Major Electronic Resources For World History
by Linda K. Brown
Major Electronic Resources For World History
by Linda K. Brown
|
When teachers of World History provide students with opportunities to write research papers, getting students to use electronic resources is no problem. Yet there is the problem of making certain that students are using websites that provide reliable, scholarly information. The best place for students to begin their research is at websites developed by universities. Many university library websites furnish `pages’ that help students evaluate Internet sources, and universities often host important scholarly resources on their servers. One such site, developed by the Cornell University library to guide college students through each stage of the research process, can also be used by your students. Located at http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/research/tutorial.html, the Cornell website provides advice on “How to Critically Analyze Information Sources,” “How to Evaluate and Cite What You Have Found,” and “Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals.” One page, “Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools explains and gives examples of criteria such as “Content,” “Authority,” “Organization,” and Searchability,” just to name a few. Often giving students a set of guidelines, such as those found at the Cornell site, is all that is needed—if only to raise their level of awareness. For a list of additional sites that offer guidelines for the evaluation of web information, try Widner University library’s site at http://www.science.edu/~withers/cklstlnk.htm. So now that students understand what to look for, they can begin their research at websites established by colleges and universities a good way to a weed out sources of dubious reliability. There are three enormous sites with which to begin The Voice of the Shuttle’s History Page, Gateway to World History, and the Index of Resources for Historians. Each site has links to hundreds, even thousands, of high quality resources. They are all accessible from the site of the World History Association (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/WHA/docs/links.html), or you can access them directly. The largest site is the history page of Alan Liu’s massive Voice of the Shuttle (VoS), maintained by the University of California at Santa Barbara (http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/cgi-bin/mfs/01/history.html). This site is part of the even larger “Web Page for Humanities Research.” The `table of contents’ for the history sub-page, last updated on 5/4/98, offers twenty pages of links when printed. Some items lead to actual research papers, while others lead to primary source materials and other valuable sites. When your young scholars arrive at the VoS “History Page,” clicking the two buttons at the top allow them to either “Search [all of] VoS” (which may be necessary for interdisciplinary research) or “search the net.” But just below those two buttons the work begins in ernest with the topical and geographic links. The student can navigate the VoS “History Page” by selecting menu items, or by scrolling down to the same list of links reproduced in outline form with sub-headings (searchable links) below. Clicking on a link may take you to any of a variety of resources: bibliographies, research papers, newspaper articles, timelines, entry into virtual museums, informational databases, or primary sources (letters, speeches, pictures, etc.), or additional links. Among the topical resources available are: “Prehistory,” “Asia,” “Economic History,” “Military History,” “History of the Family,” “History of Education,” and “Historiography.” Choosing the “General List of Resources” brings students to a menu of links that includes treasures such as “Electronic Documents in History” produced by Tennessee Technological University. There is still more. The VoS “History Page” also includes lists of, and links to, electronic “Journals.” Some of the journals make available abstracts and/or entire articles for current and selected back issues. “Discussion Lists,” “News Groups,” and information on upcoming “Conferences” (which may be of interest to teachers) are also displayed. For all of its virtues, the VoS “History Page” does have its shortcomings. While some topics have comprehensive coverage, choosing on other topics reveals only brief representation, or a single link. If your students are doing research in British (political) History or US History (especially the colonial or antebellum periods) they will have access to lots of biographical information (especially for British monarchs, prime ministers, etc.) and lots of documents (for US and British history). But a look at Prehistory reveals only one link, Africa only three, China has five, while India has sixteen. In spite of its uneven coverage, the VoS History Page can be one of the best places to begin. The Gateway to World History and Index of Resources for Historians (IRH) do not provide any information themselves, rather they provide links to informational sites. The “Gateway” (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/gateway/index.html), a massive site provided by the World History Association (WHA), is larger than the IRH. Selecting the Gateway’s “General Resources for History” brings students to a menu of twenty-four links to “search engines” and “on-line resources” (including VoS). Several of those resources are of great value for your pubescent pundits. (This is not to say that the other links are not of value but space limitations force me to choose.) The “World History Archives,” a “collection of 2600 documents that focuses on contemporary history,” is accessible from the Gateway menu, or a button at the bottom of the page, or from its address http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/index.htm. The main page displays topics (“The World,” “Africa,” “The Americas,” “Asia,” “Europe,” and “World Historiography”) with searchable sub-topic links. Choosing a link will lead your students to bibliographies, newspaper articles, and primary source documents. One word of caution though: the source of materials posted is not always clear. Also available from the Gateway, is the "Fourth World Documentation Project,” at http://www.halcyon.com.FWDP/fwdp.html. Even though it is linked to a university site, the FWDP site was developed by a non-profit organization. The website was set up to provide the on-line community with information about the history and current state of indigenous peoples. It displays UN documents and documents of various governments, press releases, and newspaper articles. Among its most interesting contents are treaties, official government statements, and statements by government officials and opposition groups around the world. The documents are arranged by geographic region (“North,” “Central,” and “South America,” for example) and by topic (“Tribal and Inter-Tribal Resolutions and Papers,” “Internationally Focus Documents,” UN Documents,” and “Treaties, Agreements, and Other Constructive Arrangements”). The FWDP site is an excellent source of documents for Native American history (past and contemporary) and for information on a myriad of indigenous peoples. Its last update was March 5, 1997. Another source of primary documents, a “major repository of historical documents” accesible from the Gateway menu, is the “Historical Text Archives.” This archive is managed by Don Mabry at Mississippi State University. Last updated on June 19, 1998, the site is organized by “region/nation” and “topic. It provides original text materials, links to other sites, and a small—but valuable—selection of bibliographies. The bibliographies include topics such as “Feudalism,” “Islam,” “Women in the US South,” US-Mexico Relations to 1980, and “French Socialism,” to identify a few. (It is located at http://www.msstate.edu/Archives/History/.) Gateway, also offers the adolescent abecedarian valuable visual information. Selecting “Images from History” from the menu (or from the button bar at the bottom of the page) will bring your students to folders organized by geographic region. Each folder is designed to “support the teaching of world history at the secondary and university level” and `contains’ pictures from “world art and archeology,” along with a text. Thumbnail or full, screen-size images can be chosen—great resources for the visual learner. Another visual information source, the “Perry-Castaneda Map Collection” (updated on July 17, 1998), is accessible from the Gateway menu or its address at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/PCL/Map_collection.html. Of immense value to the student, it contains political, economic, historical and relief maps of every region of the world. It displays over seven hundred US maps, maps of Russia and the former Soviet republics, and even maps of the oceans and polar regions. When students reach the site, buttons at the top will permit them to choose maps of current interest. The selections available when I explored the site were a series of maps of Indonesia and Kosovo—both current `hot’ spots (literally and figuratively, respectively). The site also provides links to other websites that offer historical maps. The Gateway to World History is also linked to two scholarly electronic journals. The first journal, representing the new `systems’ paradigm for the study of World History, is the “Journal of World Systems Research.” Produced by the Johns Hopkins University Program in Comparative Development, the “Journal” is an excellent example of the kind of high calibre scholarly material with which we want our students to become familiar. It displays the text of articles from each of the four volumes produced to date. The second journal is “Chronicon,” a “an on-line journal of international history,” published by the History Department at University College in Cork, Ireland. Even though its current issue is concerned exclusively with Irish history, its aim is to cover articles and reviews from the “post classical period to contemporary history.” Archeology Magazine’s web page is also included in the Gateway’s links. It displays abstracts of some current feature articles and the full text of some of its back issues. Clicking on “World History Links Page” brings students to a screen of links to websites "organized by country, and usually not historical." Scrolling down the page leads to “More world history pages” (organized by topics that include World War One, World War Two, World Poetry, and Women writers—to name a few) and then to “United States History Links” (organized by topics) with its recommended site of the month at the bottom. User are asked to add links to this page. The final Gateway link that I will mention is “Electronic documents on-line.” (When clicked this comes up as “Electronic texts on line.”) Located at http://www.hartford-hwp.com/gateway/gate01.html, this WHA page is divided into four sub-headings. The first sub-heading, “Electronic Serials,” lists catalogs and directories of electronic journals. It is a great place to find scholarly journals and online newsletters. The second subheading, “Archives of electronic documents for history” provides searchable links to sites that range from eighteenth century resources and Western European primary historical sources to a Papyrus Archive. The Papyrus Archive, an especially engaging site, is maintained by Duke university. It offers links to institutions that are deciphering papyrus—many complete with legible papyrus, translations, and information about deciphered the scrolls. The resolution is so good that users can almost feel the fragile scrolls under their fingers. The third major website for World History, the Index of Resources for Historians (IRH), is maintained by the University of Kansas’ server at http://history.cc.ukans.edu/history/index.html. The IRH was deliberately designed to be a small site. Its creators attempted to design a website which, although not comprehensive, would provide its visitors with a moderate sized broad sample. They succeeded in producing a single site that covers almost every major topic discussed in a typical one-year world history survey class. On the IRH homepage students will find an alphalist of topics and countries at the top of the page. “Ancient Egypt” (which exhibits a 3-D mummy) “Ancient Greece,” “Architecture,” “African Studies,” and “Asian Studies” are included along with “Indigenous Peoples,” “Labor and Business History,” “Medieval Europe,” “Middle Eastern,” “Vatican,” “Electronic Texts,” “Urban History,” and topics of current interest like “Tibet.” By scrolling down students will arrive at a list of topics with links to specific sites. At the bottom of the page the site’s contents are also accessible by selecting “Resources Organized by Era. The IRH’s link to the World Wide Web Virtual Library’s (WWW-VL) history page, at http://history.cc.ukans.edu/history/WWW_history_main.html, makes it one of the most useful resources for historical research available on the internet. The WWW-VL, a list of history servers, is also maintained by the University of Kansas. (Its last update was on May 4, 1998.) You can browse the list by subject or `table of contents.’ The resources are also indexed by “historical” era. The WWW-VL history page also features “World News” and “Omnivore,” which display up-to-date news from newspapers around the world. “Carrie,” part of the WWW-VL, is an electronic library of full texts. Considered one of the top 5% websites by PONT, Carrie contains materials as diverse as the full texts of dozens of banned books (Milton’s Areopagitica for example) and World War I documents. Of the hundreds of thousands of sites for World History I have found these three websites, along with the links they offer, to be the best places for my students to begin the electronic portion of their research.
|
