Website Review: Digital APUSH

DIGITAL APUSH features AP U.S. History student projects that apply data from the Chronicling America Historic Newspaper collection.

For the past couple years, students in AP U.S. History in Sunapee, New Hampshire have been using the Library of Congress’ newspaper database to conduct historical research into a wide range of topics from questions. This website shares their projects.

Librarians will find this website to be an excellent way to introduce high school students to digital history projects that make use of online collections. Encourage students to build their own projects.

This project was a winner in the Chronicling America Historic Newspaper Data Challenge.

To visit the website, go to http://apush.omeka.net/about.

Website Review: Historical Agricultural News

HISTORICAL AGRICULTURAL NEWS is a website that helps users explore newspapers for information about agricultural topics.

This website allows easy access to newspaper articles from the Chronicling America collection at the Library of Congress. Users can narrow their search by organizations, grains crops, vegetable crops, livestock and dairy, fruit and nut crops, time, newspaper, and state.

Involve students in exploring the history of a particular type of agriculture through the lens of newspaper articles. For instance, explore sheep production in Montana, apple crops in Utah, or truck farming in California. Or, focus on the history of agriculture near the school.

To visit the collection, go to http://ag-news.net/.

Website Review: American Lynching

AMERICAN LYNCHING is a gripping cultural narrative website chronicling the dark history of lynching in America.

Featuring newspaper accounts from across the United States, this chilling project shares both well-known and lesser known histories of individual lynching events connecting media and race to American history. The website is divided into sections including overview, history, stories, and explore.

Users can examine sample documents, use a map to read statistics, explore history and data, search the records, or read more at the archives.

Librarians will find many teens interested in learning about this sad period of American history. Use this website to jumpstart discussions about public killings, reforms, and race in America.

To visit the website, go to http://www.americanlynchingdata.com/.

Digital Collection: Ad*Access

AD*ACCESS
Duke University Libraries

Contents: With over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements, this digital collection covered five product areas including beauty and hygiene, radio, television, transportation, and World War II propaganda from 1911 through 1955. Users can explore by company, product, date, publication, subject, medium, headline, or audience.

Classroom Connections: Involve youth in exploring how advertising has changed over time. Ask students to compare historical advertising in their area of interest to today’s ads.

Featured Digital Objects: 
Air Travel ads - https://goo.gl/3E0Pln
Television set ads - https://goo.gl/PXY3nX
War Bonds ads - https://goo.gl/pJsBPF

To visit the collection, go tohttp://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/

Book Review: The Hunt for the Secret Papyrus

THE HUNT FOR THE SECRET PAPYRUS by Geronimo Stilton is an exciting mystery set at the New Mouse City’s Egyptian Museum.

Part of the “special edition” series, the adventure focuses on the mystery of the black papyrus. This ancient document is supposed to reveal the secret of eternal youth. Newspaper reporter Geronimo Stilton sets out to solve the mystery of the black papyrus and write an article for his newspaper.

The special edition book’s colorful illustrations and visual format will be particularly attractive to reluctant readers. While this book contains the fun highlighted words found in all the books, it also contains other interesting two-page spread visuals, diagrams, and other illustrations that will appeal to readers.

After the end of the story, the book includes a mini-mystery adventure titled The Cat Gang, jokes, and other information including a map of Mouse Island.

Librarians will find this book to be a popular addition to their growing collection of Geronimo Stilton books. Readers will particularly enjoy the full-color illustrations and additional features of this special edition. Use the author/series website to jumpstart library and classroom activities. Readers can play games, learn about characters, and even create their own comic.

To learn more about the author and series, go to http://www.scholastic.com/geronimostilton.

Published by Scholastic on March 29, 2016. ARC courtesy of Scholastic.

Website Review: Teacher's Guides for Using Primary Sources

TEACHER’S GUIDES FOR USING PRIMARY SOURCES from the Library of Congress are an engaging way to help learners analyze historical documents and other materials.

Ten guides are currently available for analyzing primary sources including motion pictures, political cartoons, books and other printed text, newspapers, sheet music and song sheets, manuscripts, oral histories, sound recordings, maps, and photographs and prints. A general guide to primary sources is also available.

Each one-page guide encourages students to observe, reflect, and question. In addition, ideas are provided for further investigation.

A Primary Source Analysis Tool is also available. This online tool allows students to enter notes that can be downloaded, printed, and/or emailed.

Librarians will find these one-page handouts and easy-to-use tools to be useful when addressing standards related to the analysis of primary source documents and informational reading.

While many teachers are familiar with these tools, the Analyzing Newspapers guide is new. Use this guide with the Chronicling America collection available at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

To explore these Teacher’s Guides, go tohttp://loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/guides.html.