Digital History is a database-driven Web site designed to assist the teaching of American history through multimedia and interactive content. Supported by the College of Education at the University of Houston, this extensive site provides high-quality resources on North American history from the pre-Columbian period to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Political, social and legal history, as well as ethnic and immigrant experiences, of the USA are covered. The target audiences are teachers and students in high schools and undergraduate colleges. Through partnerships with a variety of museums and archives, the site offers many different types of resources such as images, primary sources, multimedia, teacher materials and a textbook.
Interactive content immediately greets the user on the homepage’s chronological timeline. Choosing a time period and a resource type (media, textbook, documents and teaching materials) leads directly to that section. An alternate entry point is the menu on the bottom page that categorizes links by eras, topics, resources and references. A keyword search option is offered, but it is buried on the bottom of the site’s pages in small print Search and Site Map. Although not prominently displayed, the search is a robust feature once discovered.
Navigation is easy, and there are multiple pathways to the materials. Browsing is the preferred method. Organized into 20 broad historical eras, each one includes an overview, excerpts from the site’s US history textbook, documents, events, people, relevant music and films, images, student activities, multimedia, teacher materials, external links and quizzes. Buttons at the top allow movement between timelines, virtual exhibitions, “voices” relevant to the era, active learning activities and reference materials. The voices section emphasizes people’s opinions on specific subjects, such as immigration and civil rights. The active learning section is a series of interactive modules called “eXplorations” developed to enhance analytical and critical thinking skills by encouraging users to research their own historical questions.
The wealth of information on the site is impressive. Primary sources include Columbus’s letter to the King and Queen of Spain in 1494, the Continental Congress’ Declaration of Rights and Grievances in 1765, the Treaty of Paris in 1783, “Memorandum on a Colony in Africa for Manumitted Slaves” by James Madison in 1789, Jefferson’s letter to Meriwether Lewis in 1803, Constitution of the Confederate States of America, a Lakota chief’s account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1881, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech in 1941 and the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. External links address selected historical trials, court cases, newspaper articles and notable obituaries.
Additional features include multimedia exhibitions, reference resources, classroom handouts, chronologies, glossaries and audiovisual archives. There are six virtual exhibitions offered, including one on Lincoln’s America and one on Frederick Douglass. Another section lists the major institutions, organizations and journals in the history field. Audio files include spoken histories and music. The visual archive consists of links to historical maps and subject-oriented image sites on topics such as advertising, African Americans, architecture, paintings, music, photography and science. Unfortunately, at the time of this review, a few of the audio and video files did not operate properly, and some external links were broken.
Teachers will find a variety of classroom materials. Integrated throughout the site are hand-outs with classroom discussion questions, lesson plans and quizzes. Many of the materials are conveniently gathered into 24 separate subject modules. Each module includes a historical overview, recommended documents and films and teaching resources. Also useful are the guides on evaluating primary sources and writing research papers.
One innovative feature is the ability to create multimedia American history exhibitions from the site’s images. These hypertext markup language (html) files can be e-mailed, downloaded or saved on the site’s servers. Another intriguing aspect is the Ask the HyperHistorian component, essentially a means for users to ask a professional historian questions. However, at the time of this review, it had been disabled because of the excessive amount of SPAM they had received.
Overall, this site succeeds in providing an extensive collection of textual, visual and audio materials that allow educators and students to interactively study American history. The quality of sources is impressive. An example being the over 400 annotated documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a prestigious archive of primary sources in American history owned by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and located at the New York Historical Society. Although geared mainly toward the K-12 audience, the resources should prove useful in college history survey courses. Academic libraries supporting undergraduate history students will find the primary sources and external links to be good starting places for research exploration.
