Although the web
holds a vast amount of information, it isn't always the best place to
begin to gather factual information about a topic. You must be careful
to pay attention to who is posting the information. Who or what organization
hosts the site? What is their expertise? You must evaluate not only
the content of the site, but the person or organization behind it and
decide whether or not the information is trustworthy. It is up to you
to determine if the information you find on a web site is dependable
and accurate.
The sites listed
below have a substantial amount of information on any one topic. Outside
of the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the Smithsonian,
you should also look at the web pages of university libraries throughout
the country. When you locate the library site at a university, look
for the section on the Archives. Often the Archives or Special Collections
have documents on exhibit, internal databases to consult or descriptive
guides posted on their site.
Libraries
and Museums:
Library of
Congress
http://www.loc.gov/
The Library of Congress
posts ongoing exhibits of documents and materials from their collections
related to specific events and people in American history. They also
have an Education Department, which sponsors programs for teachers and
providdes lesson plans for the classroom. Areas of the web site that
may be useful for research: American Memory Project, Exhibits, and
Using the Library.
Smithsonian
Institution
http://www.si.edu/
The Smithsonian
Institute is made up of sixteen museums and galleries, most of which
have research collections. Their web site provides many access points
into the Smithsonian collections. They have general information posted
about each of the museums as well as virtual displays of artifacts from
their collections. In addition, on the Smithsonian web site, features
a number of databases, catalogs and indexes for locating research materials.
One of these is the Art Inventories database (within the Libraries &
Archives section), which contains listings of over 335,000 records
of describing American paintings and sculptures executed before 1914.
Areas of the web site that may be useful for research: Museums
& Research, Education & Outreach, Libraries & Archives - Smithsonian
Libraries -- Library Catalog (SIRIS).
Catalogs:
National Union
Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC)
http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/nucmc.html
The NUCMC is a
"cooperative catalog program offered by the Library of Congress. NUCMC
catalogers create MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) bibliographic records
in RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network), a national-level database,
describing collections held by participants, and establish pertinent
name and subject authority headings. Descriptions and locations of the
material are then available to researchers on RLIN throughout the United
States and around the world."2
The NUCMC catalog
is available online and is a good place to search for manuscript papers
of individuals or families or the records of an organization. NUCMC
searches records that are submitted by libraries throughout the United
States and the world. NUCMC is similar to the Firstsearch database,
whose records are supplied by OCLC libraries.
College
and University Archives and Special Collections:
Most major universities
have an Archives or Special Collections
department, which is usually found, within the library. If you go to
a university's library home page, you will find the Archives, Special
Collections or Exhibits section listed there. Although it isn't possible
in most cases to post entire manuscript collections up on the web, many
university archives are posting finding aids and exhibits of
documents online. At the University of Idaho's Special Collections web
site (http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html/),
you can search the web sites of 3900 Repositories of Primary Sources
throughout the country and the world for historic photographs, manuscripts,
archives, and rare books.
2
NUCMC website: http://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc.html/
