Primary Source

As we approach the 50th anniversary of our graduation from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, we of the Medical School Class of 1954 have undertaken a project wherein each Class member was asked to describe in a brief essay how the momentous changes in health care during the past fifty years personally affected his or her relationships with patients and patient care.

This site explores a period of U.S. history when racial prejudice and fear upset the delicate balance between the rights of a citizen versus the power of the state. Focusing on the experiences of Japanese Americans who were placed in detention campus during World War II, this online exhibit is a case study in decision-making and citizen action under the U.S. Constitution.

Experience the story through interactive galleries that combine images, music, text and first-person accounts in the Story Experience, and then share your own memories and responses in Reflections. Search more than 800 artifacts from the Smithsonian Collection in Collection Search, and find related activities, links, bibliography and more in Resources.

These pages are an on-line museum celebrating Babbage's Analytical Engine. Here you will find a collection of original historical documents tracing the evolution of the Engine from the original concept through concrete design, ending in disappointment when it became clear it would never be built. You'll see concepts used every day in the design and programming of modern computers described for the very first time, often in a manner more lucid than contemporary expositions. You'll get a sense of how mathematics, science, and technology felt in the nineteenth century, and for the elegant language used in discussing those disciplines, and thereby peek into the personalities of the first computer engineer and programmer our species managed to produce. If you are their intellectual heir, perhaps you'll see yourself and your own work through their Victorian eyes.

Historic Pittsburgh is a digital collection that provides an opportunity to explore and research the history of Pittsburgh and the surrounding Western Pennsylvania area on the Internet. This website enables access to historic material held by the University of Pittsburgh's University Library System, the Library & Archives of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The project represents a model of cooperation between libraries and museums in providing online access to their respective materials.

The Digital Library Program is proud to present the U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, a series of more than 2,200 photographs of the Gary Works steel mill and the corporate town of Gary, Indiana held by the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest. In images of compelling diversity, historians and the general public can view all aspects of this planned industrial community: the steel mill, the city, and the citizens who lived and worked there.

Virtual Motor City is the name of an IMLS sponsored digitization project, carried out by the Wayne State University Library System and the Walter P. Reuther Library.

The digitized images in the project represent a small subset of the Detroit News Collection, one of the premier photojournalistic resources freely available from a national-level newspaper and held at the Reuther Library.

This site will provide a concise Developmental History of Spectacles as well as explain all the contributions of people from many nations who were important along the way.

Website Goals:

To educate interested visitors and professionals and stimulate further research

To increase public awareness and thereby nurture a deeper appreciation in general

To complement the other websites which have information on this topic

To attract the newest generation of collectors (who may wish to join the only collectors clubs, the OAICC and the OHS)

To create a forum where scholarly people can have a dynamic exchange of information and ideas

To share images of the finest and most interesting historical items in both private and public collections from around the world

September 11, 2001, will be remembered as one of the most shocking days in American history. Armed terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and used them as weapons against the United States. The attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon, and killed more than three thousand people.

Soon after September 11, the National Museum of American History began collecting objects to document the attacks and their aftermath.

Before the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island, few had heard of the nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna River. But the crisis that began 20 years ago in the early morning of March 28 quickly turned the plant and its giant cooling towers into icons in the long national argument over the safety of nuclear energy.

Using Flickr's unique photo sharing platform, the Institute for the Future of the Book will gather pictures of the Gates from anyone and everyone who wants to contribute. The aim is to harness the creativity and insight of thousands to build a kind of collective memory machine - one that is designed not just for the moment, but as a lasting and definitive document of the Gates and our experience of them. 7,500 gates in Central Park made for infinite views and infinite ways to shoot a picture. As one observer said, there were as many views of the Gates as footsteps in the park. In that spirit, there is no pre-determined shape for this project, other than that it will be online and constantly evolving according to the contributions, suggestions and innovations of participants.