Thirty-eight students from Mr. Esslinger’s 8th grade American Studies class met periodically with Mrs. Staniforth (7-8 ELP) to archive websites for the Library of Congress this year. Digital content is lost permanently when websites are updated unless the sites are archived. The Library of Congress started this program three years ago to give students an opportunity to select what is stored for future generations to see. This project connected to the primary source training students received as part of the research component to American Studies.
Nationally, fourteen schools in thirteen states participated in the program. They created 56 collections and archived 149,925,000 documents. A majority of the sites archived were not being archived by other institutions, risking the permanent loss of those resources as digital content changed.
AMS students brainstormed how they used the Internet and selected three main areas to collect primary sources. The Educational Resources collection illustrates sites commonly used by students for school projects. The Popular Culture collection represents sites used for fun outside of school. The All About Ames, Iowa 2011 illustrates what students valued in our community.
This is the third year AMS has participated in the program. The archived sites can be viewed at the following site: http://www.archive-it.org/k12/10AmesMS.html.
