Links

The Institute Archives serves as Caltech's collective memory, preserving the papers, documents, artifacts and pictorial materials that tell the school's history, from 1891 to the present. Holdings include manuscript, photographic, print and audio-visual materials, oral histories, fine art and historic artifacts. Many of the photographs are available in digital format (thumbnail and full size) through the photo archive. The site also includes information about using the physical archive, online versions of archive exhibits and facts about the Cal Tech archive.

The Dittrick Medical History Center is dedicated to the study of the medical past through a distinguished collection of rare books, museum artifacts, archives, and images. This web site includes images of exhibits and scientific instruments in the Dittrick Museum, images and annotations of samples from the 60,000 volume rare book collection, information about the archival collections and image collections. In addition, the site also hosts two virtual exhibits, "Haunting Images: Photography, Dissection and Medical Students," and "Smallpox: A City on the Edge of Disaster." Finally the site includes a section about research aids including on-line catalogues and bibliographical information.

Online database of the Greater Glasgow National Health Service Board Archive's holdings, largely comprised of the records of patient care and of hospital administration from the foundation of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1794, which can be searched or browsed through several directories. The site also offers research guides and several image galleries.

A number of online exhibits are made including several on Yale's history with medicine, one on stem cells, and another about the hospitals of New Haven. A catalog of the library's literature is available, and includes several texts available online. The digital library also includes several collections of prints and photographs including 83 nineteenth century paintings by Lam Qua of patients with tumors. There are also images of collections of weights and measures, obstetrical instruments, and medical medals. Comprehensive lists of databases and Internet resources, as well bibliographies are compiled.

This site gives some brief information about the Australian Academy of Science and provides a description of manuscripts housed in the Academy's Basser Library. The site also contains an alphabetical index of the materials in the manuscript collection, which could be an important planning tool for researchers interested in taking a trip to the Library to do research with the papers first-hand. However, the actual manuscripts have not been made available online, so there is no historical information beyond the descriptions and index.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers History Center holdings include the IEEE Archives, which consist of the unpublished records of the IEEE and a collection of historical photographs relating to history of electrical and computer technologies, and a collection of oral history transcripts of pioneering engineers. IEEE History Center Newsletters are also archived (in PDF format). These newsletters provide information about the current activities of the Center, book reviews and a few articles about the history of electronic engineering.

This site, developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. It examines how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of more than 300 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, midwifery, birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. Two "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about two controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500-750 word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to five additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related Web sites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."

Website for the Einstein Papers Project, which has begun to publish an enormous amount of Einstein's papers, both personal and professional. No online resources, however, except for a link to the Einstein Archives Online, which reproduces a portion of the collection.

This site offers films selected from the Prelinger Archives, a privately held collection of 20th-century American ephemeral films (films produced for specific purposes at specific times, not intended for long-term preservation). The site contains more than 800 high-quality digital video files documenting various aspects of 20th-century North American culture, society, leisure, history, industry, technology, and landscape. It includes films produced between 1927 and 1987 by and for U.S. corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. Some of the films depict ordinary people in normal daily activities, such as working, dishwashing, driving, and learning proper behavior. For example, one 1955 film illustrates the ¨comfort and delight of jet travel for Pan American World Airways and a 1930s film shows how and where bananas were grown and imported into the United States. The site contains an alphabetical index and printable list of all film titles. Note that viewing these movies requires a DSL or faster connection and, even with a fast connection, many of the movies take several minutes to load. This is an important source for those interested in American Studies, business and labor history, advertising and art history, cinema studies, and cultural history.

Light! presented by the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam) and the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh), invites users to trace developments in lighting technology from the 1700s to the present by looking at the effects of light in several areas: science, economics, street, home, art, and entertainment. The exhibition combines images of objects and paintings with text arrayed on a background of bands of spectral colors. The home section begins with a pair of gilt candlesticks from 1807. Accompanying text points out that these golden candlesticks are not just prettier because they are shiny; they light better as well. This section concludes with an electric Tiffany lamp from 1907, and in between, includes the Van Gogh painting "The Potato Eaters," showing a peasant family eating potatoes in an interior lit by a meager kerosene lamp. Other objects of note are an Argand lamp in the economics section, the first lamp to exploit the discovery that flames burn brighter when fed by oxygen, and my favorite, a group of filament lightbulbs from the 1880s on a rack described in the caption as "various nationalities." The art section includes a live Webcam of the Statue of Liberty, and both the entertainment and science sections point out that many innovations in lighting originated in the theater.