The Primary Sources archive is one of three web-based tools that make up an online knowledge sharing system (the others are Dalton Explorer and Music Navigator). The combined toolset allows for Student-to-Student, Student-to-Teacher, and Teacher-to-Teacher collaboration as well as the seamless sharing of both work and multi-media resources.
The Primary Sources Archive is a repository for original historical and artistic materials. Students may explore the archive on their own, or be guided through thematically based collections designed by their teachers.
Created by the New Lab for Teaching and Learning to solve the problem of showing primary source documents from the mid-1800s, pre-Civil War, donated by the Mintz family, the Primary Sources Archive is a powerful database that is constantly growing and provides a way to share digital images or artifacts, documents, and art among teachers and students.
One can search by country, culture, period, material, artifact type, and more. Users can create their own galleries, a subset of the larger collection, to use for an Assignment. The galleries are then able to be shared by any class or grade level.
Clicking on a image brings a larger image showing incredible detail for examination.