This scavanger hunt wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be. Especially in just 30 minutes. I managed to find only four of the nine items.
The first item, a .wav file of Trotsky speaking in English wasn't hard to find at all. It took me just a couple minutes with a simple Trotsky and English and Audio search on Google. I found a nice recording of Trotsky speaking, in English, on Stalinism while in exile in Mexico.
The second item totally stumped me. I first tried a simple Google search, knowing that I was going to have my work cut out for me with that anyway. After that did not turn up any worthwhile immediate results, I went to the GMU library database site http://library.gmu.edu/resources/databases.html and tried using various online databases that might include American poetry from the early 20th century. I started with the Chadwyck-Healey American Poetry database because the site mentioned that it had added some American poets that were active after 1900. Unfortunately, this didn't work so I tried Literature Online. This too yielded no results. I've never searched for any American literature online, so at this point I had no idea where to go. Because this had by now taken me over 10 minutes, I skipped this one. I did find a CD-ROM available at Fenwick Library that I'm sure would have had this citation on it, Columbia Granger's World of Poetry but this isn't currently available online.
The third item also gave me problems, as I've never searched for American history primary sources online. I did find the letters of George Washington 1732-1799, a site hosted by the University of Virginia, available at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/WasFi21.html. Unfortunately, I could not find the exact letter to Timothy Pickering in this lengthy list without a more specific date on which the letter was written.
The fourth item was as easy to find as the first item. The problem was that I wanted to make sure that I found the speech contained on a reasonably reliable site. Being unfamiliar with GMU library online database resources on American history, I simply did a Google search for this speech. This search turned up a horrifying number of white suprimacist sites. I, for obvious reasons, did not want to trust the authenticity of these sites to publish the speech faithfully.
Also in the Google search, however, I found a site from the University of Kentucky, the Alliance to Achieve Racial Equality, which seemed much more reliable. They published the speech at www.uky.edu/studentorgs/AWARE/archives/lynch.html
By this point, I was running out of time rapidly and could not find an online debate on the Cuban Missile Crisis via Google, and did not know which GMU database that this kind of a debate might be contained in, if any. Again, being a European history student I'm not familiar with doing much research in American history online.
Item number six was easy and took me just a minute to decide where I needed to go and where to find it. I simply went to JSTOR and expanded the list of topics to be able to search for the Economic History Review. Searching only that journal with the title, I found the article quite quickly at http://mutex.gmu.edu:2051/view/00130117/di011847/01p0294n/0?currentResult=00130117%2bdi011847%2b01p0294n%2b0%2c01%2b19940500%2b9995%2b80059499&searchID=cce44035.10945444670&frame=noframe&sortOrder=SCORE&userID=81ae37f5@gmu.edu/01cce440350050141eb98&dpi=3&viewContent=Article&config=jstor
Item number eight was also quite easy due to the quick tour of the CHNM site given by Roy in class last Monday. I went to the syllabus finder at the CHNM site and found many syllabi posted on the web that use Janet Murray's book. I found a site, Multimedia Writing and Literature from the Centenary College of Louisiana http://legacy.centenary.edu/~balexand/multimedia/2001/syllabus.html As well as Virginia Commonweath University, Writing Hypertext, at http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG651-ejc/syl.htm The third site I found was at Stanford, History of Computer Game Design, http://www.stanford.edu/class/sts145/html/Syllabus.htm The last site which I chose from the list given by the Syllabus Finder was a course at NYU, Live Art on the Internet at http://www.tonisant.com/class/2002/syllabus.shtml
The last two items I did not have much time to find, and couldn't find either. I looked for a version history listing on the CHNM web page, as well as perhaps the page archived somewhere on the site or on Google, but I couldn't find it.
I also found several web pages dedicted to Janet Murray (including her own home page) and also several where articles of hers about The Sims are published, but none of them included a picture of her with characters from The Sims videogame.
I think a major problem with successfully finding all the items on this scavanger hunt for me was that I'm not an American historian. I simply just don't know where to go online for reliable, and quick, answers and primary source documents.