American history resources on the Internet

By Stanley D. Nash, Miles Yoshimura, and William Vincenti

gopher.usask.ca/00/Computing/Internet%20 America’s past finds a home Information/Directory%20of%20Scholarly in cyberspace %20Electronic%20Conferences/History; or 2) Info Magnet: access-, http://www.clark.net/pub/ listserv/lshist 1. html. he Internet includes a rich variety of T resources in American history for librar­ Historical organization homepages ians, students, and historians, including access and gophers to full-text documents, the ability to discover a These sites are similar to newsletters and are a rich variety of online electronic conferences (list- good way to keep up with the calendar and servs), to connect to nearly any electronic li­ general activities of a given organization. brary catalog in the world, and to access the • American Antiquarian Society. Access: emerging number of archival and manuscript gopher://mark.mwa.org/1. catalog sites. • Organization of American Historians. Access: http://www.indiana.edu/~oah/ Listservs index.html. • The H-NET Gopher. The most useful list­ • Cliometric Society (economic his­ servs dealing with American history are those tory). Access: http://cs.muohio.edu/. associated with H-NET, an organization affili­ ated with the American Historical Association, Electronic library catalogs which coordinates a large number of history • HYTELNET. Access to the electronic li­ listservs. It maintains a gopher that offers ac­ brary catalogs of most universities is readily cess to book reviews, listserv names and sub­ available through the software program known scription information, conference announce­ as HYTELNET. Access: http://galaxy.einet.net/ ments, grant opportunities, and a variety of hytelnet/START.TXT.html. documents related to H-NET activities. Access-. • Chicago Center for Research Librar­ gopher://h-net. msu. edu/1. ies (CRL). For those affiliated with CRL, which • H-NET Listserv Gophers. Further infor­ houses a treasure trove of difficult-to-obtain his­ mation on H-NET listservs may be obtained by torical materials, connecting to its online cata­ accessing their individual gophers. The follow­ log offers historians and librarians the ability to ing URL will provide connections to over 40 discover an up-to-date listing of its holdings. history listserv gophers. Access: gopher://h- Access: telnet://128.135.73.2/ (note: logon as net. msu. edu/11/lists. guest). • Other listservs. For other lists of his­ torical discussion groups and subscription in­ Special collections and archives formation, connect to either 1) the Directory of holdings Electronic Conferences: access-, gop h er:// There are an increasing number of archives and

Stanley D. Nash is American and British history selector at Rutgers University, e-mail: [email protected]; Miles Yoshimura is political science and economics selector at Rutgers, e-mail: [email protected]; William Vincenti is a reference librarian at Rutgers, e-mail: [email protected]

8 2 /C&RL News repositories that offer electronic access to their University you may access the full text of inau­ holdings and the full text of many finding aids. gural addresses from Washington through Bush. • Johns Hopkins University. This site of­ Access: gopher://gopher.cc.Columbia.edu:71/ fers connections to some 40 special collections 11/miscellaneous/cubooks/inaug. and archives. Access: gopher://musicbox.mse. • Presidential Addresses. This connec­ jhu.edu/. tion includes access to annual State of the Union • National Archives (NA). This site selves messages from 1789 through 1836. Access: http: both as a resource for the NA’s extensive archi­ //grid. let. rug.nl/~welling/usa/presidents/ val holdings, as well as a gateway to a number addresses.html. of other archival sites. Access: gopher:// gopher.nara.gov. Full-text access to imprints on various • Repositories of Primary Sources (Uni­ subjects versity of Idaho). Offers a myriad of connec­ There are a number of sites which feature ac­ tions to archives and special collections through­ cess to texts that concentrate on a subject or out the globe. Access: http://www.uidaho.edu/ person. The following are particularly notewor­ special-collections/Other.Repositories.html. thy archives. • American Civil War Home Page. This Full-text access to historical site offers a spectacular and well-organized set documents of links to diaries, letters, battle descriptions, A growing and potentially useful area emerg­ timelines, bibliographies, military rosters, maps, ing on the Internet is that of full-text documents and graphics related to the Civil War. Access: (i.e., official documents, such as treaties, acts http://cobweb.utcc.utk.edu/~hoemann/ etc.). The following sites are currently among warweb.html. the best. • U.S. Civil War Center. Various links to • Documents from the University of other Internet Civil War sites and books, pho­ Kansas. At this point this connection offers the tographs, bibliographies, and several Civil War fullest and best-organized list of U.S. historical newspapers from Louisiana State University. documents available via Internet, offering 100+ Access: http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/civlink.htm. documents dating from the seventeenth cen­ • Military History Resources via the tury to 1993. Access, http://history.cc.ukans.edu/ University of Kansas. Offers primary sources, carrie/docs/docs_us. html. articles, some monographs, graphics, bibliog­ • Documents from the University of raphies, book reviews, and links with other sites, Groningen. This site is especially strong in covering wars in all periods of American his­ colonial and revolutionary war documents, in­ tory. Access: http://ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu/his- cluding such fairly obscure documents as the tory/milhst/m_index.html. first, second, and third Virginia colonial char­ • Native Americans. The University of ters. Access: http://www.let.rug.nl/~welling/ Kansas also offers connections to historical texts usa/othertexts.html. dealing with Native Americans, including “Fa­ • Treaties via Cornell University. Cov­ mous Documents,” “Famous Quotes,” and the ering predominantly 1945 on, this site includes “Great Chiefs.” Access: http://kuhttp.cc. such items as the Nuclear Test Ban treaty of ukans.edu/~marc/natlit/natlit. html. 1963 and the recent NAFTA treaty. Access: go­ • Anti-Imperialism in the U.S.A., pher:// gopher. law. Cornell. edu/11/foreign. 1898-1935. This Web page includes access to • Treaties from Wiretap. This commer­ works by John Dewey, Mark Twain, and the cially owned free service offers many types of Anti-Imperialist League. Access: h ttp :// text (see also below under General Text Ar­ web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/ail98-35.html. chives). Using the following URL will retrieve a • New York City History: Lower East menu that includes a large number of treaty Side. Includes access to works by turn-of-the- texts from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. century (ca. 1900) observers, including Jacob Among these are all the Geneva Conventions Riis and William Dean Howells. Access: http:// and a good number of League of Nations agree­ 140.190.128.190:80/SMC/Dept/history/ ments. Access: gopher://wiretap.spies.COM/ll/ Contents.html. Gov/Treaties. • From Revolution to Reconstruction. • Inaugural Addresses of United States An HTML Hypertext survey of American his­ Presidents. Via Project Bartleby at Columbia tory which contains Hypertext links to appro­

February 1996/83 priate historical documents. Access: http:// torical texts such as The Autobiography o f Ben grid.let.rug.nl/~welling/usa/revolution.html. Franklin. Access: gopher://fir.cic.net/ll/ • Marx-Engels Full-Text Library. This Gutenberg. site already contains some 38 works, including Capital and the Communist Manifesto. Access: Indexes and guides to historical texts gopher://csf.colorado.edu/ll/psn/Marx. available on the Internet Full-text historical monographs are available Full-text access to imprints through from a number of sites. The following sites are general text archives excellent guides for discovering text sources • Modem English Collection. From the on the Internet: University of Virginia, this enormous list of pre­ • ALEX: A Catalog of Electronic Texts dominantly literary texts also includes connec­ on the Internet. An attempt to locate, index, tions to selected writings of historical figures and permit connections to text material on the such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Internet. Access: gopher://rsl.ox.ac.uk/ll/lib- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and corn/hunter/Browse%20Alex/Browse%20 Lyndon Johnson. Information is provided on by%20Subject/Browse%20by%20Subject%3 the scanning and the edition used. Beware, if a%20History. the text has an asterisk it is not accessible to • University of Kansas: The Virtual Li­ users outside of the university. Access-, http:// brary in History. This site is probably the etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng.browse.html. largest of the growing number of Web sites • Texts From Virginia Tech. Mostly lit­ offering connections to historical sources on erary connections; however, the historical works the Internet. Access: http://history.cc.ukans.edu/ of famous figures are fairly numerous. Included history/index, html. are works by Benjamin Franklin, Frederick • History Computerization Project. Fea­ Douglass, Henry David Thoreau and Thomas tures annotated listings and connections to a Jefferson. Access: gopher://gopher.vt.edu: huge number of historical sites. Access: http:// 10010/10/33. www.history.la.ca.us/history. • History Connections via the English • Tennessee Tech. More focused than Server from Camegie-Mellon. If you click most lists of history connections, especially on the words “Up to the English Server,” you when seeking text files. Access: gopher:// can access a variety of other texts under cat­ gopher, tntech. edu/11 lgopher_root% 3a egories such as philosophy, which in fact are %5bcampus. as. hist. edocs%5d. often historical. Access: http://english-www. • Yahoo. Provides both updated Internet hss.cmu.edu/History.html. connections to historical sources and connec­ • Electronic Books from Wiretap. A tions to several sites that have a strong reputa­ commercial service offering free access to a siz­ tion for listing or indexing historical connec­ able number of books and historical documents. tions. Access: http://www.yahoo.com/text/ The first address listed below will offer access Social_Science/History/American_History/. to mostly literary works and a few useful his­ • Other useful history gopher sites and tory texts; the second URL connects you to a homepages. The following sites offer many menu of choices which includes “Vietnam Era leads to text sources in American history: Rice Documents” and the “U2 Shootdown Incident University: gopher://riceinfo.rice.edu/ll/Sub- of 1960.” Access: gopher://wiretap.spies.com/ ject/History; North Carolina State University: 11/Books and gopher://wiretap.spies.com/ll/ http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/disciplines/025- Gov/US-History. History.html; University of Michigan: gopher:/ • OBI: Online Book Initiative. Provided /una.hh.lib.umich.edu/11/humanities/history; by the World Online Service, free of charge, University of Waterloo: http://www.lib. this connection makes available texts ranging uwaterloo.ca/discipline/history. from works of Booker T. Washington to docu­ ments related to Desert Storm. Access: http:// Access to images and sound ftp.std.com:80/obi/. Using Web browsers, such as Mosaic or • Project Gutenberg. This ambitious Netscape, you may access a growing number project aims at creating an electronic library of sites which transmit images and sound. The of thousands of public domain literary texts, following sites are particularly good examples. and includes a number of useful American his­ (History cont. on page 96)

84/C&RL News February 1996/85 that is available to them when enrolling at a new university or college. Librarians should be eager to help these new students become comfortable using the library and its resources to support their entire academic career, and they should provide a strong foundation to prepare students for the future. African Ameri­ can students should not leave the academic environment without being library literate. To prepare for lifelong learning requires that stu­ dents continue to acquire new skills, pursue career opportunities, enhance their potential for career advancement, and invest time to de­ velop library research skills. Photo Notes credit: 1. Alfred Young, “The Historical Origin and Significance of National Afro-American History Gerald Month Observance,” Negro History Bulletin 43 ( 1980): 6–8. Holmes 2. Charles H. Wesley and Thelma D. Perry, An African American History Month display at introduction to Carter G. Woodson, The Mis- Kent State University. education of the Negro (1933; reprint, Wash­ ington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1969). dating to change on a day-to-day basis. From 3. Levirn Hill, “Why We Need More Black he incoming freshmen to post-doctoral stu­ Librarians,” ABBWA Journal 4 (1992): 29–30. dents, African Americans should not be over­ 4. For information on the kits contact Associ­ whelmed with the vast amount of information ated Publishers at (202) 265-1441. ■

(History cont.from page 84) • Civil War Photographs: From the Li­ Electronic journals brary of Congress. A selection of important Thus far, electronic journals are not a rich source photographs. Access: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ of information for historians of the U.S. For cwphome.html. keeping up with the advent of such journals • Rare Maps from the University of connect to CICnet. Access: gopher://gopher.cic. Georgia. Colonial, Revolutionary, nineteenth- net: 2000/11/e-serials/archive. Or try the Elec­ century, and many other maps housed at the tronic Journals gopher. Access: gopher://peg. Special Collections of the University of Geor­ cwis.uci.edu:7000/l1/goρher. welcome/peg/ej. gia are made available to the public. Access: http://scarlett.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/ Bibliographies maps/maps.html. An area that promises to be very valuable is • American Memory Project: Library of that of bibliographies. So far the listservs have Congress. This remarkable project makes avail­ been the best source of small reading lists, of­ able documents, speeches and other sound fered by knowledgeable historians; however, recordings, photographs, and, most impressive, a few lengthy searchable bibliographies are some actual scanned manuscripts. Access: http: available. The best example is the one on Mar­ //lcweb2.1oc.gov/amhome.html. tin Luther King Jr., from Stanford University, • American Prohibition Project. Ohio consisting of thousands of sources. Access: tel- State University’s history homepage provides net://forsythetn.stanford.edu/. Note: When you access to photographs and primary text relat­ make the connection type socrates for account, ing to the history of prohibition from its ante­ then type yes, and then type select mlk. cedents in the 1870s through the 1920s. Access: Please try our Web page for leads to many http://www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/ other sources. Access: http://www.rutgers.edu/ projects/prohibition/default.htm. rulib/artshum/amhist.html. ■

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