However, there are great sources of information available to you from reliable sources such as national federally-funded libraries (like the Library of Congress) and research and educational institutions.

Here are a few:

• Resources by Chronological Period
  Of particular interest to this class will be the second half of the subdivisions:
  • Development of the Industrial United States (1876 - 1915)
  • Emergence of Modern America (1890 - 1930)
  • The Great Depression and World War II (1929 - 1945)
  • Postwar United States (1945 - early 1970s)
  • Contemporary United States (1968 - Present)

• American Memory--Primary Sources Collections
  American Memory is an online archive of over 100 collections of rare and unique items important to America’s heritage. The collections contain more than 7 million primary source documents, photographs, films, and recordings that reflect the collective American memory. They are a treasure trove of unique personal items from another period in time – perhaps old records, letters with exquisite penmanship and arcane language, clothing, keepsakes, or faded photographs. These collections are ‘snapshots’ providing a glimpse into America’s past. The Library of Congress has been busy digitizing and recording America's history for years now. Using their collection finder, you can find such things as:
  • AMDOCS, which has more than 200 historical documents organized by time period,
  • Atlantic Monthly collections grouped around topics,
  • Douglas Archives of American Public Addresses, speeches & articles from Jane Addams, Theodore Roosevelt, Huey Newton, and everyone in between.
  • Inaugural Addresses of U.S. Presidents - from George Washington to Bill Clinton,
  • Documenting the American South, primary sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through 1920, from the University of North Carolina.
  • Special Collections Library, Duke University - links to unusual primary sources on such topics as women's history, historic music, urban landscapes and campaign memorabilia.

• Making of America
  Primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. Contains approximately 1600 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

Specialized Sites:

• Ellis Island Records
  Between 1892 and 1924 over 22 million passengers and members of ships' crews came through Ellis Island and the Port of New York. Now you can research passenger records from ships that brought the Immigrants -- even see the original manifests with Passengers' names.

• American History 102
  These are online course materials from a history class at the University of Wisconsin. 30 lecture-by-lecture notes, profiles of important figures, outlines of big trends, links to original documents, a photo gallery, even exercises and sample exams.

• Women's Studies Database Reading Room
  Links to the history of the American Suffragist Movement, the Equal Rights Amendment, biographies of historical women, Civil War women, history of the Roaring 20s and the Flapper Culture, the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, and much more.

• Between a Rock and a Hard Place
  A History of American Sweatshops, 1820 - present. Designed to give the user the feel of walking through the actual exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, starting with the floor plan. Includes the history of sweatshops, the global fashion industry, and the 1995 El Monte sweatship.

• The New Deal Network
  A resource devoted to the public works and art projects of the New Deal. A database of more than 3000 photos, political cartoons, and texts (speeches, letters and other historic documents from the Depression and New Deal period).

• Free Speech Movement Archives
  A growing collection of documents and images about the movement known as the FSM that took off October 1964 at the University of California Berkeley campus with a speech by Mario Savio.

• Digital Sources on American Radicalism
  From the library at Michigan State University, scanned copies of more than 100 pamphlets published by political and social pressure groups in the U.S. Includes the American Indian Movement, Black Panthers, the Hollywood Ten, the Ku Klux Klan, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Students for a Democratic Society. Also material from the Rosenberg Case, Sacco-Vanzetti Case, and Wounded Knee.

• The Red Scare (1918 - 1921)
  A period in U.S. history following World War I when "Reds", "Anarchists", and "Outside Foreign-Born Radical Agitators" were persecuted through the Alien and Sedition Act and "mass round-ups and deportations of foreign born citizens" occurred. Images were scanned from newspapers and magazines, including photos political cartoons, and other illustrations.

• Voices from the Dust Bowl
  Covering a period between 1940 and 1941, documents the lives of Dust Bowl migrants living in Farm Security Administration camps in California. Includes songs, interviews, recordings of camp meetings, graphic images and all the print material in the Migrant Worker Collection.

• The American Newspaper Repository
  The American Newspaper Repository was founded in 1999 in order to save a unique collection of original newspapers that would otherwise have been destroyed or dispersed. Although the entire collection is not available online, you can click on "Read Articles from Newspapers" or "Gallery of Newspaper Illustration" to view some interesting examples of articles from the late 19th and early 20th century.