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Lincoln/Net facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Lincoln/Net is a cool online project that helps you explore the history of Abraham Lincoln and early Illinois. It's like a giant digital library filled with old documents, pictures, and speeches from Lincoln's time in Illinois, which was from 1830 to 1861. It also has materials from when Illinois first became a state.

This project was created by the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization Project, based at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Their main goal is to save these important historical items in a digital format and make them easy for everyone to see and learn from.

What Can You Find on Lincoln/Net?

Lincoln/Net has tons of historical stuff! Imagine more than 30 million words you can search through. It also has over 3,000 audio and video clips.

Types of Historical Materials

The project includes many different kinds of documents:

  • Old books
  • Handwritten letters and papers (called manuscripts)
  • Historical images
  • Speeches given by important people
  • Writings from that time

All these items help you understand what life was like back then. The project also adds information about the people involved and explanations of what the historical items mean.

How to Explore the Archive

It's super easy to find what you're looking for on Lincoln/Net. You can use their search tool to look for specific words or topics.

Browsing by Topic

The project team has also organized the materials into different themes. This makes it simple to explore a particular subject that interests you. Some of the themes include:

  • How people settled the frontier
  • Relations with Native Americans
  • How the economy grew
  • The experiences of women and their roles
  • The experiences of African-Americans and attitudes about race
  • Law and society
  • Religion and culture
  • How politics developed

Each theme comes with an essay. This essay helps explain the history behind the documents and gives you more context.

Who Created Lincoln/Net?

This big project brought together materials from many different places. These included universities and historical societies.

Contributing Institutions

Some of the places that shared their historical items are:

A lot of people worked together to make Lincoln/Net happen. This included nearly 80 student helpers! Drew E. VandeCreek is the director of the project.

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Lincoln/Net Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.