Selected Web Sites

History 7 - The City in American History

Evaluating Web resources

In a medium where virtually anyone can ÒauthorÓ a web site there are challenges in determining legitimate resources. The current state of the Web can create confusion for users who may find it valid for certain information queries but not others.

A number of libraries have created pages that explain and illustrate the importance of evaluating electronic sources. The sites below are a sampling of places that offer guidance.

Cornell University

Earlham College

UCLA

Examples of web sites pertaing to Urban History

The Urban History Association
htttp://www.unl.edu/uha/UHA.html

The Urban History Association was founded in Cincinnati in 1988 for the purpose of stimulating interest and forwarding research and study in the history of the city in all periods and geographical areas. It is affiliated with the International Planning History Society.

Urban Planning, 1794-1918
http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/homepage.htm

Compiled by John W. Reps, Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Cornell University, this selection of 185 primary documents dealing with urban planning will be extremely useful to persons concerned with the subject or urban history in general.

Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1892 to 1934
http://www.suba.com/~scottn/explore/mainmenu.htm

Created by Scott Newman, a doctoral history student at Loyola University of Chicago, this site is a compendium of material relating to the development of commerce, retail, and entertainment centers in Chicago from the turn of the 19th century to the early 1930s.

Photographs from the Chicago Daily News: 1902-1933
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/ichihtml/cdnhome.html

The explosion of daily newspapers and developments in printing technology in the late 19th century made a plethora of visual images available to the majority of urban dwellers, and the city of Chicago was certainly no exception. As part of their excellent online collection series, the Library of Congress (in collaboration with the Chicago Historical Society) has digitized approximately 55,000 images of urban life stored on glass plate negatives dated between 1902 and 1933, all taken by photographers under the employ of the Chicago Daily News.

Down the Drain: Chicago's Sewers, The Historic Development of an Urban Infrastructure http://wwwDo.chipublib.org/digital/sewers/sewers.html

While many aspects of urban life and history are frequently explored by scholars and journalists alike, one particularly important element of modern living is often overlooked: sewers.