New K-12 Digital Collection Delivers History Sources to Students

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 08/23/16

School libraries will have the opportunity to supply digital source content to history and social studies students without teachers or media specialists having to compile it themselves. A new service being offered by Gale brings together 1,800 digital primary sources from the archives of the Smithsonian and Gale's own collection.

"Smithsonian Primary Sources in United States History" includes documents, maps, historical objects and other content from 15 different time periods in American history, from pre-colonial through to the present.

"Nothing makes history come to life quite like primary sources. Imagine being immersed in the women's rights movement and being able to view not only a copy of the 19th amendment, but also detailed images of physical artifacts, like posters, badges and maps encouraging women to exercise their congressional rights — an especially relevant topic during this election year," said Paul Gazzolo, Gale senior vice president and general manager, in a prepared statement. "By engaging with artifacts and individual records, students can explore, analyze and delve deeply into a topic, aiding in the development of critical thinking skills."

The new service runs on a digital content platform that integrates with Google Apps for Education tools and Microsoft Office 365. The integration enables users to log in using their Google or Microsoft accounts and then save, share and download content to destinations that include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Docs and Gmail. With Google Classroom and Microsoft Classroom teachers can also integrate and share content with their students through the learning management system.

According to the company, the primary sources service is available as an annual subscription, with pricing based on number of full-time equivalent students. Through 2016 the minimum subscription is $1,237.50.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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