In an article from the History and Technology column of the May 2007 Perspectives from the American Historical Association, The Digital History Reader: Teaching Resources for United States and European History by E. Thomas Ewing and Robert P. Stephens, a digital history reader was highlighted that was released by Virginia Tech. The article itself is simply an overview of the site along with some student feedback in case you need some convincing that it works. Looking at the site myself, it is really cool. It takes the classic primary source reader and improves it ten times over. There are of course letters, newspaper articles, and political cartoons, but the online format allows the expansion of content. In this reader there are also links for sound bites and movie clips and, because the reader only covers the 19th and 20th centuries, they were able to add quite a few of these. In addition, there is also a multiple choice quiz at the end with the option to email the results to your professor. Now there are many undergrad texts that come with online components, but these usually come with a code in the book that you obviously have to pay for. This is free for anyone to use, which is great because it could even be used in high school courses. The only downside seems to be that since this article was written in 2007, not much appears to have been done with the site. While there are several modules on different points in US and European history, there are many subjects that aren't covered that really could be. For example, the last module on US history is on Richard Nixon. There are a couple more decades after that in the 20th century that could have been covered. Maybe funding was an issue, but these five years could have expanded this site into something even cooler.
A different article from the Viewpoints column was The Historical Profession
and Archival Education by Joseph M. Turrini. I really enjoyed this article because it made me think that there has been a rivalry between archival programs- one which history is losing. I can say that my experience looking for a graduate program in public history I did notice that there was a lack of archival studies offered and often it would just be one semester class on the subject. However, I didn't think anything of it because of the offerings that library science programs make on the subject. The Southeast Archives Education Collaborative spearheaded by Auburn University came up with a really interesting solution to try and keep history archival programs in the game. They teamed up with five other universities (Louisiana State University, School of Information and Library Science; Auburn University, History Department; University of Kentucky, School of Information and Library Science; Indiana University, School of Library and Information Science; and Middle Tennessee State University, Public History Program) to offer a greater variety of classes to their students. Through this new collaboration, students are now allowed to take one webcam class at another university per semester. This is an awesome use of technology and is right in step with the historians basic function of sharing knowledge. I just wish that there were more schools that were able to do this in other programs. It would be a really cool way to completely personalize your education and take advantage of online learning while at the same time having a classroom experience. It would also allow students to see how different parts of the country think about different issues in the field.
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