Earth Sciences

This American Memory site records the mapping of North America and the Caribbean from 1750 to 1789 through images of maps in the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress. Most items on the site are also included among the 2000 images in Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, 1750-1789: A Guide to the Collections of the Library of Congress, compiled by John R. Sellers and Patricia Molen van Ee (1981). Currently the site contains roughly 2000 images. Maps and charts will be added to the online exhibit gradually. Selected images include original manuscript drawings by famous mapmakers like Samuel Holland, John Hills, and John Montresor; maps from the personal collections of men like Admiral Richard Howe and the comte de Rochambeau; and large groups of maps by three major 18th-century London publishers: Thomas Jeffreys, William Faden, and Joseph Frederick Wallet des Barres. The online collection allows researchers to compare editions, styles, and techniques of mapmakers from Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, and the United States, and to follow the development of specific maps from the manuscript sketch to the finished, printed version. Each image is accompanied by descriptive notes (100-150 words) and a list of the medium, date and place of publication, condition, call number, and repository. The site also includes a 1500-word essay on mapmaking during the American Revolutionary era and links to 12 other American Memory sites containing related materials. Researchers can browse this site by geographic location, subject, creator, and title, and can search the site by keyword. This site is ideal for students and teachers interested in mapmaking in the 18th century and in exploring how maps helped to illustrate American culture.

Three scientific organizations: the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Institute of Physics (Center for History of Physics) have developed this site to collect the first-hand accounts of those involved with the Greenland Ice Sheet Projects (GISP1 and GISP2) and the development of deep-core ice drilling. The site asks for the memories of scientists, engineers, students, financial backers and others who participated in these research efforts. Participants can send material to the American Institute of Physics, which runs the site, or join an online discussion newsgroup on a variety of topics relating to the GISP efforts. In addition, there is a brief historical essay on ice drilling and its scientific importance and links to other related sites. This site is funded by the Sloan Foundation.

This site has not been updated since 1999, but nonetheless contains excellent primary source material for researches who are interested in one of the two topics on which material was collected: the Clean Air Act and and the GATE experiment of the Global Atmospheric Research program. Both areas include general histories, primary documents, images, interviews, biographies, and links for further study.

The American Geophysical Union established this site to detail the scientific study of changes in global climate, especially temperature, roughly between 1960 and 1990. It is particularly useful in comprehending the topic of global warming and how scientists have assessed this trend over time. The site provides an annotated historical essay on the scientific understanding of climate change and its relationship to solar radiation. In addition there are documents, including interviews with geoscientists and photographs, relating to experiments on solar irradiance, flare and spots, as well as tree rings, isotopes and other historical measures of Earth's temperature. The site asks for further contributions, biographical recollections, and materials such as photographs from those who have participated in the study of climate change and solar variability.

This site contains biographical profiles of over 200 African-American men and women who have contributed to the advancement of science and engineering. The site provides brief (roughly 250 word) biographies of scholars from fields such as biology, chemistry, physics, zoology, and veterinary medicine, as well as inventors. Among the scientists included in the site are prominent figures like George Washington Carver, scientist and inventor of numerous industrial applications for agricultural products, and astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker. Each entry also includes a bibliography of sources for further biographical information. The site is indexed by scientist name and profession, and there are special sections for the biographies of 20 women scientists and 14 of the first African Americans to receive Ph.D.'s in science. Though there are no primary documents on this site, it is a good place to find general information on prominent African-American scientists throughout American history.

This online database of over 3,000 images from the California Institute of Technology's archive of visual materials illustrates the history of science from the Scientific Revolution to the present. Photographs, fine prints, book illustrations, paintings, and architectural drawings of various scientists and their projects, including Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, George Ellery Hale, and Linus Pauling are found in the database. Images are accompanied by a brief (roughly 150-word) biography and, in many cases, a photograph or other image of the scientist(s) involved in the project. The site can be browsed through two sub-categories, "Science and Technological artifacts" and "Rare Books," as well as a keyword search by scientist name or subject. This site provides an ideal tool for research on the history of science and prominent scientific figures.

Site contains brief biographies for over two hundred women complemented with bibliographies for further study.

A Library of Congress Manuscript Division online exhibit to celebrate the Manuscript Division's centenary, this site contains approximately 90 representative documents from the 15th to the mid-20th century. The selected documents include the papers of presidents, cabinet ministers, congressmen, Supereme Court justices, military officers, diplomats, reformers, artists, writers, scientists, and other Americans who made a mark in history. Most items fall with eight categories that reflect the division's strengths: "The Presidency"; "Congress, Law, and Politics"; "Military Affairs"; "Diplomacy and Foreign Policy"; "Arts and Literature"; "Science, Medicine, Exploration, and Invention"; "African-American History and Culture"; "Women's History"; and "Miscellany." Each theme contains a roughly 250-word essay with links to digital reproductions of selected documents. A detailed description (200 words) accompanies each document, and additional information about the collections from which a document came is available through links to the collection records and finding aids. The exhibit also includes roughly 25 images, primarily in the "Science, Medicine, Exploration and Invention" category. There is a special presentation entitled "Collecting, Preserving, and Researching History: A Peek into the Library of Congress Manuscript Division." This site provides a description of the division, its holdings, definitions of terms like "personal papers" and why they are important, how the Library of Congress acquires manuscripts, how the staff prepares, conserves, and stores them, and who uses the documents. The site also has links to the Library of Congress's ordering and reproduction policies, the American Memory site, and to the Library of Congress collection catalogs. This easily navigable site is keyword and subject searchable. This site is ideal for conducting research in many areas of American History, as well as answering the question: "What do archives do?"

Good site for children interested in learning about latitude, longitude, ships, compasses, and other topics related to nautical travel. Especially focuses on the progress made in navigation during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A variety of related links are also available.