Helpful Links
Digital Public Library of America
DPLA is free resource indexing content from libraries, museums, archives and other public sources.
Library of Congress: An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings, and motion pictures. The LOC's American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contain the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well.
The Library of Congress American Memory
This collection in particular is an outstanding resource for American history and general studies. Included are multimedia collections of photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and digitized text. Use the Teachers section to explore primary set collections and themed resources. Teachers can get updates on new tools, professional development opportunities, and Library programs, events and services.
National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA offers federal archives, exhibits, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and more. In addition to its paper holdings (which would circle the Earth 57 times) it has more than 3.5 billion electronic records. Users can research people, places, events and other popular topics of interest, as well as ancestry and military records. There are also features exhibits drawing from many of the NARA's popular sources. Among the most requested holdings are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, WWII photos, and the Bill of Rights.
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that examines thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history that have been integrated in a digital format. Upon entering the homepage, the user is given eight random archives to choose from. Clicking on one will give a description and a brief history of that archive, as well as displays a large variety of similar archives. The user has the ability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, as well as search for specific points in history using a keyword search. Although a lack of initial organization or index might seem overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a wonderfully imaginative resource for exploring history in a digitally compiled way.
Offers 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings, that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965. Features a teacher's toolbox and competitions for students and teachers.
Center for History and New Media
The Center for History and New Media produces historical works in new media and tests their effectiveness in the classroom. Its resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history. This link takes you to their History Matters: U.S. History on the Web site that provides an annotated guide to a 1000+ websites for U.S. history and social studies. The Many Pasts section contains primary documents in text, image, and audio about ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. See also related World History Teaching Sources.
The Internet History Sourcebooks
The Internet History Sourcebooks are wonderful collections of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts for educational use by Paul Halsall. The Sourcebooks include an Ancient History Sourcebook, a Medieval Sourcebook, and a Modern History Sourcebook, as well as assorted other Sourcebooks on topics such as African History, Women's history, Islamic history, and East Asian history. Maintenance of the Sourcebooks is uneven, so expect some broken links.
EuroDocs: History of the United Kingdom - Primary Documents
These links connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents and shed light on key historical happenings. The sources on the United Kingdom cover various chronological periods, such as 1689 to 1815 and 1816 to 1918.
Project Gutenberg is a major source of free historical electronic texts that can be searched by author or title. Content is free in the United States because its copyright has expired. You can download 30,000+ free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device.