunes from the period and a musical tribute to Lincoln that was performed at his Chicago funeral; and a virtual tour of the Chicago Historical Society's Conservation Laboratory. This website will be of particular interest to students of the Lincoln assassination, the history of museums and Americana collectors, and to those intrigued by the use of material culture to help answer questions about the past.
Read a more in-depth review of Wet with Blood written by William G. Thomas, III, of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Explore additional website reviews at History Matters.
New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
Source: American Memory, Library of Congress (12-7-09)
A key component of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) were the five Federal One projects, designed to employ out-of-work artists, researchers, writers, and musicians. The Federal Theater Project (FTP) was founded on August 29, 1935, and employed 12,700 actors, directors, playwrights, designers, vaudeville artists, and stage technicians at the height of its four-year duration. It was the only time in U.S. history that the Federal government has been entirely responsible for large-scale theater production and administration. This website offers more than 13,000 items relating to the FTP, including 71 playscripts and 168 documents from the FTP's Administration Records. Extensive materials, including photographs, scripts, posters, rehearsal schedules, and set and costume designs, have been selected from three significant productions: Macbeth and The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus, directed by Orson Welles, and Arthur Arent’s Power, an example of the Project's innovative "Living Newspaper" series of topical plays. The site includes a 3,500-word background essay, as well as four illustrated articles about the Project, rendering the website useful for researchers, students and teachers alike. There are extensive browsing options, but the materials are not searchable.
Read a more in-depth review of New Deal Stage written by Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff of the University of South Carolina.
Explore additional website reviews at History Matters.
Foreign Relations of the United States
Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian (11-8-09)
Primary sources from the diplomatic history of the Kennedy administration reveal the prominence of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the minds of policymakers at the time, and especially Cold War-era concerns with restricting Soviet influence in the Middle East. Contemporary readers of these documents, available in this official archive of the U.S. State Department, will recognize the intractability of some of these issues.
In addition to Kennedy-era sources, this archive includes formal and informal diplomacy (official reports, correspondence, and transcriptions of Presidential tape recordings), charting major U.S. foreign policy decisions from the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon-Ford administrations. The bulk of the material covers the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, with special emphasis on Israel, Egypt, and Iran. Other prominent topics include the Vietnam War, Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Foreign Economic Policy, China, and the Soviet Union. Pairing these documents with media reports would allow for an interesting examination of the parallels and disparities between public awareness and government considerations in the construction of foreign policy.
Read a more in-depth review of Foreign Relations of the United States written by Nancy Stockdale of the University of North Texas.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Matters.
Spellman Collection of Victorian Sheet Music Covers
Source: Reading University Library, The Visual Arts Data Service (10-9-09)
Music hall artist Miss Jenny Hill, dressed in “male costume,” stands with her hand in her pocket on the cover of the sheet music to the song “Arry,” published in London in 1882, which she apparently “sung with great success.” “Arry” is just one of more than 800 sheet music covers available through this website.
These sheet music covers, published between 1840 and 1900 primarily in the British Isles, provide a unique view into Victorian life and culture, illuminating the everyday lives of music hall artists, women, children, the royal family, and soldiers, as well as the towns and seascapes they traversed. In addition to lives and landscapes, the covers also depict Victorian sports and pastimes (e.g., "polo"), animals, natural history, military events, and exhibitions (such as the Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851). Browsing is available, as is an Advanced Search. Each record is accompanied by the name of the artist or lithographer, composer, writer, and date.
Explore other website reviews at World History Sources – Finding World History.
Meeting of Frontiers: Digital Collections
Source: http://frontiers.loc.gov (9-18-09)
The end of the Cold War in 1989 fueled a resurgence of ethnic, religious, and economic ties between Russia and Alaska—separated by the mere 58 miles of the Bering Strait—that date to the late 18th century. This English-Russian digital library of hundreds of photographs and prints, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, books, and pieces of sheet music tells the story of the settlement of Alaska and Siberia and the connections forged across the border between Russia and the United States.
Several photograph collections document Alaskan lives and landscapes in the early 20th century, capturing the activities of native peoples, miners, and fisherman, as well as stunning panoramas of Alaskan wildlife and wilderness. Other photograph collections highlight the lives of natives and American expatriates in Siberia through town panoramas, churches, factories, picnics, and other festivities. Twenty-five full scores of popular songs sung by Siberian native peoples and Russian settlers in the late tsarist and early Soviet periods shed light on criminal activity, weddings and other aspects of day-to-day Russian life, and are provided in high-quality resolutions, allowing viewers to read the notes and play the music. A virtual exhibit provides historical context surrounding exploration, colonization, development, national identity, and perceptions across the border.
Explore other website reviews at World History Sources – Finding World History.
Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative
Source: Texas Tech University, Special Collections Library (5-14-09)
Over the past 40 years, researchers at Texas Tech University collected thousands of Turkish folktales through interviews with several hundred Turks. This website presents English translations of more than 2,200 of these folktales (as PDF files), preserving many oral traditions that might otherwise have been lost in a dynamic, rapidly changing 21st-century Turkey. The folktales are accompanied by hundreds of additional primary and secondary sources. More than 40 topics in the “Guides” section contextualize the folktales, ranging from original Turkish publications of folktales to secondary accounts of the historical value of such literature in Turkey. Additional resources include 100 stories and poems, three audio files of readings, 100 audio files (MP3) of Turkish folk music, as well as lyric sheets for many songs, and close to 100 images of Turkish landmarks. These materials also present the opportunity to study the Karagoz puppet tradition, a representation of Ottoman popular culture. While this bilingual website is sometimes difficult to navigate, persistent users will uncover a treasure trove of information.
Read a more in-depth review of the Uysal-Walker Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative written by Nancy Stockdale of the University of Central Florida.
Or explore other website reviews at World History Sources – Finding World History.
Other Women's Voices: Translations of Women's Writing Before 1700
Source: Dorothy Disse (4-16-09)
Enheduanna (a Mesopotamian priestess), Sappho (an Ancient Greek poet), and Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz (a 17th-century Mexican scholar and nun) are just several of the women represented on this website. The 125 texts presented here were written by women throughout time and across continents, spanning from 2300 BCE to the early 18th century, and from the Middle East to Asia to Europe.
The majority of these women were nobility, but writings from other women are also available. These include the works of Sei Shonagon, a prominent literary figure and attendant at the Japanese court in the 10th century, and Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya, of Basra, Iraq, who may have been a freed slave living in the 700s. Available texts include drama, prose, poetry, biography, visionary literature, history, memoirs, and letters that shed light on how women viewed such diverse topics as war, crime, class, sexuality, sex roles, and especially religion, in the particular contexts in which they lived. The website offers a biographical portrait of each writer with pertinent facts, though little additional historical context is provided.
Read a more in-depth review of Other Women’s Voices: Translations of Women’s Writing Before 1700 written by Nora Jaffary of Concordia University.
Or explore other website reviews at World History Sources – Finding World History.
Digital Map Collection
Source: University of California, Berkeley (3-11-09)
During the mid-19th century, California (which became a U.S. state in 1850) saw a period of explosive population growth and economic boom. The settlement of California can be envisioned spatially through this collection of 700 California maps, dating primarily to the mid-1800s.
In addition, this website presents more than 5,000 maps (primarily from the 19th and 20th centuries) covering other parts of the world, including Portugal, Kenya, Hong Kong, Iraq, and hundreds of other nations or territories. These include topographic, nautical, transportation, and thematic maps as well as aerial photographs. The maps are very high quality, and many are equipped with zoom functions allowing for close exploration of map details. Bibliographic information, including date and author, is always provided, rendering these maps useful as historical sources. Though the website is difficult to navigate and the search engine is finicky, this resource will be especially useful to those interested in high quality, historical maps, as well as California’s early years as part of the United States.
Read a more in-depth review of Digital Map Collection written by David J. Bodenhamer of Indiana University.
Or explore other website reviews at History Matters.
New Deal Network
Source: The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI) and the Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) at Columbia University (2-15-09)
As the current financial crisis deepens and the prospect of a depression looms, many across the U.S. are turning to the Great Depression and the New Deal era for guidance. This database presents more than 20,000 items relating to the New Deal, treating a broad array of subjects relevant to the period's social, cultural, political, and economic history, while placing special emphasis on New Deal relief agencies and issues relating to labor, education, agriculture, the Supreme Court, and African Americans. It includes more than 900 newspaper and journal articles, speeches, letters, reports, and advertisements; and 5,000 images emphasizing construction projects, social programs, federal agencies, disaster relief, and public figures. Other materials in this website's eclectic collection include 17 selected interviews from American slave narratives gathered by the Works Progress Administration, an illustrated essay on the history and social effects of the Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as several virtual exhibitions, including "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt" with selected letters written by young people to the first lady. Resources for teachers are available as well, including six lesson plans and a guide to using the archive in the classroom.
Read a more in-depth review of New Deal Network written by Charles Forcey of Columbia University.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Matters.
Marxists Internet Archive
Source: Jorn Andersen, Brian Basgen, Chris Croome, Alphonso Pangas, David Walters and a global volunteer cooperative (2-1-09)
Marxist ideology has played a significant role in world history, especially in the 20th century, and many of the sources found in this extensive archive are essential to a complete understanding of the Cold War as well as anti-colonial and liberation movements in the developing world.
Materials include the work of more than 300 authors in 30 languages and tens of thousands of pages of text. An additional 500 images plus dozens of audio files makes this the most comprehensive library of Marxist thought available online. At the heart of the collection are the complete writings of Marx and Engels in English and Chinese. There are also large collections of works by Mao, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh. Not all of the writers here are Marxists. Charles Darwin, for example, is included because his work influenced Marxist writers. The resources allow for interesting cross-cultural comparisons. For instance, how did Asian Marxists describe European colonialism? How did European Marxists or those in Latin America describe it? For the uninitiated, a brief history of Marxism and an encyclopedia of Marxist concepts are provided.
Read a more in-depth review of the Marxists Internet Archive written by T. Mills Kelly of George Mason University.
Or explore other website reviews at World History Sources – Finding World History.
Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
Source: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA) and Memorial Hall Museum (11-1-08)
In 1704, 300 Frenchmen and their Native American allies raided Deerfield, Massachusetts, capturing 112 men, women, and children who were forced to march 300 miles to Canada during the winter. Eventually, about two-thirds of the captives were released and returned to Deerfield, while one-third remained with their captors.
This multimedia exhibit asks users to read evidence about the raid and then decide whether it was part of a larger pattern of cross-cultural violence or an aberration. As evidence, the website presents short historical background essays on the white settlement patterns that led to profound tensions, information on the five cultural groups involved in the raid (English, French, Mohawk, Huron, and Wobanaki), 28 individual biographies of participants in the raid, a dozen maps, several audio clips of Native American creation stories, five 17th-century popular songs, eight selections of 17th- and 18th- century French music, and excerpts from the opera The Captivation of Eunice Williams. This website is valuable as both a teaching tool, and an electronic exhibition that seeks to immerse users in a particular historical moment.
Read a more in-depth review of Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 written by Richard Rabinowitz of the American History Workshop.
Or explore other website reviews at History Matters.
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Source: Calvin College (7-17-08)
Boasting 850 texts addressing all aspects of the history of Christianity, this website is an excellent resource for materials in English from the Reformation period.
Beyond numerous sources on the Reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, the website is especially strong in the areas of the church fathers, from Augustine through Aquinas. There are versions of the Bible and the Psalms, copious correspondence, creeds, catechisms, hymns, and liturgies as well as many literary classics, including the full text of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Some of the longer texts are rendered more useful online than in print form due to the advanced search feature that allows specific phrases, names, or subjects to be instantly located. Users can quickly find examples of how Augustine and John Calvin used terms like “grace” or “predestination,” or what they had to say about sex and marriage. The collection is still growing, but at the moment, there are only a few writings from the secondary reformers such as Philip Melancthon, Theodore Beza, and Martin Bucer.
Read a more in-depth review of the Christian Classics Ethereal Library written by Mack P. Holt of George Mason University.
Or, explore other website reviews at World History Sources--Finding World History.
The Chinese in California, 1850–1925
Source: American Memory, Library of Congress; University of California, Berkeley; and California Historical Society (6-1-08)
This website presents more than 8,000 items—photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and art work—documenting the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials on San Francisco’s Chinatown—its architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders—feature prominently. Additional materials document Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing, and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiment concerning the Chinese. An introductory essay contextualizes the website’s materials within a standard narrative of Chinese American immigration history: flight from economic hardship, confronting racial hostility and exclusion, and contributions to American society. Thus, novices approaching this website would do well to recognize the existence of competing interpretations of the Chinese American immigrant experience.
Read a more in-depth review of The Chinese in California, 1850–1925 written by Robert G. Lee of Brown University.
Or explore other website reviews at History Matters.
Digital South Asia Library
Source: American Institute of Indian Studies and Digital South Asia Library, University of Chicago (5-8-08)
Historians have long recognized that data collection was an integral component of establishing colonial projects around the world. The British conducted the first census in India in the 1860s, and continued to collect data about the subcontinent through the end of their rule in 1947.
This extensive website presents a wide range of materials for studying South Asia, including 1,200 Excel spreadsheets of statistical information on British India between 1840 and 1920. The data can also be viewed via scans of original documents from British record offices. This information is useful for exploring colonial economics, demographics, and administrative functions, as well as for considering how and why this kind of information was of value to the British authorities.
In a separate section of the website, more than 150,000 high-quality images present mid-nineteenth-century photographs of hill tribes, political life, and architecture, as well as a series of photographs taken by American servicemen during World War II. The image collection is an ideal resource for studying specific geographic locations, daily life, and religion, or artistic forms such as sculpture, terracotta, and painting. Additional resources include thirty South Asian language dictionaries, more than twenty-five maps, bibliographic information, online journals, and indexes of South Asian scholarship.
Read a more in-depth review written by Robert DeCaroli of George Mason University at http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/16/whm.html.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History or History Matters Website Reviews.
Digital Vaults
Source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) (4-9-08)
An early engraving of the Declaration of Independence, a top secret document about the dropping of the atomic bomb, and a photograph of Navajo code talkers are just three pieces of the National Archives and Records Administration’s collection of more than 10 billion items addressing the social, economic, political, and cultural history of the United States.
This interactive website makes more than 1,200 of those items available, including official documents, personal accounts, images, maps, and ephemera. Browsing is easy from the website’s main page, which presents a rotating cast of eight archival images. More than 550 tags and a keyword search render this vast collection accessible to those interested in specific topics, such as “Abraham Lincoln” (20 items), NASA (19 items), and “Yellowstone National Park” (3 items). Each item is accompanied by a brief annotation providing historical context and related tags, and can be zoomed for highly detailed viewing. The website also provides tools that allow users to create individualized posters and movies out of any item or group of items from the website. After a free login, users can save and email these creations for future use.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History or History Matters Website Reviews.
The Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-19
Source: Library of Congress, American Memory Project (3-14-08)
"The Yanks are Coming" read the main headline of The Stars and Stripes on April 19, 1918. "Two Boche Planes Felled by Yankees" read another. These articles appeared in a weekly newspaper published by the United States Army from February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, for its forces in France. In addition to war information, the newspaper regularly featured American news, sports, poetry, and cartoons, and was designed to provide troops scattered across the Western Front, and often embedded among Italian, French, and British forces, with a sense of unity and purpose.
This website presents complete editions of all seventy-one issues of the paper, which offer users the opportunity to experience firsthand how American soldiers conceived of (and were taught to conceive of) their interactions with soldiers from other countries. In addition, many articles address not only political and current events, but also topics such as food and etiquette that provide a glimpse into the daily lives of American soldiers. The website includes a 1932 map of the American forces in Europe to provide some historical context. Though the newspapers are sometimes slow to load, all issues are keyword searchable and can be zoomed for detailed viewing. Each issue can also be downloaded as a high quality pdf.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History or History Matters Website Reviews.
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts
Source: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands (2-19-08)
Though daily life in the Middle Ages can seem at first like a distant and inaccessible historical realm, this impressive collection of 11,000 manuscript illuminations proves otherwise. These miniatures, initials, and border decorations are drawn from close to 400 manuscripts, primarily late medieval manuscripts from France and the Low Countries dating from the 8th through 16th centuries.
“Highlights” is a good place to begin for users unfamiliar with these rich sources. Here, themes in the collection emerge, such as church and society, Christian holidays, the Bible, and topics like “fabulous animals” or “devils and demons.” “Browse by Subject” is especially useful for charting change over time, as evidenced in the differences between a 14th-century Majestas Domini image from Amiens and one from an early 10th-century set of gospels from Tournai. Daily life in the Middle Ages can be glimpsed by browsing “eating and drinking,” which yields images depicting the marriage feast at Cana and Esau’s sale of his birthright in return for a bowl of lentils. All images are high-quality, enlargeable, and accompanied by keyword searchable descriptive information, rending the collection useable for students and scholars alike.
Read a more in-depth review written by Jonathan Rotondo-McCord of Xavier University at http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysource. Or explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History and History Matters Website Reviews.
Japanese Old Photographs in Bakumatsu-Meiji Period
Source: Nagasaki University Library (1-25-08)
During the second half of the 19th century, Japan changed dramatically, marked in large part by the overthrow of the feudal Tokugawa regime and rapid formation into a modern nation-state. At the same time, photographic technology emerged and became increasingly portable. When Westerners visited Japan, viewing the country and people through the lens of Western expectations, they began recording what they saw with photographs. Travelers who brought cameras produced many landscape photographs as well as hundreds of pictures of Japanese people, such as farmers planting rice, a blind beggar on a city street, and samurai in full armor. They also produced many staged pictures of Japanese women, particularly geisha (a favorite subject of Western photographers). Some of the photographs were created by Japanese photographers who began taking pictures in these decades as well.
This website presents 5,000 hand-tinted photographs, a large sample of the photographs taken during this era. Though the photographs are rather small in size, they are all keyword searchable, allowing users to choose images to illustrate discussions of Orientalism, Japanese modernization, Western imperialism, and daily urban life.
Read a more in-depth review written by historian Brian Platt of George Mason University at http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysource. Or explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History or History Matters Website Reviews.
LACMA Collections Online
Source: Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (12-1-07)
One of the largest artifact collections online, this website presents more than 70,000 images of artwork and objects from around the world and throughout history. Images are organized by subject—such as African Art, Costume and Textiles, German Expressionism, and Prints and Drawings—which facilitates browsing. A Quick Tour option generates random images from all departments to provide a rough sense of the scope of the collection, offering up images ranging from Pablo Picasso’s Centaur to a painted porcelain bowl from China’s Yuan dynasty.
The most substantial sections are Japanese Art, with about 2,500 images, and South and Southeast Asian Art, with 2,000 images sorted by country. In addition, the Photography section offers prints ranging in date from 1840 to the present. Basic bibliographic data is provided, and most sections include useful historical context and additional background information. All images may be enlarged and manipulated using the Image Viewer, which saves previously viewed images. New materials are added regularly.
Explore additional website reviews at World History Sources—Finding World History or History Matters Website Reviews.
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