Nebraska

Nebraska's online archives are a real mix of online resources and online indexes to offline resources. They do have some interesting exhibits and materials online, and the indexes themselves are often useful research tools.

Let's start with the online collection of Nebraska Virtual Exhibits which include:

• New Deal Art
• Collections Treasures
• Depression Era Quilts
• The Boy Scouts of America, 1910-2010
• Saving Memories (family histories)
• French Gratitude Train (post-WWII Merci Train)
• Made in Nebraska
• Weird Nebraska
• Beadwork Masterpieces
• Collections Treasures
• Chimney Rock
• One Hundred Years of 4-H in Nebraska
• Building the State: Nebraska, 1867-1916

And that's just a sampling of what's available.

Other pages display highlights from the Nebraska Historical Society's photograph collection covering farming, industry, daily life and more, including a small sampling of photos from the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

Nebraska Treasures includes WWII Posters, cowboy and Indian artifacts and photos, and baseball paraphenalia.

There are more treasures at a second site and Nuestros Tesoros (Our Treasures) devoted to Mexican-American heritage in the state.

You can use a search tool to search many of the records and indexes at the archives, though it's not entirely clear what is and isn't included in the search.

There are also searches for specific collections, indexes and topics including:

• Photograph Collections
• Archival Collection Database
• Nebraska History Magazine Index Search

A page of additional database searches includes:

• Atlases / Plat Books
• Atlases / Plat Books Name Index
• Cemetery Registry
• City / County Directories
• Civil War Veterans (includes name searching)
• Gazetteer Index, 1890 and 1911
• Newspaper Indexes
• Newspaper Project (additional name searching)
• Prison Records, 1870-1990
• U.S. General Land Office Tract Books (homestead records)
• WWI Draft Registration Cards

Overall, this is a real scattershot website and there's no way I could list everything of value. It's worth spending some time exploring its nooks and crannies as it does have some unusual materials that will interest historians, genealogists and the generally curious.