WEB SITE OF THE MONTH
ARCHIVE

A listing of previous VSA featured websites of the month.

February 2007

The Kingwood College Library, Kingwood, TX
 19th Century History Project

In 1800, everyday life had changed little since the year 1000. 80% of Americans worked on farms. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 the fastest man could move by land was on horseback. It took 15 days to travel from Charleston to Philadelphia. But things were to change. Watch it happen as you browse your way through each decade at the The Kingwood College Library 19th Century History Project, an overview of the century in a 'semi-essay' form, with dozens of links, and an 8-minute visual tour.

The Kingwood College Library | 19th Century History Project

January 2007

The Internet Public Library

The Library is hosted by the School of Information & Library Studies of the University of Michigan, and exists to provide services and information which enhance the value of the Internet to its ever-expanding and varied community of users - work to broaden, diversify, and educate that community - communicate its creators' vision of the unique roles of library culture and traditions on the Internet.

Selected subject:
 American Literary Criticism
1865-1900

December 2006

The "little mountain"

Apparently not satisfied with writing the Declaration of Independence, being delegate to the Virginia General Assembly & Congress, Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-President, and of course, President for eight years, Thomas Jefferson found time to design his own neo-classical house with no formal training.

He called it Monticello (literally little mountain) and you can explore it by clicking on the link below: not Victorian but a superb Webby Award winning historical site worth noting.
http://explorer.monticello.org/

November 2006

BBC HISTORY TRAILS
 VICTORIAN BRITAIN

 Experience history through animations, games, movies and virtual tours, or delve into more than 450 feature articles by leading writers. 

Victorian Britain
 Articles, games, activities and quizzes that help make sense of the past and the sources that made history. The impact of the Industrial Revolution; women's rights and urban lives; reading the past: cartoons, recipes, and school reports.

Pick a trail and start your journey.

British Victorians
 This site is dedicated to bringing history to life, for the casual browser and the total enthusiast.

October 2006

http://www.archives.gov/

Of all documents created by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept forever.

This is where they are, preserved and available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family’s history, need to prove a veteran’s military service, or are researching an historical topic.  Be sure the visit the online The National Archives Experience, including the fine exhibit Eyewitness.

August/September 2006

GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH
http://books.google.com/books

Search on Google Book Search and you'll find references in millions of books that match your search terms.  This is an amazing resource that can save many hours of leafing through library catalogs and shelves.

From your search results, click a book title and you'll see, like a card catalog entry, some basic information about the book. You may also see a few snippets of text from the book showing your search term in context. If the publisher or author has given us permission through our Partner Program then you'll see a few full pages from the book - and if the book is out of copyright, you'll be able to page through the entire book: this is especially valuable when searching old or rare books, which are usually out of copyright.  Instantly find your search criteria in thousands of historical volumes.

Example of a copyrighted book:
Paint In America by Roger W. Moss

 Example of an out of copyright book:
New York, Past, Present, and Future (1849)

TIPS FOR SEARCHING:

Use "quotation marks" around text when you want to search for a specific phrase or text string; e.g. "Greek revival", "Oliver Wendell Holmes".

Use the Advanced Book Search to specify other search criteria including date ranges; e.g. a search for books from the 1880-1900.

For more about the program visit:
http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html

July 2006

Wikipedia
 Victorian Era

Wikipedia is a revolutionary Internet resource: an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers making thousands of changes an hour, all of which are recorded on article histories and recent changes. Inappropriate changes are usually removed quickly, and repeat offenders can be blocked from editing. The link above is the Wikipedia article on the Victorian Era, and related links

May/June 2006

Welcome to Collect Britain!
 www.collectbritain.co.uk

This website showcases thousands of items from the British Library. You can browse our collections, tours and exhibitions, or search the site in many different ways. Views of Victorian England, captured in hundreds of original photographic prints.

March/April 2006

THE 1900 HOUSE
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/1900house/

This web site of the PBS program that was an extraordinary living experiment in understanding science and technology's transformation of family life, includes lesson plans, virtual tours, and behind the scenes information.

January/February  2006

COUNTING BY WINTERS

Lakota winter counts — pictographic calendars of a community's history — provide a unique look into the history of the Lakota Sioux people during the 18th and 19th centuries. Unlike historical accounts recorded by European settlers and explorers, winter counts represent a rich Lakota tradition of oral history and storytelling. Community historians, known as winter count keepers, maintained and used these pictographic records as mnemonic devices to remember the sequence of events that marked each year. By referring to the winter count, members of a Lakota community could mark events in their own lives.

The Smithsonian's collection of winter counts documents the history of several Lakota communities over a 200-year period, and is represented in this award winning web site:

http://wintercounts.si.edu/index.html

December 2005

THE GILDER LEHRMAN INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN HISTORY
 http://www.gilderlehrman.org/

 Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History promotes the study and love of American history. Increasingly national and international in scope, the Institute's initiatives target audiences ranging from students to scholars to the general public.

The Institute creates history-centered schools and academic research centers; organizes seminars and enrichment programs for educators; produces print and electronic publications and traveling exhibitions; and sponsors lectures by eminent historians.

The Institute funds awards including the Lincoln and Frederick Douglass Book Prizes and offers fellowships for scholars to work in the Gilder Lehrman Collection and other archives.  Many programs and initiatives are free to educators and scholars, including:

  • Summer Seminars and other professional development opportunities for teachers and college professors;

  • History Now (www.historynow.org) a quarterly, interactive, online journal featuring articles by historians, lesson plans;

  • Lectures, symposia, conferences and traveling exhibitions on American history;

  • A number of publications, including “Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760-1820” available free of charge to history teachers, professors and institutional libraries.

To order a copy, educators and librarians should email name, title, school or library and address to resources@gilderlehrman.org.

Awards include the History Teacher of Year; and fellowships for scholars and journalists to work in history archives.

October/November 2005

THE NYPL DIGITAL GALLERY
 http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

The New York Public Library Digital Gallery provides access to over 363,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

The Curator's choice is "Classic 6:" New York City Apartment Building Living, 1880s-1910 - more than 1,300 digital images depict elevation views and floor plans for middle and upper class apartment buildings from New York City's pre-World War I residential building boom.

My favorite is the collection of over 16,000 pictures of New York City filed by street address.  But there are many, many other, varied and interesting collections.  Highly recommended.
 

August/September 2005

THE MUSEUM OF ONLINE MUSEUMS
 http://www.coudal.com/moom.php

At the Museum of Online Museums you will find links to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions:  from a review of classic art and architecture, to the study of mundane (and sometimes bizarre) objects elevated to art by their number, juxtaposition, or passion of the collector. The MoOM is organized into three sections.

The Museum Campus contains links to brick-and-mortar museums with an interesting online presence. Most of these sites will have multiple exhibits from their collections (or, in the case of the Smithsonian, displays of items not on display in the Washington museum itself).

The Permanent Collection displays links to exhibits of particular interest to design and advertising.

Galleries, Exhibition, and Shows is an eclectic and ever-changing list of interesting links to collections and galleries, most of them hosted on personal web pages. In other words, it's where all the good stuff is.

July 2005

 THE LOUVRE
 http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home_flash.jsp

The Louvre’s website, relaunched after 10 years online, is a masterpiece in the making. You can navigate the Louvre’s more than 175,000 works of art by using either the curatorial departments or the Kaleidoscope feature which categorizes works into themes such as nudes, religion, or kings and emperors.

For serious researchers, the site offers access to databases such as the Louvre’s current works on display and works in French museums. Some areas of the site are still under construction - future plans include more thematic sections, more personalization features and online ticket sales - and it can be slow to load at times, while some of the color schemes make the navigation bars hard to read.

The Biennale, which opened last week and runs to November 6, can usually be guaranteed to show off some of the most bizarre and cutting edge art in the world and this year’s edition is again an eclectic collection of paintings, video, sculptures and installations, many of which make use of digital cameras and editing.

June 2005

Horizons: Canadian and Russian Landscape Painting (1860-1940)
Canadian Heritage Information Network / Virtual Museum of Canada

Discover the breathtaking landscapes of Canada and Russia through this unique virtual exhibit, featuring 250 art works by renowned artists.

 http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Horizons/

May 2005

National Museum of American History

The National Museum of American History has recently added an excellent interactive timeline to its website. It consists of items from the Museum's various online collections, exhibitions and programs, such as Plymouth Rock, a charred timber from the 1814 White House blaze and a world map from 1511, all of which link to in-depth sections and online exhibits. Visitors can zoom in and out through the timeline and its objects and also elect to toggle on or off various themes, such as "Arts and Culture", "Peopling America", and "Politics and Reform".

April 2005

The Victorian Society (UK)

The Victorian Society is the UK's national society responsible for the study and protection of Victorian and Edwardian architecture and other arts.  It was founded in 1958 to fight the then widespread ignorance of nineteenth and early twentieth century architecture. Among its thirty founder members were John Betjeman and Nikolaus Pevsner.

March 2005

The VSA  Book Store

Web site of the month is the VSA's very own, and revamped, book store.  Pay a visit and help the VSA by shopping at Amazon.

January/February 2005

The Victorian Web
 http://www.victorianweb.org/
Probably the best scholarly Victorian resource on the Internet.

December 2004

The Battle of Antietam on the Web
 http://aotw.org/

A superbly researched web site by historian Brian Downey  brings to life the Battle of Antietam, one of the pivotal battles of the Civil War. Fought in September 1862 near Sharpsburg, Maryland, it halted Confederate General Lee’s invasion of the north at a terrible cost.  More than 22,000 soldiers were killed or wounded on what is still the single bloodiest day in American history.  Most impressively, it includes some 280 official reports filed by officers and soldiers on both sides.

November 2004

Picturing Modern America, 1880-1920
 http://www.edc.org/CCT/PMA/

Featuring primary documents from the Library of Congress' American Memory archives, these thinking exercises for middle and high school students comprise a project of the Center for Children and Technology Education Development Center with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

October  2004
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/victorians/
 http://home.freeuk.net/elloughton13/vicintro.htm

With schools back it's time for the kids to learn about the Victorians.  Here are two web sites devoted to just that.

The first is a BBC site called Children in Victorian Britain. This interesting and fun historical site gives an insight into the lives of Victorian children. This site is designed for children age 9-11 years and has been designed for children to be able to work through by themselves with minimal input.

The second is a school resource called The Victorians with information about Queen Victoria, Sounds of the Century, Change and Invention, and Florence Nightingale.

September 2004
 http://presidentelect.org/

It was 1876, Rutherford Hayes against Samuel Tilden.  When the votes were counted, Tilden had won the popular vote by about 300,000, and was heading towards an electoral vote win as well. Most newspapers went to press that night announcing a Tilden victory. Hayes went to bed assuming he had lost. However, some Republican operatives noticed the close races in the three unredeemed southern states. If they could reverse Tilden's apparent victory in those states, Hayes would win in the Electoral College by a single vote...

See article at; http://presidentelect.org/art_everythingold.html

See election result at: http://presidentelect.org/e1876.html

August 2004

Digital History
 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/

Designed and developed to support the teaching of American History in K-12 schools and colleges and is supported by the Department of History and the College of Education at the University of Houston.

The materials on this Web site include a U.S. history textbook; over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection on deposit at the Pierpont Morgan Library, supplemented by primary sources on slavery, Mexican American and Native American history, and U.S. political, social, and legal history; succinct essays on the history of film, ethnicity, private life, and technology; multimedia exhibitions; and reference resources that include a searchable database of 1,500 annotated links, classroom handouts, chronologies, glossaries, an audio archive including speeches and book talks by historians, and a visual archive with hundreds of historical maps and images. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

July 2004

BedandBreakfast.com
 http://www.bedandbreakfast.com

Are you touring this Summer?

If so, you might need a place to stay. BedandBreakfast.com has the most comprehensive database: Over 27,000 worldwide listings include bed and breakfasts, B&B homestays, country and urban inns, guest houses, lodges, cabins, historic hotels, small resorts, guest ranches, and farmhouse accommodations.

June 2004

The Victorian Wedding
 http://www.lahacal.org/wed.html

The Victorian wedding is a topic of considerable interest to VSA members, as well as social historians, fashion historians, antique collectors and especially those who want to inject a sense of tradition and grace into their modern weddings.

To help address this interest, here is a website full of information.  It includes a chapter reproduced a 19th Century American etiquette book: "Our Deportment: or the Manners Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society" by John H. Young, A.M., F.B. Dickerson Publisher, 1882. The chapter addresses weddings, and is reproduced in its entirety, in facsimile.

April/May 2004

Heritage Preservation Services
 http://www2.cr.nps.gov/

Heritage Preservation Services, National Park Service, helps the nation's citizens and communities identify, evaluate, protect and preserve historic properties for future generations of Americans.

Located in Washington, D.C. within the National Center for Cultural Resources, the Division provides a broad range of products and services, financial assistance and incentives, educational guidance, and technical information in support of this mission. Its diverse partners include State Historic Preservation Offices, local governments, tribes, federal agencies, colleges, and non-profit organizations.

March 2004

THE VICTORIAN DICTIONARY
 http://www.victorianlondon.org/

An excellent resource for anyone interested in how life was lived in Victorian London.

By an obsessed author and librarian.
 

February 2004

Encyclopaedia Britannica
Black History Month

Two months before the Civil War ended Abraham Lincoln told portrait painter Francis B. Carpenter that the Emancipation Proclamation was:

 "the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the nineteenth century."


To Lincoln and to his countrymen it had become evident that the proclamation had dealt a deathblow to slavery in the United States, a fate that was officially sealed by the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

Read more from the Encyclopaedia Britannica archive on Black History at this link.

January 2004

THE OFFICIAL SITE OF THE BRITISH MONARCHY

Queen Victoria

Born in a palace, her father dying shortly after her birth, educated by a governess at home, and Queen at the age of 18.  Victoria was warm-hearted and lively girl, with a a gift for drawing and painting. She was a natural diarist and kept a regular journal throughout her life.

"I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here, and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing-gown) and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen."

She became associated with the great age of industrial expansion and economic progress and at her death, it was said, Britain had a worldwide empire on which the sun never set.

Read her story and diaries [adobe acrobat required] at the official site of the British monarchy.

December 2003

An Online Literature Library

The image of the Victorian Christmas began with Charles Dickens and his classic tale of redemption "A Christmas Carol"

Click SCROOGE to read the story at An Online Literature Library

November 2003

Snapshots

Educational features and activities based on the visual resources at Learning Curve: an online teaching resource of the U.K. National Archives.



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