Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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The Gilder Lehrman Collection is the largest private collection of American history documents in the world. It preserves, exhibits, and disseminates archival resources chronicling the history of the United States from the beginning of European colonization, with emphasis on the period from 1760 through 1876. The collection contains particularly rich resources on the history of colonial settlement, Indian relations, the American Revolution and its origins, the Constitution, the struggle over slavery, and the Civil War.

Looking for ways to jazz up, deepen, broaden, or just generally improve your history course? The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History provides resource guides to help you find online textbooks, readings, multimedia, and instructional plans on a broad range of topics from colonization to the present.

Doing “real” history

First, check out Gilder Lehrman History Online, a collection of resources “created by professional historians to help teachers at all levels to integrate the latest historical scholarship into their classes.” This area includes interactive timelines, annotated primary source documents, guides to historical controversies, overview essays on major themes, and historical perspectives on contemporary issues.Teachers wanting to give students opportunities to do hands-on history will want to check out the collection of annotated primary source documents. Each document provides a brief explanation of historical context to help teachers. Unfortunately, the documents provided are only excerpts from longer source documents, and teachers should use them with caution. While you can search a collection of some 600 documents for a topic of interest, it may be more useful to browse a particular topical collection.

Teaching materials

The Lehrman Institute website provides three ways to find materials for teaching history, all available from the front page.Teaching materials are first organized by time period and topic. The period 1900-1929, for example, is divided into the Progressive Era, Immigration, World War I, and the 1920s. Selecting a topic on the front page takes you to a brief historical overview; from there, click “Get more information about…” to see a list of related resources. These resources are divided into several types:

• Online textbook chapters written by historians
• Readings: articles and brief essays about the topic
• Primary sources such as documents, historic newspapers, historic maps, political cartoons, and newscasts
• Teaching resources such as charts, instructional maps, chronology, classroom handouts, lesson plans, and quizzes
• Audio and visual resources: music, speeches, sound, images, and fashion
• Additional resources that may include film essays, films, recommended websites, and bibliographies.

You can also browse resources on broader topics, including education history, family, film, labor history, legal history, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, science and technology, slavery, and women.Finally, the Reference Room will help you locate specific types of resources, such as maps, newspapers, court cases, speeches, and so on. You’ll also find information on how to use these resources in your classroom. The guide to maps, for example, lists historical maps by time period, maps by topic, maps by location, and resources on Maps as Teaching Tools.The resources listed are on reputable third-party websites. For each resource, the guide lists the author, title, and provider. They are not otherwise annotated.

Additional exhibits and opportunities

Online exhibitions cover topics such as A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln and Dear Madam: Catharine Macauley and Mercy Warren, about two eighteenth-century writers.Under Interactive History, you’ll find features such as “Ask the Hyperhistorian,” which allows you to send questions to a historian in (virtual) residence. Also available are Flash movies and games.