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Primary Sources through the lens of Star Wars.
Various Collections
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The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship
The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship explores black America's quest for equality from the early national period through the twentieth century. It showcases the incomparable African American collections of the Library of Congress by displaying more than 240 items, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, and plays in the largest black history exhibit ever presented by the Library.
The Library's materials, gathered over the two hundred years of its existence, tell the story of the African American experience through nine chronological periods. These periods document the courage and determination of blacks in adverse circumstances who overcame immense odds to fully participate in all aspects of American society:
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The Avalon Project at the Yale Law School: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
Ancient Documents
4000bce - 399 Medieval Documents
400 - 1399 15th Century Documents
1400 - 1499 16th Century Documents
1500 - 1599 17th Century Documents
1600 - 1699 18th Century Documents
1700 - 1799 19th Century Documents
1800 - 1899 20th Century Documents
1900 - 1999 21st Century Documents
2000 -
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Cold War International History Project
The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program.
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Digital History
Browse more than 600 annotated documents written by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others dealing with American politics, diplomacy and social history.
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Digital History Reader: US History
The Digital History Reader (DHR) is comprised of two main content areas, each broken out into modules. The United States History section provides materials covering important themes and issues from the colonial era to the present. The European History section, entitled "Modern Europe in a Global Context," explores links between European and world history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The modules presented on this website are designed for introductory-level survey courses at colleges and universities and for advanced history courses at the secondary level. All of the modules organize and present data in a similar fashion. Each module includes an introduction outlining the module objectives and relevant historical questions students might consider while reading; background historical information, or the context of the period; an "archive" of documents, along with questions to guide students' use of the evidence; an assessment section to evaluate what students have learned and to allow for feedback; a conclusion; and a list of related resources.
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Earliest Voices : A Gallery from the Vincent Voice Library
Presents some of the most significant voices captured during the first fifty years of sound recording, 1877-1927: William Jennings Bryan, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, William McKinley, William Taft, and Booker T. Washington.
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H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online is dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Our edited networks publish peer reviewed essays, multimedia materials, and discussions for colleagues and the interested public. The computing heart and main office of H-Net resides at the History Department, Michigan State University, but H-Net officers, editors and subscribers come from all over the globe. An international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net creates and coordinates networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new content management and communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources. In light of that commitment, in 2014 H-Net migrated from the listserv platform that had served its subscribers for nearly two decade to a Drupal-based content management platform, the H-Net Commons.
Primary Sources and Video
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America at Work, School, and Leisure, 1894-1915
The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
The Library's mission is to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people.
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Edison Companies, Film and Sound Recordings
This collection features 341 Edison films, including 127 titles also available in other American Memory motion picture groupings. The earliest example is a camera test made in 1891, followed by other tests and a wide variety of actualities and dramas through the year 1918, when Edison's company ceased film production. The presentation also offers a brief history of Edison's work with motion pictures as well as an overview of the different film genres produced by the Edison company.
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Motion Picture and Television Reading Room
A curated list of resources through the Library of Congress.
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Prelinger Archives
Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 20,000 digitized titles (all originally derived from film) and a large collection of home movies, amateur and industrial films acquired since 2002. Its primary collection emphasis has turned toward home movies and amateur films, with approximately 30,000 items held as of Fall 2023. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. Getty Images represents the collection for stock footage sale, and over 8,800 items (representing approximately 6,000 distinct films) are available here.
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Life Magazine Photo Archive
Google and Life Magazine have a wonderful search engine that lets users search millions of images from the Life Magazine Photo Archive. Not only can you type in key terms to guide your searches, you can also look through images organized by decade (1860s through 1970s) or significant people, places, events or sports topics.
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C-SPAN Video Library
The video library records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 170,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives.
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Community Service Society Photographs
Nearly 1400 photographs (and a few illustrations). They offer representations of urban poverty, unsafe tenement housing, inadequate hygiene in public areas, and other pressing social issues in late-19th- and early-20th-century New York. The images range from the 1880s through the 1950s.
