T&L Journal #3 - Digital Libraries

American Memory from the Library of Congress

I was first impressed by the amount of information that must lie in this digital library, which I deduced from seeing the 18 categories worth of resources. The next thing I noticed, which could be very useful in education, is the "Today in History" feature, which I assume uses date tags in the Library's resources to point out things that happened on that specific date. This could be especially useful for a Social Studies Teacher. Today, for example, Civil War era photographer photographed Abraham Lincoln before a famous speech and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born.

The rest of the site contains some fascinating digital scans of papers, documents, maps and pictures from a variety of settings. Most of these documents are at least one hundred years old. Among the interesting things available on this site are a wealth of George Washington's diaries (wow!), 4 of Walt Whitman's notebooks and Civil War era maps. There are also old videos available, such as a 1905 video of the NYC subway system (just 7 months after it opened) [It looks the same as it does now!]. Not all of the resources are old; for example, there is a wealth of resources about September 11, 2001.

Clearly this site has a plethora of visuals that a teacher--especially, but not limited to, Social Studies teachers--can use to complement and add realism to lessons. Imagine being in the 4th grade, learning about George Washington and seeing the actual 200+ year old document from the Continental Congress naming him Commander in Chief. Impressive.

Youngstown State University Oral History Program

As a northeast Ohioan who was born a few minutes from Youngstown State University, I was interested in seeing what this library had to offer. While going through the site, I was initially disappointed to find that it was not a library of audio recordings, rather a library of transcripts of interviews. This could still be valuable and would make quoting easier as well.

Another thing that did disappoint me was that many of the transcripts were not actually available on the site. Once you select a topic that you'd like to view, you are sent to the YSU library page for that set of resources. For some of the resources you can view .pdfs of the transcripts, while for others you have to go to the library to view them.

One particular .pdf transcript that I read was of a Italian immigrant that lived in Niles, OH (a town that borders my hometown and is where my mother teaches). He discussed the life of an immigrant as well as some of the riots with the KKK that occurred in Niles in the 1920s.

It is very apparent that this site could be useful, but only in very specific instances. But, when studying Ohio History or when discussing particular topics (such as the KKK or immigration, as mentioned before), these first-hand accounts could be a valuable and engaging addition to a teacher's lesson.

Overall, the idea of a digital library is a great one. While plenty of information is available on the internet, not all of it is of quality and is trustworthy. Information coming from a library, is clearly trustworthy and of quality. What a great resource.