What a Digital Archives SHOULD be!

For those of you who have not seen it, Columbia University has a very fine example of what online collections should be: accessible, intelligible, easy to navigate, and educational. Their Mapping the African American Past (at www.maap.columbia.edu) . It contains a very rich selection of maps, primary source accounts, photos, streaming video, a very slick historic maps interactive timeline (http://www.maap.columbia.edu/place/index.html), and (in my opinion, most importantly) LESSON PLANS (http://www.maap.columbia.edu/module/index.html)! Columbia has given a guide to teachers in 8-12 grades of how to integrate the primary source materials from their collection in to high school history classes. This is a well conceived plan that I have been advocating for years, it is one thing to read about history and see a 3"x5" map in a textbook printed who knows where, it is a very different and engaging experience to read first hand events and research history on your own. By engaging students still in high school and showing them the importance of primary source materials, we can strongly illustrate that not all knowledge can be found on the Wikipedia site. Check it out for yourself and tell me what you think.