Browse Website Reviews

Discover quality websites on a range of topics and time periods. If a website link is no longer active, consult this guide to website URL paths for tips on locating the original resource.

Logo for Austrialian Periodical Publications 1840-1845 showing the title in front of newspaper pages

Australian Periodical Publications Project, 1840–1845

The manner in which newspapers in this period created transnational links, both in reporting news from elsewhere and in systematically including extracts from other papers, makes them an especially pertinent source for the study of world history.
1897 watercolor of Sydney's port looking across the roofs of several buildings towards the harbor and ships

Australian Studies Resources

The wide assortment of material makes it useful for teaching many distinct themes relevant to world history.
The portrait of Selim III 1789-1807, showing Selim dressed in red robes sitting against some pillows

Topkapi Museum

Such images of Islamic art from the Topkapi museum can not only bring to life periods of Ottoman history, but also the variety and brilliance of Islamic art, both of which are useful to the teaching of world history.
"The Radical's Arms" a political cartoon criticizing French Revolutionaries for the reign of terror by depicting two peasants with a guillotine before a burning globe

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

It is this type of versatility, coupled with the topical essays and the intuitive design of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity that makes this site a welcome resource for teachers of European history and world history (and their students).
Screenshot of the site's map feature showing the Indian Ocean in the Industrial and Imperial era with markers for different objects, goods, and places highlighted on the site

Indian Ocean History

It is easily the most comprehensive website for studying and teaching Indian Ocean history currently available.
Page from The Badianus Codex, an Aztec book of herbal medicine showing several plants.

History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

The fields of science and Latin America have considerably grown in recent decades, and HOSLAC addresses these disciplines by seamlessly merging both fields in a manner that seems natural and relevant to a wide range of users.
Detail of a page from Andreas Vealius' book Bruxellensis showing a map of major arteries

Vaulted Treasures: Historical Medical Books at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library

This website features roughly 200 digitized pages drawn from more than 50 medical books published between 1493 and 1819. The website is structured as a virtual exhibit, presenting a separate page for each of 45 authors, including a brief biography of each.
Image of the website header reading "The Story of Africa: African History from the Dawn of Time"

The Story of Africa

Each segment provides a selection of quotes from primary sources that illuminate specific issues. There are many gems to mine. They range from original lyrical quotations that capture the imagination...to arresting images of initiation rituals and political power.
Image of the front of Aegina, Temple of Aphaia by Maria Daniels. It shows the ruins of a Greek temple with the remaining columns standing.

Perseus Digital Library

Perseus is a valuable resource for more general studies of history and historical methods both for the range of information it presents and for the tools it provides.
The image is titled "Outer Islands High School students". It shows a group of boys sitting on the floor in a crowd.

Trust Territory Photo Archives

The images in the collection are an extensive record of American views of Micronesian peoples, society, and culture and of the interaction between the United States and the Trust Territories.
The image shows the UNICEF logo depicting in solid blue a parent holding a child in front of a sphere marked with latitude and longitude lines representing the globe.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Teachers of modern history and regional or world geography will find a wealth of primary sources on this site that can contribute to filling in a realistic picture of children's situations and the economic, public health, scientific, social, cultural, and political issues that affect them, as well as initiatives of remarkable creativity that are currently being employed to address them.
The image shows a girl dressed in her Dund Deustcher Maedel uniform.

Bund Deutscher Maedel

The historical materials provide glimpses of girls' activities and appearance, and the primary source images and text illustrate the friendships among young women and girls. It also depicts the ways in which a modern state could appropriate girlhood.
Logo of the International Children's Digital Library abstractly showing an open book with a children running across the cover

The International Children's Digital Library

The International Children's Digital Library is a feast for children who are bookworms. It is also a treasure trove for teachers of reading, literature, science, social studies, and world cultures or geography. Scholarly researchers will find in its global collection a wealth of material for comparison, thematic exploration, historical studies of childhood and reading, and interdisciplinary studies of all kinds.
The image is of "Child with Fox Mask; Gosho Doll" from the museum's collections. It is a small, white porcelain figure of a child wearing a textile decorated with flowers. A separate image of the doll on the site shows a fox mask for it to wear.

Kyoto National Museum

The museum site is accessible and user-friendly. It will be particularly valuable for instructors looking to mobilize a collection of images and objects from ancient through early modern periods of Japanese history for student exploration.
Detail from the poster "Our Brigade Leader" created in 1976. The detail shows a family excitedly watching tv. In the complete poster, they are watching a politician on tv.

Chinese Posters: Propaganda, Politics, History, Art

Chinese Posters offers a rich collection of over 1,600 Chinese propaganda posters, representing a time period from 1841 to the present day, and a rich range of political, social, cultural, and visual themes.
The image is a detail from the a photo titled "Boys at Boubon, Niger 1992" from Gallery 5 of the site. It shows three Nigerian boys posing for a picture.

Africa Speaks: West African University Students Write About Their Lives

The great strength of Africa Speaks is the honest and unfiltered voices of the Nigerien students. Rather than being described and defined by journalists, scholars, and other outsiders, they speak for themselves about the experience of growing up in a developing and politically unstable African country during the 1970s and 1980s.
Image from the collection titled "Making Pottery at Kwilu" taken by Robert E. Smith in the 1960s. It shows a woman kneeling over a clay bowl she is sculpting with her hands.

Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent

By using the search filters effectively, teachers can have students compare and contrast various images of worship, schooling, work, and landscapes to highlight the vast cultural and ecological diversity of Africa.
Image from the collection titled "Lady in Waiting" from the 1930s-1940s. Its shows two children and their nanny walking. The youngest child is walking in front with a cloth on her head and the nanny carrying the end like a wedding veil.

Swaziland Digital Archives

Featuring approximately 600 photographs chronicling daily life and politics in Swaziland, the Swaziland Digital Archives provides visual insights into the experiences of childhood and adolescence in southern Africa over the past century.
Detail of the Gifts of Speech homepage logo reading "Gifts of Speech"

Gifts of Speech: Women's Speeches from Around the World

This site offers an archive of speeches by “influential, contemporary women.” Almost all of the speeches in the collection come directly from the authors themselves or from the organizations representing them and have not been published elsewhere.
Detail of the site header showing the Lutheran Church logo.

Project Wittenberg

It contains the largest online collection of Luther’s writings in English, including more than 100 hymns, as well as writings about Luther by many of his contemporaries and later Lutheran scholars.