More primary sources are becoming available electronically as universities, libraries, and other institutions develop digital collections. Materials they digitize are often unique and become accessible only through digitization. Examples include:

• Collections of local interest

Example: Valley of the Shadow ("hypermedia archive of thousands of sources for the period before, during, and after the Civil War for Augusta County, VA, and Franklin County, PA.") - University of Virginia

• Photographs/Images

Example: AdAccess ("images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955") - Duke University

• Historical documents and artifacts

Example: Cholera Online: A Modern Pandemic in Texts and Images (a collection of the National Library of Medicine's "History of Medicine")

American Memory, a project of the Library of Congress to digitize historical collections for public use, is an excellent example of a digital collection incorporating many types of resources. From the Web site:

"American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning." http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/about/index.html

Examples of what you can do using American Memory:

• listen to Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech about "Americanism"
• watch Coca-Cola ads from the 1950s
• view a map from the civil war

Click here to listen to one one person's reaction to the September 11 bombings. It is from the "September 11, 2001, Documentary Project" which "captures the heartfelt reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center....

Digitizing and making archival materials available through the Web has opened up access to materials that would otherwise be unavailable. Preservation is also a benefit, in that users don't need to handle the original (and usually aging) artifact.

Many universities are making their own archives available digitally. The ODU Library has recently completed a project to digitize our holdings of materials relating to the Massive Resistance movement in the late 1950s, when Norfolk closed its public schools rather than integrating African American students into the all-white schools. View Web site.

Finding out about these collections and individual items is tricky. The major collections are accessible through Internet search engines and directories. There are other open-access listings, e.g., OAIster (a catalog of digital resources), and various repositories to help identify what's available. Under the various "Subject Guides" on the Library's Web site are links to Web resources that contain digital collections.