BEYOND RAGS TO RICHES has great resources for history students at every level. For college students who need a research-paper topic, we have several dozen suggested topics, and each one comes with a curated document set. You may not write like Richard Hofstadter, but your paper will be based on an abundance of primary sources that will impress even the toughest professor. If you have to give a class report on Irish immigrants, the infamous Five Points neighborhood of New York, or the Great Irish Potato Famine, our collection of original photos, prints, and maps will make your presentation very impressive. There are dozens of potential senior thesis topics you could create from our documents and data. You don't even have to be a history student to make use of our resources. Our data could also be used for a class project in data visualization or GIS.
For Students
Our site also has lots of great resources for high school and middle school students. Either group can use our collection of historic photos, prints, and maps to make a great PowerPoint presentation. We also have research paper suggestions with documents specifically chosen to insure you have plenty of primary sources to use to complete each assignment. We also offer document-based questions ("DBQs") for A.P. history students. And if you participate in History Day competitions, we offer both suggested History Day research questions and most of the primary source documents you will need to answer them. You can also use our interactive maps and historic photos and prints to better understand the potato famine, chain migration, patterns of immigrant settlement, and immigrant life in urban America on the eve of the Civil War.