Along with the documentary made by Roberta Grossman and Marta Kaufman that aired on PBS in 2010, there have been a few historical collections putting up materials about Hava Nagila, the ubiquitous folk tune that has become part and parcel of the American Jewish experience. Here’s some links to the history, video and archival materials that may be of interest to our readers.

First, the video, (fundraising promo about the PBS special from 2010): (about 10 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=molJ3Y6z97g

Second, the archival materials published on Flickr from the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26577116@N04/sets/72157605304880455/

Images from, Sadagora, hometown where the melody was traced:
http://pics.livejournal.com/edward_tur/pic/00320q7e

For years, the song text was attributed to Moshe Nathanson, but this claim turned out to be untrue. Later in life, Nathanson wrote to Idelsohn and apologized about accepting credit for the text, which Idelsohn had written. (You’ll still find wrong information about that on the Internet on my sites.).
Idelssohn Thesaurus has been digitized at JNUL
http://www.jmwc.org/announcements/2005/09/jewish_national.html
but is also for sale today from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Thesaurus-Hebrew-Oriental-Melodies-Idelsohn/dp/0933676999