Research: Website of the Week: Making of America

This week's online research tool is actually a pair of websites: the Making of America project, hosted by both Cornell University Library and the University of Michigan. In short, Making of America is "a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction." Both sites contain different texts, so if you search in one, make sure to search in the other as well. Perhaps the most significant aspect of these sites is the access they provide to a wide range of important nineteenth century journals - to list a few: Appleton's, DeBow's, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, The Century, and Scientific American. As such, it is a phenomenal research tool for all those working in the nineteenth century.

As a Christmas special, here are a few festive stories from the Making of America archives:

• Horatio Alger, "Joe Warner's Christmas" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1863)
• Grace King, "The Christmas Story of a Little Church" (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1888)
• Joel Chandler Harris, "A Conscript's Christmas" (The Century, 1890)
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Christmas Bells" (New England Magazine, 1891)

If you've found any online research tools that you'd like to share with the world, leave a comment. The American Studies blog will be back in 2008 - Happy New Year to you all.