I was introduced to the American Memory Collection, an initiative of the Library of Congress, through reading descriptions of significant Web sites in our textbook by Lesk.  I decided to visit the site located at http://www.loc.gov/index.html.  How amazing!  You can browse collections by topic or search for particular information; the scope of information is huge; the site boasts over 100 thematic collections.  Anything you can imagine having to do with American culture or history is available on this site.  In addition to text, there are many images, audio records, video, maps and music.  A section is devoted to education of children.  The learning page includes lesson plans, activities, links, and professional development for teachers.  I think this would be a neat way for history to come alive for school children.  Textbooks can be informative, but using multiple senses to learn enhances the learning process and reaches some children who are not readers or who have language barrier problems.

The Web site’s history dates the beggining of the initiative to a pilot program from 1990 through 1994; the pilot program experimented with digitizing a part of the LOC collection.  At the end of the pilot, donations allowed the establishment of the National Digital Library Program.  The U.S. Congress as well as other private donations have supported the collection .  The goal was to digitize 5 million objects by the year 2000; the goal has been exceeded and the online collection will continue to be developed for the use of all citizens.