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Document-Based Questions (DBQs) and Primary Source Materials and Lessons

US Documents           [Return to the top]

The Library of Congress-- three sections with primary documents.
http://www.loc.gov/
Thomas
http://thomas.loc.gov/
The U.S. Congress on the Internet
American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/
A tremendous collection of primary documents! One may search the  collection by date, format, and keyword.
America's Library
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi
Stories of America's past using primary sources. Have fun in each section playing games, leaning facts and reading more stories; play the president's scavenger hunt, learn what happen in history on your birthday, find out how a picture can lie and more.
  Meet Amazing Americans --Stories about each amazing person's life, a time line and a link to how to learn more.

Jump Back in Time to learn about eleven different eras through the stories developed from primary sources, with links to find out more information.

Colonial America (1492-1763),
Revolutionary Period (1764-1789),
The New Nation (1790-1828),
Western Expansion Reform (1829-1859),
Civil War (1860-1865),
Reconstruction (1866-1877),
Gilded Age (1878-1889),
Progressive Era (1890-1913),
Great War & Jazz Age (1914-1928),
Depression & WWII (1929-1945) , and
The Modern Era (1946-present).
 

Explore the States and learn about each one through the stories that the Library of Congress's primary sources tell.

Join America at Play and learn how we play ball, celebrate our holidays and more.

We also tell stories about ourselves by what we See, Hear and Sing. Find out about children's songs, animation, buckaroos and more in this section.

US National Archives & Records Administration-NARA
http://www.archives.gov/
The Digital Classroom
http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/index.html
..lesson plans for teaching with documents from the National Archives of the US that are correlated to the National History Standards, the National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections.
Presidential Libraries
http://www.archives.gov/presidential_libraries/index.html
... links to presidential materials and educational resources from each of the Presidential Libraries.

HistoryWired: A Few of Our Favorite Things  
http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
This new site from the Smithsonian is great.  The site introduces students to 3 million objects held by the National Museum of American History and the significance of each object is explained or illustrated by a story.

OurDocuments.gov
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
This site, designed for teachers and students, has as its core 100 milestone documents drawn from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Educators will find a variety of classroom resource tools on the site for using the documents, and several interesting national and state-wide competitions for students to enter.

Teaching with Historic Places
http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/
Teach with historic places listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places. Teaching with Historic Places has created a variety of products and activities that help teachers bring historic places into the classroom. Examples: Shaker Historic Trail and Chesterwood: The Workshop of an American Sculptor .

Repositories of Primary Sources
http://www.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html
A listing of over 5000 websites describing holdings of manuscripts, archives, rare books, historical photographs, and other primary sources for the research scholar. This site may also be browser by geographic location. There is a great list of resources for primary sources in New York State from different colleges and museums to historical societies including Albany Institute of History & Art, Emma Willard School, and the Saratoga County Historical Society-Brookside Museum .

Documents for the Study of American History-AMDOCS
http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/
AMDOCS is a great collection of primary sources on American History, from fifteenth century excerpts from Christopher Columbus's journal to U2 Shoot down Incident of 1960 to Bush's Speech to Congress, September 20, 2001.

US Historical Documents
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/
This site includes a chronology of US historical documents from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Suitable for grades 6 and up.

Detroit Publishing Company Online Exhibit
http://www.hfmgv.org/exhibits/dpc/
This online exhibit from the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village provides a look at another slice of the Detroit Publishing Co. collection (the Library of Congress has part of the collection), primarily views of the Western United States, both in cities and wilderness, such as cable cars and earthquake damage in San Francisco; a New Mexican Pueblo; or the Lone Star Geyser, Yellowstone National Park.

Making of America
http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/
Making of America is a collection of primary sources, books and magazines, of American social history from the antebellum period through to reconstruction.

San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection  
http://sfpl.lib.ca.us/librarylocations/sfhistory/sfphoto.htm
The San Francisco Public Library has begun to place a number of their historical photo holdings online.  Visitors can search for photographs by neighborhoods, or through a list of subjects, which includes monuments, nightclubs, orphanages, parks, and stadiums. 

New York               [Return to the top]

New York State Archives
http://www.archives.nysed.gov/aindex.shtml
Examples: 
Erie Canal Time Machine 
Legacies Project- explores the history of Chinese and Latino populations in the Capital District
Rediscovering New York
Image Archive

New York History Net
http://www.nyhistory.com/links/museums.htm
This page has  list of links for museums and historic sites in New York State.  Many of these sites have put a selection of their primary documents online. For example, The Brookside Museum which is part of the Saratoga County Historical Society has a database of photographs, objects, manuscripts and books that tell the story of Saratoga county.

New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center
http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/historic/mil-hist.htm
This is the first museum devoted solely to NYS's collection of 10,000 military artifacts. A small part of the collection has been digitalized and put online.

Brookside Museum Virtual Exhibit Home Page
http://www.brooksidemuseum.org/vewebsite/index.htm
This site contains Saratoga County Historical Society's collection of photographs and objects. Take a look at the:

A Virtual Tour of New Netherlands
http://www.nnp.org/newvtour/index.html
....a virtual tour of New Netherlands using Dutch documents in New York repositories relating to the seventeenth century colony.

The Colonial Albany Project Website - The People of Colonial Albany
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/index.html
The New York State Museum's has created this site to introduce everyone to the people of colonial Albany and their world.

The NYPL Picture Collection Online
http://digital.nypl.org/mmpco/
The Picture Collection is a collection of 30,000 digitized, public domain images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923. It consists of images of New York City, Costume, Design, American History and other subjects.

Old Amsterdam, New Amsterdam    
 http://www.wnyc.org/dutch/
Features audio of comparisons between New York City and Amsterdam in areas including art and music (such as still life painting and jazz), culture, and environmental awareness.

New York City Signs -- 14th to 42nd Streets  
http://www.14to42.net/
"Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, thousands of businesses  advertised their wares through creative and elaborate signs painted on the sides of buildings." For each entry, a photograph of the sign is available, along with a brief sketch of the business and its history. Users of this site can browse an interactive map of the area, by the date of sign construction, or by business name.

Other US State's Documents         [Return to the top]

Western Trails: An Online Journey  
http://www.cdpheritage.org/westerntrails/index.html
The Western Trails digital database provides access to thousands of primary documents (essays, maps, images and more) associated with various aspects of Western US history. Visitors to the website may want to dive right in and view some of the "trail" themed collections, such as the Native American Trails or the Railroad Trails.

The Connecticut Historical Society
http://www.chs.org/
Founded in 1825, the Connecticut Historical Society is one of the oldest such societies in the United States, and a repository for a great deal of historical documents and other material dealing with the history of the state and the 1800's in New England. The site includes an online exhibit on Early American Tavern and Inn Signs and a link to Connecticut History Online which has a searchable resource of over 15,000 images online.

Civil War             [Return to the top]

The Valley in the Classroom
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/teaching/vclassroom/vclasscontents.html
Information from the Virginia Center for Digital History on how to use the site "The Valley of the Shadow" in your classroom.

American Documents       [Return to the top]

A Treasure Trove of North American Exploration
http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/8/
.... Canada's digital collections from the National Library of Canada.

American Journeys: Eyewitness Accounts of Early American Exploration and Settlement                          
http://www.americanjourneys.org/
.....contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later. The Teacher section includes suggestions on integrating documents into lesson plans, information on interpreting documents, and addressing sensitive content. The complete contents of the digital library may be searched  by topic, author name, document type, and by keyword or full text.

The Atlantic World : America and the Netherlands    http://international.loc.gov/intldl/awkbhtml/awkbhome.html
This site, which is available in both English and Dutch, " explores the history of the Dutch presence in America and the interactions between the United States and the Netherlands from Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage to the post-World-War-II period." The site is divided into two areas, themes and collections and contains over 11,000 images from the LOC, the National Library of the Netherlands, and other Dutch institutions. Under themes the information and materials in the collection is broken out by date. Under collections the material is divided into types, including books and other printed materials, maps, and photographs and prints [Part of the Library of Congress site].

Early Americas Digital Archive
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/eada/
This "is a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820." Also includes "'Gateway to Early American Authors on the Web, "which allows you to browse a list of early American authors whose texts are available ...on sites that others have posted on the World Wide Web."

Europe       [Return to the top]

EuroDocs: Western European Primary Historical Documents
http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
EuroDocs contains links to Western European historical documents that have been transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated.

Historical government publications from WWII.
http://worldwar2.smu.edu/

A digital library of historical government publications from WWII including the Melvin C. Shaffer Collection of WWII images of Germany, North Africa, Italy, and Southern France from 1943 to 1945.

BBC Education Learning Zone: Soundbox
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/lzone/soundbox/index.htm
A selection of the BBC sound archive files.

The Fitzwilliam Museum
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/
Perhaps one of the most well-regarded university-affiliated museums in the world, the Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge contains close to 500,000 different objects ranging from medieval manuscripts to coins from the Roman occupation of Britain. Currently, 77,000 items (15% of the museum's total holdings) are available for online record finding.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/
This site is a great source of primary documents. The Sourcebooks Project is a collection of public domain and other documents that may be copied and used in the classroom. The main sourcebooks are: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. There are also a number of subsidiary sourcebooks and special resources including: African, East Asian, Indian, Jewish, Islamic, and Lives of the Saints. Visit the Selected Sources areas to access selected and excerpted texts suitable for classroom use.


Other Lists of Primary Sources      [Return to the top]

Cornell Library Digital Collection   
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/
Collections include database of African American Poetry, Digital Himalaya Project, French Revolution Collection, From Domesticity to Modernity, Human Ecology Historical Photos, Making of America, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and many more...

Primary Sources Material & Document Based Questions
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/fil/pages/listdocumentpa.html
More links on primary sources from Nassau BOCES.

CBC Radio And Television Archives
http://archives.cbc.ca/
There are over a thousand news and current affairs radio and TV clips at the CBC Radio & Television Archives Web site to use in teaching history.

Primary Sources Worksheets    [Return to the top]

Library of Congress Media Analysis Tools
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/media.html
worksheets that guide students into deeper analysis of primary sources.

Document Analysis Worksheets from The National Archives:

Learning how to use Primary Documents/Sources in the Classroom      [Return to the top]

New York State Social Studies DBQ Courses
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/dbq/ssindex.html

The Learning Page
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/index.html
The Library of Congress created The Learning Page to help k-12 teachers teach with primary documents.  This is a wonderful resource.
Using Primary Sources in the Classroom
This document has suggestions for using primary sources in the classroom from the Library of Congress' The Learning Page. Source types covered include objects, images, audio, statistics and the community.
Lesson Framework when working with Primary Sources
This section of the Learning Page provides a framework, in four sections on using primary sources in the classroom: rationale, selecting sources, organizing instruction and activities for the instructional cycle.
History Firsthand: Primary Source Research in Elementary School
This is a lesson plan designed to help elementary students begin to understand what primary sources are.

Looking Into Holidays Past Through Primary Sources  
http://memory.loc.gov/
This is a Library of Congress teacher activity on how to use primary sources in the classroom.

DBQ Page
http://www2.lhric.org/eastramapo/dbqpage.htm
East Ramapo has put together a page introducing what a DBQ is, the DBQ requirements, document sources and other helpful links for teachers.

Yorkers Document-Based Questions
http://www.yorkers.org/dbq.htm
Yorkers, sponsored by the New York Historical Association, has designed learning experiences for 4th and 5th graders based on the NYS Social Studies Core Curriculum. These experiences include:

The Late 1800s Farm Family and the Economy in NYS,
Discovering Government Records,
Dairy Farming: A Growing Industry, and
The Impact of Railroads on NYS in the 1800s.

The Chicago Handbook for Teachers-Using Electronic Resources for Teaching
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/075125.html
Although this resource was written for the college classroom much of the information here is useful for K-12 classroom teacher.

Using Primary Sources on the Internet To Teach and Learn History
http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-1/history.html
An ERIC Digest on using primary sources on the Internet.

Lesson Plans using Digital History
http://www.teacherlink.org/content/social/vcdh_lessons/
Here are lessons using digital history from the Virginia Center for Digital History.  Lessons include 23 using The Valley of the Shadow, 3 using the Dolly Madison Project, 9 using Virtual Jamestown and one on the Race and Place: African American Community History .

Using Primary Source Documents in the Classroom
http://www.ohiohistory.org/resource/teachers/primary.html
A nice page from the Ohio Historical Society on using primary source documents in the classroom.

Discovering Government Records:
http://www.yorkers.org/dbqs/govdoc/govdocs.htm
...worksheets on "How to Look at Government Records and Other Primary Resources" for 4th graders.

Upstate History Alliance - DBQ Resources  
This site can be used as a resource for librarians and teachers who want to learn more about DBQs or are looking for online documents on specific topics.

DBQ/CRQ: Teaching with Documents by Peter Pappas
http://www.edteck.com/dbq/index.htm
This site has gathered in one spot many of the tools needed for working and teaching with documents: worksheets, elementary links to sources, analysis of sources, types of sources and state testing.
Types of Primary Sources
Elementary Lessons and Links

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Note: Please keep in mind that the Internet is a fluid medium and sites are constantly being added, moved and deleted.  If you find a dead or redirected link or you would like me to add a new resource please contact me at morsilka@shenet.org. Please give me the name of the task, the title of the link, and the url.  Thanks.

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morsilka@shenet.org
Updated: 2006-2007