History in the Classroom: Primary Sources for Early American History Available from Home or Classroom

How to Use Primary Sources

Teaching with Documents: Lesson Plans - The National Archives
http://www.archives.gov/education/index.html
Lesson plans, activities, worksheets, and links to documents and other primary sources.

E-Classroom: New Jersey Women's History
http://www.scc.rutgers.edu/njwomenshistory/WPNJ2/ipage14.htm
Ideas on how to use primary sources in the classroom with example exercises and links to the primary source documents used in the examples.

Databases Available from Home or School

You can access these databases using your NYPL library card.

History Resource Center
Variety of historical data from primary sources and reference documents. Also includes photographs, illustrations, and maps.

Facts on File History Database
Comprised of the World History Online, Ancient History & Culture, American Women's History, African-American History & Culture and American Indian History & Culture, this interface allows us to search across all five history databases

You can get to a full list of additional databases accessible from home or school by going to http://www.nypl.org/databases/index.cfm?act=2&j=home.

Web Resources

AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History
http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/
A comprehensive web index linking to primary source documents. Arranged chronologically.

American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html
A digital record of American history and creativity from the collection of the Library of Congress and other institutions.

Avalon Project at Yale Law School
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm
A full-text collection of primary source documents relating to Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government

Charters of Freedom
http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/charters.html
A website of the National Archives exhibition with links to image files and HTML full text of the Charters, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

Digital History
http://digitalhistory.uh.edu/resource_guides/default.cfm
Resource guides for various periods in American history with short HTML full-text excerpts of important documents relating to the era including letters, journals, and other primary sources.

Historical Census Information
http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html
U.S. census information from 1790 to 2000.

Images of Early Maps on the Web
http://www.maphistory.info/webimages.html
An index of websites containing maps or information about the history of cartography.

Maps from the NYPL Digital Gallery
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgdivisionbrowseresult.cfm?trg=1&div_id=hm
Digital images of selected maps in the NYPL's collection.

Our Documents – National Archives
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/index.php?flash=true&
100 Milestone Documents digitized by the National Archives. Image files and HTML full text available.

US Historical Documents
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/#2001
Full text versions of primary sources such as the Magna Carta, Iroquois Constitution, and charters for Virginia and Massachusetts created by the University of Oklahoma