HIST 813 Primary Sources 30 August, 2005

Browsing this week has turned up a lot of interesting sites. Although none are done by agencies like NARA and the Library of Congress, these sites have combined topics and linked to the primary sources on those sites.

One of the most interesting and resourceful sites I found was at AmericanRhetoric.com. This site has a collection of speeches going back about as far as you can go. The older speeches are available in text format or are recorded using someone else's voice. If you are looking for a certain speech, or you want to find out what people are talking about in a certain decade, you can search that way also. American Rhetoric also has a list of the top 100 speeches of the decade. I found that useful when I wasn't sure what I was looking for but wanted something from the 20s. The URL for American Rhetoric is: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speechbankg-l.htm

Another great site was put on the internet by the University of Missouri-Kansas City law school. This site gives detailed information, primary sources, and much more about important trials from Socrates to O.J. I passed this site along to my social studies colleagues because it was really well done. The URL is:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/Ftrials/ftrials.htm

The last site I found was done by a high school. Here, they have combined a lot of primary sources into categories and given the user a direct link to the primary source within sites such as NARA and the Library of Congress American Memory. The URL is: http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/~spjvweb/primary.html#Speeches

I know these aren't the sites that were recommended, but they are still useful for someone looking for primary sources.