The Center for History and New Media
The Common-place Web Library reviews and lists online resources and Websites likely to be of interest to our viewers. Each quarterly issue will feature one or more brief site reviews. The library itself will be an ongoing enterprise with regular new additions and amendments. So we encourage you to check it frequently. At the moment, the library is small, but with your help we expect it to grow rapidly. If you have suggestions for the Web Library, or for site reviews, please forward them to the Administrative Editor.
The Center for History and New Media
http://chnm.gmu.edu/
This Website, based at George Mason University, is an important clearing house and resource for those interested in developing and exploiting the vast potential of the Internet. As noted on the home page, the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) "has used digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past." Engaged in these projects since 1994, the CHNM team members have goals consistent with those of Common-place: they want to provide an open and inclusive forum for exchanging ideas about history. Directed by Roy Rosenzweig and associate directors Mike O’Malley, Paula Petrik, and T. Mills Kelly, the CHNM counts among its staff leaders in the field of digital history. A visitor to the Website quickly realizes that it represents the best one-stop Web resource for teachers, scholars, students, and members of the public with an interest in history.
Among the many resources available through the CHNM site are digital history projects. These include the "History News Network," a Web magazine featuring historical perspectives on current news developments, and "Exploring U.S. History," which offers online teaching materials for an eighteenth-through-twentieth-century survey course, with textual and visual sources linked to specific assignments on themes such as indentured servitude, antebellum popular culture, and runaway slaves.
For teachers, perhaps the most useful of the digital projects is History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web. "History Matters" directs users to a wealth of resources, including an online archive of primary sources, guides on how historians use and evaluate different kinds of evidence, a digital blackboard with teaching assignments based on Web resources, teaching discussions, a compendium of syllabi, and an annotated guide to over eight hundred Websites in American history. This online history project is a joint effort with the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which also cosponsors several other CHNM projects. Among their collaborative digital projects are the "September 11 Digital Archives" and "The Lost Museum," which allows viewers to explore a virtual version of Phineas Taylor Barnum’s nineteenth-century American Museum. (See Thomas Augst’s Common-place essay about this site.)
The "Tools and Resources" section includes a guide to twelve hundred history departments; free digital tools for building surveys and polls and taking notes; and a very useful collection of essays on history and new media, which users can consult for a range of scholarship "devoted to the theoretical and practical aspects of taking history into a digital format." These essays address topics ranging from teaching digital history to Web design and the scholarly implications of digital archives.
The historical and technological expertise underpinning this site renders it an indispensable starting point for novice and experienced Internet users alike. Sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences at George Mason University, the CHNM site, a "gateway to web resources," is one that visitors will want to bookmark and consult regularly.