http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/trends.aspx

Change is afoot in the United States, and the Pew Center on the States has created their "Trends to Watch" site for policymakers, public officials, and members of the public at large. The backbone of the site is found in the overview they offer related to eight major economic, technological, social and environmental trends and issues likely "to be profound determinants of the prospects of states in the next 10 years." These issues include migration patterns ("The Big Sort"), political participation ("Demand for Democracy"), and climate change ("Green Wave"). Visitors can click on each of these eight major trends and issues to retrieve thematic and interactive maps, data tables, and press releases. Additionally, visitors can view state by state comparisons, and compare all of the 50 states via handy and easy-to-read charts and graphs. The site is well-designed and easy to navigate, and visitors can also sign up for electronic newsletters and their RSS feed. [KMG]

http://wardepartmentpapers.org/

After a traumatic and devastating fire in 1800, many historians though that the early files of the United States War Department were essentially lost forever. Thankfully, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University recently completed a decade long project to locate all of these records and place them online here. The collection is a very important one, because during this time period the War Department was responsible for Indian affairs, veteran affairs, and naval affairs. The project was begun in earnest by Ted Crackel in the mid-1990s and it involved visits to over 200 repositories and consulting over 3,000 collections in the United States, Canada, England, France, and Scotland. Now, visitors can browse through 55,000 documents, and also perform detailed searches, complete with links to digitized images of each document. Interested parties can also browse the collection by year or person of interest. In short, this is an extremely valuable project that will be of interest to those with a penchant for American history, and early American military history in particular. [KMG]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero/

On a hot day, some might wish they could get the temperature down a bit. They might not wish it to be as cold as, say absolute zero, but there are many scientists who are interested in doing just that. For those who are curious, absolute zero clocks in at around minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit. This engaging website is meant to serve as a complementary resource to the two-part series that recently aired on NOVA on this engaging topic. Visitors can start by watching a short preview of the program, and then continuing on to look over some of the special interactive features on the site. All told, there are ten different features, including "A Sense of Scale", "How Low Can You Go?", and "Milestones in Cold Research". The "Milestones in Cold Research" is a great place to start, as it's an interactive timeline that chronicles the "netherworld of extraordinarily low temperatures" as investigated by everyone from Galileo to current researchers. Of course, there are also more playful features here, such as "The Ice Trade", which asks users to dispatch ships loaded with natural ice to Florida, Brazil, and India. [KMG]

http://historyexplorer.americanhistory.si.edu/

The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, along with the Verizon Foundation, has developed a website that offers standards-based online resources for teaching and learning American history. This lively looking red, white and blue-themed website has an eye-catching feature on the homepage which highlights an item from the Museum's Artifacts. Visitors should click on the "Read More" tab, which is right below the description of the artifact, which will take the visitor to the full detail of the artifact, as well as any related artifacts. Clicking on the "Museum Artifacts" tab at the top of the page will take the visitor to the search engine for the 65 museum artifacts on the site. The "Lessons/Activities" tab at the top of the homepage takes the visitor to a list of lessons and activities that can be filtered by Grade Level or Historical Eras/National Standards. Additionally, the list provides the lesson/activity description, the grade band it's suitable for, as well as the duration of the lesson. Finally, the "Interactives/Media" tab, located at the top of the homepage, links to a slew of audio, video, and interactive resources that are meant to be used by students on their own, without the aid of a parent or teacher. "Building a Sod House", "Artificial Anatomy: Body Parts", "Children Write to the President", and "Whatever Happened to Polio?" are just a few of the 36 fascinating interactive lessons. [KMG]

http://www.madmuseum.org/

Originally begun as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, has an impressive website that is easily accessible and fun to browse. Click on the "See" tab at the top of the page to choose from "Current Exhibitions", "Past Exhibitions", "Traveling Exhibitions", and "Search the Collection". To see the highlights of the Museum's collection of jewelry, quilts, metalwork and wood, click on "Collection Highlights" when in the "See" tab. To play curator and pick your own highlights of the collection, the Museum of Arts and Design has a feature that seems right at home on their site. Click on the "Interact" tab on the homepage, and choose "Curate the Collection". From there, click on "Collection Home" and scroll down to the middle of the page to register and start your own virtual collection that can even be saved and sent to friends. Also under the "Interactive" tab is the link to "Multimedia", which includes videos of interviews with artists, curators, the deinstallation of one of the past exhibits, several lectures on architecture, and several artists in the process of creating some new works. [KMG]

http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/

The University of Chicago's Fathom project consisted of a site whose goal was to bring accessible online learning resources to people around the world, whether student, professional, educator, or lifelong learner. And they succeeded, via a consortium of fourteen educational and cultural institutions committed to that very goal. This site contains the full archive of the Fathom project, which is part of the University of Chicago Library's Digital Collections. To see the list of the members of the consortium, click on "History of Fathom", in the middle of the homepage. After that, click on "Browse the Archive" at the top of the homepage to browse all of the works by title or author. The topics cover a broad array of material, from capital punishment to human cloning to studies of race and ethnicity. [KMG]

http://www.foodtimeline.org/index.html

Whether visitors to the Food Timeline are foodies, or just plain curious, they will definitely find more information than can be taken in at one sitting. The Food Timeline was developed by a "reference librarian with a passion for food history," and her dedication is evident in the link near the top of the page entitled "About Culinary Research". Clicking on this link is extremely helpful for those researching food, and just plain interesting for those who are simply curious. In a nutshell, the author tells the visitor that research on food history is quite difficult and complex, and gives a bounty of hints on how to approach a particular food puzzler. She also notes that very few foods have been invented, rather they have just evolved. The timeline is smack dab in the middle of the homepage, and has links galore. It has links to individual ingredients, as well as to complete dishes and historically important cookbooks. Near the bottom of the homepage, below the timeline, is a menu of choices that includes: "Teacher Resources", "Historic Menu Collections", "Digitized Cookbooks", and "Historic Food Prices". There is so much on this website visitors might want to grab a snack and a beverage, and let the learning begin. [KMG]

http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/lincoln/

In time for both Lincoln's 200th birthday and Barack Obama's inauguration, this small exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery explores the still-mysterious nature of the 16th U.S. president, through portraits selected from the Gallery's collections. Examples include a small-size copy of an Alexander Hesler photograph; Lincoln with "tousled hair" which was produced in 1860 so it could be cut out and worn as a campaign pin; an engraving of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation; a drawing of Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln; and the famous cracked plate portrait, one of the last images made of Lincoln, taken in February 1865 by Alexander Gardner. The audio tour provides answers from David Ward, Historian, National Portrait Gallery, to some persistent Lincoln questions, such as "Why is this portrait cracked?" which refers to the Gardner portrait, or "In what way did Lincoln try to manage the explosiveness of the Emancipation Proclamation?" which refers to the engraving of the First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. [DS]