The Bullis School, Main Number: 301-299-8500

2008 Nov. 13: If you are researching an inventor and want to find the item he or she invented, I've added a link to the search page of the U.S. Patent Office in the yellow websites section, below.
Nov. 11: Hi, AP US students. (1) I hope that the U.S. History Resource Center is behaving itself better today -- if not, please send me an email and let me know so that I can provide feedback to the vendor. (2) For those of you having trouble finding all that you need in the databases (which should only be a handful), note that I have added information about Google Scholar, below. It's a way of searching Google for *just* the scholarly content -- academic journals, digitized books, etc. It's helpful for someone like Kristen, who is researching the Auburn Prison System.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

Check for multimedia content.

Encyclopedia Americana

Search across Encyclopedia Americana and all other Grolier collections by entering term in top search box. Especially good for graphics and websites.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

Conduct a basic search -- enter 2 or 3 search terms.

Discovery Streaming Video

Once you've searched on your topic, use menu at left to set further limits (image, clip art, audio, sound effect).

Annals of American History

Uneven coverage for this assignment, but what's here is good. Contains primary sources.

U.S. History Resource Center

Use the tabs across the top to locate different types of sources.

ProQuest Platinum

NOTE how the list is arranged; used drop-down menu on right to change it. Use tabs at top to limit resource type.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Graphical)

Articles and photographs from these historical newspapers are presented as scanned images. Nov. 13: These newspapers only go back to the 1850s.

Try limiting your Google search to reputable websites by limiting your search to specific domains. Nov. 11: This also works well when searching for images in Google -- a search that will often turn up primary source documents that have been scanned and preserved as .pdf documents or some sort of graphical file. In front of your search terms, add the following text:

site:edu      site:gov      site:org

Some examples:

site:edu cyrus mccormick
site:gov david ruggles
site:org dorothea dix

Google Scholar is a good way to limit your search to just the scholarly, academic content. Your list of results will include digitized books and digitized articles. Search using Boolean Search techniques described above:

auburn AND prison
temperance AND society
"lydia maria child"

American Memory

Digitized material from America's attic, the Library of Congress.

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office

Use the blue box at left to search for patents issued before 1976. You will need to search by patent number, not inventor's name. Go to www.ask.com and enter a question similar to this: What is the patent number for the john deere plow?

Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

National Public Radio (NPR)

It helps to use quotation marks around phrases when searching this site. These will be audio files, not text.