Perhaps the most astounding educational
opportunity provided by the World Wide Web is the availability
of primary documents and sources of all kinds to the general
public. For instance, the American Memory Collection
(http://memory.loc.gov/) of the Library of Congress alone
contains more than seven million items from over 100 of the library’s
collections. Now everyone can do original research! In
this course students will plumb a different collection of
Americana on the web each week with the aim of actively “doing
history” rather than just settling for pre-digested knowledge
from scholarly textbooks and lectures. Students with
special interests in a certain field or figure in American
culture, or who have already identified a virtual collection
of personal value, should contact Prof Gallagher early enough
to influence the syllabus. Teachers or prospective teachers
will be able to explore web resources and develop class exercises
or units.