History Research Guides

Center for History and New Media: History Matters ★★★★☆
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. See also:

  • The CHNM Research + Tools section features Zotero a free Firefox extension for collecting, managing, and citing your research sources.
  • Making Sense of Evidence provides strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources.
  • Visit the Reference Desk for information on annotated links to resources on standards, citing and evaluating Web sites, and understanding copyright and fair use.
  • The History News Network is a weekly web-based magazine that features articles by various historians.

Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students ★★★★☆
Professor Rael at Bowdoin College has compiled a wide-ranging set of helpful materials for college students that are divided into several categories: reading primary and secondary historical sources, the nature of historical arguments, the research process, structuring history papers, writing papers, working with sources, and editing and evaluating our own historical writing. Unfortunately it does not provide guidance for researching online sources. The last chapter includes handouts to accompany a presentation on the writing process. You may freely reproduce any part of this website.

NoodleTools ★★★★☆
Noodle Tools is a suite of interactive tools designed to aid students and professionals with online research. Among its free tools are “NoodleQuest,” designed to develop the optimum Web-based search strategy for your research topic. Fill in the short form and NoodleTools will suggest a research direction. Furthermore, “Choose the Best Search” provides helpful search strategies based on an analysis of your topic. In table format, it provides concise but detailed information literacy search strategies. Other free tools include “NoodleBib Starter,” a free and simplified MLA version for students grades 1-5, ESL, and “NoodleLinks,” a way to browse bibliographies written by researchers around the world on hundreds of topics.

Discovering American Women’s History Online ★★★★☆
A database of primary sources of women’s history in the United States. The collection ranges from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970’s.

Online Writing Lab at Purdue University ★★★★☆
Purdue University has the most comprehensive OWL (Online Writing Lab) on the Web and received over 161 million hits during the 2009-2010 academic year. The web site contains hypertext workshops and subject tutorials on writing various types of papers, teacher resources , huge collections of links to help users find information on the Internet, PowerPoint presentations about writing that can be downloaded for use in classes or individual study, and web pages that cover all aspects of writing. The Purdue OWL also contains a list of handouts organized by category and a list of interactive practice exercises. Topics include General Writing Concerns (Planning/Writing/Revising/Genres), Research and Documenting Sources, Punctuation, Capitalization and Spelling, Sentence Construction, Parts of Speech, English as a Second Language, Exercises/Answer Keys, and Professional Writing (and Writing in the Job Search). You can also receive their free Writing Lab Newsletter, which contains articles and information.

H-Net, Humanities & Social Sciences Online ★★★★☆
H-Net is an international interdisciplinary collection of scholars who contribute their findings and activities to this research-oriented site. Their free e-mail subscription provides you with the latest information on pertinent collections, exhibits, and grant opportunities; it also allows you to partake in scholarly discussions.

CIA World Factbook ★★★★☆
The CIA World Factbook provides limited commentary but a wealth of statistics and information on Geography, People, Government, Economy, Communication, Transportation, Military, and Transnational Issues of 266 “world entities.” It offers maps of major world regions, Flags of the World, a Physical Map of the World, a Political Map of the World, and a Standard Time Zones of the World map. The Factbook is a great starting point for amassing general information about individual countries.

The Internet Public Library ★★★★☆
The Internet Library is the first public library of and for the Internet community and features online collections and exhibits as well as more traditional library resources. This link it to the History section and its 200 resources.

The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide ★★★★☆
This free booklet presents some guidelines Smithsonian folklorists have developed for collecting folklife and oral history from family and community members. It is a general guide to conducting an interview, and includes a sample list of questions that may be adapted to your own needs.

Guide to Grammar & Writing ★★★★☆
The Guide to Grammar & Writing is an impressive, interactive guide. It is divided into six major categories: Word & Sentence Level; Paragraph Level; Essay & Research Paper Level; Ask Grammar, Quizzes, and Search Devices; Peripheral Devices; GrammarPoll, Guestbook, Awards. The Principles of Composition section is for writers in English composition courses and features handouts on Getting Started, Structure, Tone, Transitions, Editing, Logic, Formats, Rhetorical Patterns, Argumentative Essays, Research Papers, and more. There are also 150+ computer-graded quizzes to test knowledge of grammar and you can submit a question about English usage or grammar. The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation.

Scout Report: Archives ★★★★☆
The Scout Report Archives is a searchable and browseable database to over seven years’ worth of the Scout Report and subject-specific Scout Reports. It currently contains tens of thousands of critical annotations of carefully selected Internet sites and mailing lists.

Reviews in History ★★★★☆
An electronic publication which reviews and reappraises significant work in all fields of historical interest, covering the principal areas of the subject as taught in institutions of higher education. Started in 1996, it now publishes a new issue every week featuring four original reviews on its newly redesigned website, and has published over 1,000 reviews in total.

Fact Monster ★★★★☆
This is an Online Almanac, Atlas, Dictionary, and Encyclopedia for kids. Also includes Homework Center, Games, and Quizzes.

The Research Guide ★★★★☆
The Research Guide is a free, no-frills education site designed for students, teachers, and the general public. It provides a list of useful URLs arranged by Dewey decimal classification 900-919 or History & Geography.

Art History Resources on the Web ★★★☆☆
Professor Chris Witcombe of the Art department at Sweet Briar College has perhaps the best organized gateway to art history sites on the Web. His directory is chock-full of useful and regularly updated links and is divided into twenty one categories including Prehistoric Art, Art in Early Europe, Renaissance Art in Italy, and Prints & Photography.

Voice of the Shuttle: History Page ★★★☆☆
Part of an extensive guide to humanities resources that provides numerous links to feature sites, teaching resources, electronic journals, course syllabi, and more. Aimed at university educators.

Internet Search Tools

Google Advanced Search Narrow your Google search down a search by:

  • Exact words or phrase
  • Excluding terms
  • A file type (pdf, ppt, etc.)
  • A specific domain
  • Where search terms are located within a website
  • Other parameters
Google Advanced Search – EdTechTeacher Video Tutorial

Refseek
Refseek is an academic search engine that makes academic information on the Internet easier to access than with typical search engines. Refseek cuts down on the overload of non-academic search results by eliminating sponsored links and most commercial web sites.

Wolfram Alpha
WolframAlpha is a unique, computational search engine. The Search results are data driven, which makes it especially uses for searching socioeconomic data, geographic and demographic data, economic data, and other topics.

SweetSearch
SweetSearch is a search engine for students. It searches far fewer web sites than Google, but only lists websites that have been reviewed by its team of educators. It also provides social media tools that enable you to send your results to others.

Internet Archive: Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public to billions of web pages stored in the Internet Archive’s web archive. Great tool for seeing what web pages contained months, or years ago. Collections include Web, Moving Images, Texts, Audio, and Software. holdings.

Google Custom Search Engine
With Google Custom Search Engine you can create your own customized search engine — quickly and easily. It is a great tool if you want control over which websites will be included in the search results. Requires a Google account.

Google Custom Search – TeacherTube Video Tutorial

Google News
Google News gathers news stories from 4,500 sources and organizes them into eight categories: Top Stories, World, U.S. Business, Sci/Tech, Sports, Entertainment, and Health. But what sets Google News apart from other online news sources is that you can customize Google News and create your own categories. (To do so select the “Customize this page” option and then click on Add a Custom Section.) You can edit/delete categories and physically change their placement on the screen. You can also have Google email you news updates, called Google Alerts. Alerts will notify you — daily or less frequently — when information matching your keywords is found .With Google News and News Alerts the trick is to select your keywords carefully so that they are neither too broad nor two narrow in scope.

TripHistoric
TripHistoric is a map search engine to historical sites aimed at travelers. You’ll get information on each historic site, directions, entry and contact details and comments from other users.

Diigo
Diigo is a great web-based platform for saving, annotating, and sharing bookmarks. Students, teachers, departments, and even institutions can collect, share, and publish their online resources.

Social Bookmarking with Diigo – EdTechTeacher Video Tutorial

Bubbl.us
Bubbl.us is intuitive mindmapping tool for brainstorming and organizing ideas. Students can start creating right away without creating an account and can work on the same mindmap from anywhere with an Internet connection. Mindmaps can be printed and saved with a free account.

Google Docs
Create documents, presentations, spreadsheets, polls, surveys, or drawings for free and share with others. Organize documents into folders, publish to the web, and collaborate with other users. (Special feature is ability to work on a document in real-time with anyone, anywhere.) You can convert documents into Word, PowerPoint, PDF and other formats.

History Pin
With History Pin users can overlay (mainly historical) photographs on top of Google Maps Street View and add a story.

Live Binders4Teachers
LiveBinders is an interactive resource for teachers to quickly research websites related to topics they are teaching that otherwise would take them much longer using Google or other search engines. A LiveBinder is a compilation tool made up of several websites related to one specific topic of the LiveBinder. For example, under the category of History LiveBinders, there is one based on the Battle of Guadalcanal. Within the binder, there are roughly ten websites relating to and describing the battle from different perspectives. Although it is much faster than navigating a topic on a search engine, LiveBinder still retains many of the drawbacks of searching for a topic online. While many websites go through a filter before they are added, the reliance of some of the websites can waver depending on who posts them. As long as this recognition is understood, LiveBinder is a generally good resource for teachers to use in their lesson plans and assignments.

TrackStar
TrackStar is a starting point for online lessons and activities for multiple disciplines. Simply collect websites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a “Track.” Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators. Search the database by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick and easy activity.

Primary Source Collections and Activities

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: Teachers
The new Library of Congress Teachers page provides tools and resources for using Library of Congress primary source documents in the classroom and include excellent lesson plans, document analysis tools, online and offline activities, timelines, presentations and professional development resources.

The Library of Congress American Memory 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.

Edsitement — The Best of the Humanities on the Web ★★★★★
EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. This impressive site features reviewed links to top sites, professionally developed lesson plans based on primary sources, classroom activities, materials to help with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You can search lesson plans by subcategory and grade level; middle school lessons are the most numerous.

National Archives (UK) Education Service ★★★★★
The UK National Archives holds records dating back nearly 1,000 years and here you will find lessons, podcasts, and other resources. The resources cover a wide range of historical periods and are arranged in chronological periods. The lessons are usually source-based case studies centered on key questions.

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: Teachers’ Resources
    The National Archives Lesson Plans section contains incorporates U.S. primary documents and its excellent teaching activities correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Lessons are organized by chronological era, from 1754 to the present.
  • Digital Vaults
    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. Clicking on a document 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.
  • DocsTeach
    With DocsTeach, educators can create interactive history activities that incorporate more than 3,000 primary-source materials in a variety of media from the National Archives. Tools on the site are designed to teach critical thinking skills and integrate interactive elements such as puzzles, maps, and charts.
  • Our Documents
    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.

Smithsonian Source: Resources for Teaching American History ★★★★☆
Several groups of teachers conducted research at the Smithsonian and contributed primary source activities for this website. In total there are three dozen or so history lesson & culture plans at Smithsonian Education. These are engaging, quality teaching resources worth exploring.

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 ★★★★☆
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.

History Matters: Many Pasts ★★★★☆
The Center for History and New Media produces historical works in new media, tests their effectiveness in the classroom, and reflects critically on the success of new media in historical practice. Go to the Many Pasts section for primary documents in text, image, and audio about ordinary Americans throughout U.S. history. See also related World History Teaching Sources.

Global Connections: Middle East ★★★★☆
Global Connections: Putting World Events in Context provides the background information needed to understand events occurring in the Middle East. The site includes original materials created in conjunction with the Centers for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard and UCLA. The site also aggregates and contextualizes the rich resources available throughout public broadcasting, including material from Frontline, Online NewsHour, NOW with Bill Moyers, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, and many others. Designed with educators in mind, the site is also useful for those curious to better understand the Middle East and its relationship with the West.

Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web ★★★★☆
The Smithsonian offers this useful gateway to libraries and exhibits on the Web. Include over 3000 links to online exhibitions from libraries, archives, and museums around the world.

Primary Source World ★★★★☆
Primary Source resources for the Global Classroom features teacher-created, classroom-ready activities designed around key primary sources, including written documents, artifacts, audio clips, visual evidence and much more. Each cluster of sources includes key questions, objectives, and a background essay.

Documenting the American South ★★★★☆
Documenting the American South (DAS) is an impressive collection of sources by the University of North Carolina on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. DAS supplies teachers, students, and researchers with a wide range of titles they can use for reference, studying, teaching, and research. Currently, DAS includes ten thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture including Oral Histories of the American South, True and Candid Compositions: Antebellum Writings, First-Person Narratives of the American South, and North American Slave Narratives.

Authentic History: Primary Resources from American Pop Culture ★★★★☆
Contains an impressive array of pictures, documents, audio, and video from the antebellum period to the 9/11 terrorist attack.

The Avalon Project: 9/11 Collection ★★★★☆
A staggeringly enormous collection of primary sources and government documents on terrorism, 9/11, and more. Fortunately, it has a search feature; there is an amazing amount of material here.

The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy ★★★☆☆
A great research site from Yale University rich with primary source documents relating to world history. Searchable database is organized into three periods: pre-18th century, 19th century, and 20th century.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Educator Resources ★★★★☆
There is much quality material for students, educators, and enthusiasts at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. Start with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History, a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Each timeline page includes representative art from the Museum’s collection, a chart of time periods, a map of the region, an overview, and a list of key events. The timelines, accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps, provide a linear outline of art history, and allow visitors to compare and contrast art from around the globe at any time in history. There is plenty more here apart from the Timeline, however, such as lessons plans and online workshops.

Turning the Pages ★★★★☆
Turning the Pages is an award-winning interactive display system developed by The British Library to increase public access and enjoyment of some of its most valuable treasures. Visitors are able to virtually “turn” the pages of manuscripts in a realistic way, using touch-screen technology and animation. There are currently fifteen treasures on display in Turning the Pages including: the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Diamond Sutra, the Sforza Hours, the Leonardo Notebook, the Golden Haggadah, the Luttrell Psalter, Blackwell’s Herbal, the Sherborne Missal, and Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an.

Awesome Stories ★★★★☆
AwesomeStories.com is a free educational site for educators and students. Stories link to organized primary and secondary source materials found principally at U.S. and other worldwide national archives, museums, libraries, universities, news organizations, and government web sites. The purpose of the site (including its separate, stand-alone channels) is to take visitors on a virtual guided tour of relevant on-line source materials.

PBS Learning Media ★★★★☆
A great source for information on a myriad of historical events and personalities. PBS’s assorted and diverse web exhibits supplement their television series and generally include a summary of each episode, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and/or links to relevant sites.

Social Explorer ★★★★☆
Reports and interactive maps on census data from 1790 to 2000. Interactive maps allow you to choose a time period and demographic feature to look at. You can zoom in on any area or request a corresponding report on the specific information you request. Free maps are mainly of population, race, and religion, but a premium subscription allows access to many more maps. The “News and Announcements” section also offers some interesting special demographic reports. A great resource.

National Historical Geographic Information System ★★★★☆
The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides easy access to summary tables and time series of population, housing, agriculture, and economic data, along with GIS-compatible boundary files, for years from 1790 through the present and for all levels of U.S. census geography, including states, counties, tracts, and blocks.

Primary Access ★★★★☆
Primary Access allows students to use primary source documents, pictures, videos, and recordings to create multimedia presentations about a specific topic in history. It uses a general layout that consists of video recordings, outlines of ideas, timelines of history that include dated pictures and archives and much more. Although it can be very informative, Primary Access’s simple layout and summarized history explanations make it seem a bit more directed towards middle school students. While the information may seem limited at times, it provides a good layout for students to begin formulating a general idea of what they want to focus on.

Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies ★★★★☆
Hosted by the University of Toronto, the CRRC is a research centre with a library devoted to the study of the period from approximately 1350 to 1700. Its web site contains links to sites useful for researchers working in the Renaissance and the Reformation, as well as other periods. It offers FICINO, an international electronic seminar and bulletin board for the circulation and exchange of information about the Renaissance and Reformation. There are also exhibitions from its Rare Book collections, such as Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe and Textual Conversations – interactions between Renaissance authors, printers, readers, and texts. There are even two fully-searchable databases containing information from approximately 170 prompt-books for productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

The Price of Freedom: Americans at War ★★★★☆
This Smithsonian website skillfully integrates Flash video and text to examine armed conflicts involving the U.S. from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict contains a brief video clip, statistical information, and a set of artifacts. There is also a Civil War mystery, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher’s guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) section contains an introductory movie and short essay on the conflict as well as historic images and artifacts.

Digital History ★★★★☆
This impressive site from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston includes an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary sources on slavery, and United States, Mexican American, and Native American history; and succinct essays on the history of ethnicity and immigration, film, private life, and science and technology. Visual histories of Lincoln’s America and America’s Reconstruction contain text by Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney. The Doing History feature lets users reconstruct the past through the voices of children, gravestones, advertising, and other primary sources. Reference resources include classroom handouts, chronologies, encyclopedia articles, glossaries, and an audio-visual archive including speeches, book talks and e-lectures by historians, and historical maps, music, newspaper articles, and images. The site’s Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

British Empire ★★★☆☆
A professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada has created this internet gateway. You’ll find courses on various aspects of the British empire, including history and cultural studies. There are links to other sites: other gateways, libraries, writings and images of empire, and more. You can also find out about journals and discussion lists connected with British empire or Commonwealth studies. Some broken links.

Perseus Project ★★★★☆
Perseus Project is an impressive digital library for Greek and Classical resources from the Classics Department at Tufts University for primary and secondary source scholarly works that cover the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world. The collection contains extensive and diverse resources including primary and secondary texts, site plans, digital images, and maps. Works are listed by author and you can browse the Greco-Roman Collection or use the search engine. Art and archaeology catalogs document a wide range of objects: vases, sculptures and sculptural groups, coins, buildings and gems. The site also has FAQs, essays, a historical overview, and an extensive library of art objects, and other resources. Special exhibits include The Ancient Olympics and Hercules. Site is updated regularly.

The Online Medieval and Classical Library ★★★☆☆
Part of the Berkeley Digital Library, OMACL is a collection of some of the most important literary works of Classical and Medieval civilization. You may search all of the texts in this collection or browse by Title, Author, Genre and Language.

Labyrinth: Medieval Resources ★★★☆☆
This Georgetown University site features free, organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies. Among its offerings are bibliographies, a searchable index, links to special topics, and full-text versions of medieval works. The Labyrinth’s menus and links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images on other servers.

Early Modern Resources ★★★☆☆
In 2000 a Ph.D student began Early Modern Resources, a gateway site for the early modern period (c.1500-1800). It contains a wide range of links, organized into Research, Sources, Regions, and Themes. Subject themes include Cultures, Law and Order, and New Worlds. Also includes links to General Resources, E-tests, E-journals, and more.

History Research with Databases

Note: These are fee-based subscription services. Check to see if your institution has procured access.

JSTOR: The Scholarly Journals Archive
JSTOR provides wide access to the most popular academic journals in history, roughly 250 titles. Its Primary Sources Collections are both multi-disciplinary and discipline-specific and include primary source content such as monographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, letters, oral histories, government documents, images, and more.

Lexis Nexis
LexisNexis’s most useful resource is its archive of newspaper articles dating back to the 1980s from dozens of newspapers from around the country. The interface is simple and the archive is enormous. While Google News is an excellent resource for recently published news, LexisNexis is currently the champion for searches of articles from the last 20 years.

Thomson Gale Powersearch (formerly known as Infotrac)
The Thomson Gale Databases archive an incredibly wide range of publications from children’s magazines to encyclopedias to scholarly journals. It is a vast collection, so they have subdivided it into a collection of smaller databases. When you get to their landing page, you’ll see the first part of the list. (Scroll down and you’ll see more, depending on the relationship your library has with Thomson Gale.) When Powersearch returns your results, it will break them up by resource type. Magazines, Academic Journals, Reference sources, News and Multimedia all have their own separate tabs. Like LexisNexis, Powersearch provides the full title and word count of each article, which are helpful to look at when selecting sources. The best general collection for younger researchers (roughly 6th-9th grade) is the Student Edition. The best general collections for more advanced readers are the General Reference Center Gold Collection and the Expanded Academic ASAP.

EBSCOHost Online Research Databases
EBSCOHost’s History Reference Center collection focuses on history articles and sources for K-12 students. Clicking the Linked Full Text option is key to getting articles that you can actually read right away. EBSCOHost also has the nice feature that you can limit your search by reading level. One feature that sets EBSCOHost apart is that is its visual searching technology.

ABC-Clio
ABC-Clio has five different databases of Social Studies Web Sites. What distinguishes ABC-Clio is that search results will be grouped by source type: essays, primary sources, audio, video and more. For many research assignments, teachers ask students to write their papers or create their presentations using a wide variety of different source types. This search engine makes that task easier for students and it helps them see more clearly whether a source is an essay, a primary source, or something else.

ProQuest
ProQuest’s resources include several different databases that each contain their own unique and helpful reserves of information. The ProQuest Historical Newspapers database provides indexing of the New York Times back until 1850 (when it was the New York Daily Times). The most novel resource however is the History Study Center. Like ABC-Clio, the History Study Center can produce results by source type, but in addition, the History Study Center has over 500 “Study Units,” where editors have compiled the best of ProQuest’s collections on a variety of topics.

American Periodical Series
The full text of articles in 1,100 American journals and popular magazines published between 1740 and 1941.

History Museums Online

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There is much quality material for art students, educators, and enthusiasts at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. Start with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History, a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Each timeline page includes representative art from the Museum’s collection, a chart of time periods, a map of the region, an overview, and a list of key events. The timelines – accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps – provide a linear outline of art history, and allow visitors to compare and contrast art from around the globe at any time in history. There is plenty more here apart from the Timeline: “Just for Fun” has interactive activities for kids, “A Closer Look” examines the “hows and whys” behind Met objects (such as George Washington Crossing the Delaware), “Artist” enables visitors to access biographical materials on a selection of artists as well as general information about their work, and “Themes and Cultures” presents past and present cultures with special features on the Met’s collections and exhibitions. (Many of these individual exhibitions are listed below.)

The British Museum
The British Museum was founded in 1753 to promote universal understanding through the arts, natural history, and science in a public museum. Its various online offerings are impressive. It features interactive multimedia resources, historical reconstructions and 3D animations and attracts millions of visitors each year. COMPASS is an on-line database featuring around 5,000 objects from the British Museum’s collections. There are online tours on a variety of subjects, including introductions to the current exhibitions. Childrens’ COMPASS offers a special childrens’ search, activities and quizzes for use in the classroom, noticeboards for children’s work, ‘Ask the Expert’ and articles written especially for 7-11 year olds.The World Cultureswebsite highlights the achievements of some remarkable world civilizations and explores cross-cultural themes of human development.

Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is America’s first federal art collection, dedicated to the art and artists of the United States. More than 7,000 American artists are represented, including major artists such as John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others. The featured themes and topics of the collection include Colonial portraiture, nineteenth-century landscape, American impressionism, twentieth-century realism and abstraction, New Deal projects, sculpture, photography, prints and drawings, contemporary crafts, African American art, Latino art, and folk art. Today the collection consists of more than 40,000 artworks in all media, spanning more than 300 years of artistic achievement. The Smithsonian Online Exhibitions feature prize holdings from different eras in American history. The online version of American Art, the academic journal of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, has articles of interest to art historians.

The American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History’s website is both a general introduction and a helpful resource for teachers and students alike to become involved in past and current exhibits of the museum without necessarily having to visit. Providing good resources about the many research departments located at the museum, the website allows students, teachers, and the general public to explore many different aspects of biological, cultural, and evolutionary history. Users can plan visits, research online libraries of information, and learn about what scientists are doing in the world at present (climate change research, oil spill clean-up, etc.) Teachers may also take advantage of the many professional development and curriculum topic planning tools provided under their “Education” heading. While not an in depth resource of historical events (natural or otherwise), the AMNH website provides a decent starting ground for examining the diverse milestones of human society.

Site Officiel du Musée du Louvre
At the official web site of the Louvre there are virtual tours of many of the galleries and exhibitions. The site presents a selection of the works of art from each of the seven departments of the museum. There is also an English Version.

National Heritage Museum
The National Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA is an American history museum with a searchable database that provides access to information about and images of many objects in the collection of the Museum and the Van Gorden-Williams Library & Archives. Go to the Explore the Virtual Museum section to search by keywords.

Evaluating web sites

Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators: Critical Evaluation Surveys
Kathy Schrock is the Administrator for Technology for the Nauset Public Schools in Massachusetts, but is better known as the creator of Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators. She is a highly acclaimed educational technology guru and her articles, web sites, and books have helped countless teachers, students, and educators. She has put online a helpful series of web site evaluation guides for students that we and many other educators have made great use of.

Evaluating Web Pages – EdTechTeacher Video Tutorial

Center for History and New Media: Reference Desk
The Center for History and New Media produces historical works in new media, tests their effectiveness in the classroom, and reflects critically on the success of new media in historical practice. This link takes you to their excellent “History Matters” web site for U.S. History. Go to the Reference Desk for information on annotated links to resources on standards, citing and evaluating Web sites, and understanding copyright and fair use.

Jo Cool or Jo Fool: An Online Game about Savvy Surfing
An interactive online module that takes students through a CyberTour of twelve mock Web sites to test their savvy surfing skills. Jo Cool or Jo Fool is also accompanied by an extensive Teacher’s Guide, that contains background information for teachers, and questions and classroom activities for students, about online issues such as marketing, privacy, safety, responsible Internet use and authenticating information.

Copyright & Fair Use
The Stanford Universities Libraries Copyright & Fair Use Center provides articles, FAQs, primary materials, and various other helpful resources.

Citation Machine
Use the Citation Machine to create the proper format for an MLA or APA citation then copy and paste the result into your bibliography or footnotes.

EasyBib.com
EasyBib provides a free service to teachers and students who want to create proper bibliographic citations.

Creative Commons
Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creativity. Creative Commons can help you find photos, music, text, books, educational material, and more that is free to share or build upon utilizing Creative Commons enabled search services

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States
This useful chart from Cornell University provides a quick overview of copyright terms for various works, including sound resources.

The Chicago Manual of Style Online
The editorial guidelines presented in the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style. The Manual and these other components of the site are fully searchable.

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers
A brief but useful article

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