Public History

Resources from the collections of the Library of Congress that document the American experience.

Provides links to state digital archives.

United States National Archives and Records Administration. Provides access to some digital collections, the Archives' catalog, and online exhibits.

List provided by the Library of Congress of digital collections and resources by state.

The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.
The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.

Omeka is a free, open source web publishing system for online digital archives. Its main focus/strength is producing websites and online exhibitions. It allows fast/easy creation of online exhibits through a Web interface, a low learning curve, many plugins with added functionality, and a large developer community.

Collective Access is a free, open source cataloging tool and web-based application for museums, archives and digital collections. Its main focus/strength is on cataloging and metadata. You can create very robust cataloging records, create relationships between items, create profiles of creators and subjects of items and link them to objects, etc.

CollectionSpace is a free, open-source collections management application for museums, libraries, historical societies, and other organizations with special collections.

Open Exhibits is a multitouch, multi-user tool kit that allows you to create custom interactive exhibits. The strength of this application has less to do with cataloging collections of digital assets, but developing online and interactive exhibits with digital objects.

Pachyderm is a free, open-source and easy-to-use multimedia authoring tool created by the New Media Consortium (NMC). It’s been designed for people with little technology or multimedia experience and involves little more than filling out a web form. Authors place their digital assets (images, audio clips, and short video segments) into pre-designed templates, which can play video and audio, link to other templates, zoom in on images, and more. Completed templates result in interactive, Flash-based presentations that can include images, sounds, video, and text that can be downloaded and displayed on websites or can be kept on the Pachyderm server and linked directly from there.

Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections.

DH Press is a flexible, repurposable, extensible digital humanities toolkit designed for non-technical users. It enables administrative users to mashup and visualize a variety of digitized humanities-related material, including historical maps, images, manuscripts, and multimedia content. DH Press can be used to create a range of digital projects, from virtual walking tours and interactive exhibits, to classroom teaching tools and community repositories. (open source)