Waking Up Digital Content

All librarians—well, almost all—rejoice when they hear that historical documents, like their local newspaper, are being digitized and made freely available on the Web. It’s not because we hate print (microform is another matter). It’s because we believe that far more readers than ever before will now have access to this content, 24/7. It also means that these documents, from birth announcements to first-hand accounts of a labor strike, are suddenly available in a powerful way: they’re searchable.

But access doesn’t equal usage. We know this valuable content is available, but do our students? Often it’s scholars, graduate students, and those with a keen interest, like genealogists, who readily locate these primary sources. The rest of the world often needs to be guided by a reference librarian, a Web portal that provides context, or, in the case of middle and high school students and faculty, materials that connect these vibrant resources with the curriculum.

Which is why every project to digitize primary sources—and there are some ambitious ones underway—must include funding to help teachers, school librarians, and media specialists access, use, and produce curricula with these online primary sources.

Fortunately, there are some great models. Over four consecutive summers, the American Memory Fellows Program at the Library of Congress (LC) invited 250 teachers, media specialists, and librarians to LC for week-long workshops where, in two-member teams, they developed teaching materials based on LC’s online materials. These materials were “road-tested” then eventually published in LC’s Web site.

“This was one of the most professionally and personally fulfilling experiences of my library career,” says Margaret Lincoln, a 2000 Fellow and librarian at the Lakeview High School, Battle Creek, MI. Lincoln worked with Scott Durham, a social studies teacher at Lakeview, to produce a primary source unit focused on World War I.

While the privately-funded Fellows Program ended in 2001, its impact is still felt. For one thing, its units continue to be used throughout the country. It was also the inspiration behind the Adventure of the American Mind (AAM), which today trains teachers and school librarians to create curriculum based on LC materials on the state level. Members of Congress earmark funding for their district or state; AAM is currently operating in nine states.

At the Grandview High School library in Aurora, CO, the home of this year’s SLJ/Greenwood Administrator of the Year, teacher-librarian Evelyn Scott and English teacher Vernal Pope created a learning activity about rhetoric for eleventh graders with the support of AAM-Colorado. The unit uses U.S. Civil War material from LC to demonstrate the power of language, then asks students to write their own persuasive letter or speech.

Following LC’s lead, some states have created portals for educators, such as New Jersey. Christopher Dennen, AAM’s national director, believes that teaching materials “can have the greatest impact when they tie national materials together with local primary source materials.”

Many state libraries, public libraries, and universities have digitization programs underway or in the planning stages. The National Endowment for the Humanities has begun a 20 year project: an online resource of important American newspapers from 1836 through 1922.

As Dennen points out, “Unlike most of the Web, this content is reliable; it’s vast; and it’s free.” Let’s make sure that the funding is there not just to scan the print and pay for the servers but to create those valuable connections between this primary content and our students as well. After all, access isn’t usage.