This site helps teachers and students navigate the vast online collections of primary source materials at the Library of Congress. The links, arranged by chronological period, lead to sets of selected primary sources on a variety of topics in U.S. history.

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

This site provides 253 narratives describing travels in the colonies and U.S. The collection includes works by authors not widely known as well as by Matthew Arnold, James Fenimore Cooper, Dickens, Washington Irving, Sir Charles Lyell, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other major figures. The collection is searchable and can be browsed by not only by author and title, but also by subject.

This video provides a detailed description of the habitat of the American Pika and how this organism may serve as a climate indicator species because they have a relatively narrow ecological niche and specialized habitat.

The ĺÎĺ_ĺĚĄ_American Renaissance,ĺÎĺ_ĺĚĺÎĺ a period of tremendous literary activity that took place in America between the 1830s and 1860s represents the cultivation of a distinctively American literature. The student will begin this course by looking at what it was in American culture and society that led to the dramatic outburst of literary creativity in this era. The student will then explore some of the periodĺÎĺ_ĺĚĺ_s most famous works, attempting to define the emerging American identity represented in this literature. Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to: discriminate among the key economic, technological, social, and cultural transformations underpinning the American Renaissance; define the transformations in American Protestantism exemplified by the second Great Awakening and transcendentalism; list the key tenets of transcendentalism and relate them to romanticism more broadly and to social and cultural developments in the antebellum United States; analyze EmersonĺÎĺ_ĺĚĺ_s place in defining transcendentalism and his key differences from other transcendentalists; analyze competing conceptualizations of poetry and its construction and purpose, with particular attention to Poe, Emerson, and Whitman; define the formal innovations of Dickinson and their relationship to her central themes; describe the emergence of the short story as a form, with reference to specific stories by Hawthorne and Poe; distinguish among forms of the novel, with reference to specific works by Hawthorne, Thompson, and Fern; analyze the ways that writers such as Melville, Brownson, Davis, and Thoreau saw industrialization and capitalism as a threat to U. S. society; develop the relationship between ThoreauĺÎĺ_ĺĚĺ_s interest in nature and his political commitments and compare and contrast his thinking with Emerson and other transcendentalists; analyze the different ways that sentimentalism constrained and empowered women writers to critique gender conventions, with reference to specific works by writers such as Fern, Alcott, and Stowe; define the ways that the slavery question influenced major texts and major controversies over literature during this period. This free course may be completed online at any time. (English Literature 405)

The American Revolution entailed some remarkable transformations -- converting British colonists into American revolutionaries, and a cluster of colonies into a confederation of states with a common cause -- but it was far more complex and enduring then the fighting of a war. As John Adams put it, "The Revolution was in the Minds of the people . . . before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington" -- and it continued long past America's victory at Yorktown. This course will examine the Revolution from this broad perspective, tracing the participants' shifting sense of themselves as British subjects, colonial settlers, revolutionaries, and Americans.

The collection consists of over 62,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the nineteenth century. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred music and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.

ASL I is an introduction to the naturally existing language widely used by Deaf people in North America. Since ASL is a visual-gestural language, students will need to develop unique communication skills. These consist of using the hands, body, face, eyes and space. In order to achieve progress in this class, it is important to become comfortable communicating with your whole body and listening with your eyes.

ASL II is a sequential course following ASL I, which continues to build knowledge of the naturally existing language widely used by Deaf people in North America. Since ASL is a visual-gestural language, students will need to continue to develop unique communication skills. These consist of using the hands, body, face, eyes and space. In order to achieve progress in this class, it is important to become comfortable communicating with your whole body and listening with your eyes.

ASL III is the third quarter of the first year study of American Sign Language (ASL) and the people who use it. ASL III will enhance the use of ASL grammar and consist of concentrated efforts to develop the studentęs expressive and receptive skills. The course will continue to provide insights into Deaf Cultural values, attitudes and the Deaf community. Now learning more abstract concepts of the language, ASL III students will be able to: narrate events that occurred in the past, ask for solutions to everyday problems, tell about life events, and describe objects. Students will also be able to: demonstrate intermediate finger spelling competency, generate complex ASL structures with intermediate vocabulary knowledge, execute a wide variety of grammatical principles, including classifiers and inflections, adapt to different sign language registers, dialects and accents, and create opportunities to interact with members of the Deaf community.

presents a travel itinerary of 58 historic places across Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It includes forts built to protect mail routes and settlers, missions and churches, prehistoric cliff dwellings, trading posts, petroglyphs (from the petrified forest), pit house villages, and Indian villages home to the Anasazi, Sinagua, Zuni, and other Native American tribes.

The Printed Ephemera Collection at the Library of Congress is a rich repository of Americana. In total, the Collection comprises 28,000 primary source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompassing key events and eras in American history. Among them are a variety of posters, notices, invitations, proclamations, leaflets, propaganda, manifestos, menus and business cards. They capture the experience of the Revolutionary War, slavery, the western land rush, the Civil War, Women's Suffrage, and the Industrial Revolution from the viewpoint of those who lived through them.

This is a multimedia anthology illustrating the vibrant and diverse forms of popular entertainment, especially vaudeville, that thrived from 1870-1920. Included are 334 English- and Yiddish-language playscripts, 146 theater playbills and programs, 61 motion pictures, 10 sound recordings and 143 photographs and 29 memorabilia items documenting the life and career of Harry Houdini.

Dime novels written by women were once enormously popular with their readers, but the genre has been neglected for most of its history by scholars, collectors, and libraries. The genre suffers from the double burden of being both popular and written for working-class women. This project hopes to overcome the history of oversight to both the form and its readers by providing information about the novels themselves, the authors, the readers, and nineteenth century public reaction.
This site is a source of information about women’s dime novels and includes primary sources on dime novels, biographies for lesser-known authors, lists of relevant archival collections and cover art.

Selected readings within an allegorical universe replacing American sovereignty with an Order of the Diaspora.  Intended as a play on the sovereignty of the people spoken of in the Preamble to the Constitution lesson work.

This is a unit about the ADA. It has hands on activities that simulate physical and cognitive impairments to build empathy in relation to the social justice standards.