The American Studies Web Museum is an experimental course in local cultural history and web design. Participating students use original archival materials from the Sheldon Museum and Middlebury College Special Collections to launch interpretive online exhibits that explore the rich cultural heritage of the College and the surrounding local community. A considerable portion of class time is spent on site at the Sheldon and in Special Collections. Students learn scanning, web design, and other technical skills. Part of what makes the Web Museum unusual is the collaborative nature of instruction and learning. The instructional team includes faculty, librarians, and instructional technologists. Learning is also collaborative. Students work in teams to interpret, digitize, and design websites relating to particular archival resources. For everyone involved, the work entails a rich combination of hands-on archival research and the development and application of web-based technical skills.
     While unique in the College curriculum, the American Studies Web Museum builds on the work of nationally recognized web projects such as the Center for History and New Media and the American Studies Crossroads Project. Inspired by such national web consortia, the American Studies Web Museum seeks to utilize new media for two purposes: first, to digitally preserve rare manuscripts and archives; and second, to create a more collaborative and participatory context for learning about America's cultural past.
     The Web Museum owes its impetus to the work of two individuals in LIS: Shel Sax, Director of Educational Technology, and Andrew Wentink, Curator of Special Collections. Shel Sax has long encouraged humanities faculty to adopt course websites and other educational technologies in their teaching. Having learned a great deal from Shel as a participant in the Davis Fellowship program, I sought his advice during the planning stages of the course. Shel, along with Mack Roark and Joe Antonioli, have provided excellent technological instruction to the students in the course. Over the years, Andrew Wentink has essentially co-taught the course with me. With his in-depth knowledge of Special Collections and the Sheldon Museum, he has helped to identify themes and materials for each year's work, and he and the rest of the Special Collections staff have assisted students on a day-to-day basis throughout the four-week term. Without Andy's help, the Web Museum could never have succeeded.
     As a multi-year project, the Web Museum has evolved considerably since its first iteration in the winter of 2004. Each new group of students benefits from the accomplishments and shortcomings of work completed in previous years. Each year, the Web Museum also benefits from the distinctive skills and aptitudes of participating students. Students with technical expertise acted as course webmasters in 2004 and 2005. In 2005, Amanda Gustin designed what has become the permanent template for the Web Museum. Her contributions, first as student and then as Special Collections Digitization Intern, exemplify the unique opportunity this course affords for collaborative learning and knowledge production. The cumulative nature of the Web Museum also enhances students’ enthusiasm for the course. Students enjoy contributing to something that they know will be permanent, and they like the challenge of improving on work completed in previous years through more sophisticated use of digital media.
     In 2004, students used materials at the Sheldon to develop websites related to leisure, domesticity, and manhood in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Vermont. Using materials in Special Collections, they chronicled the history of the College, with a particular focus on student life. An exhibit on the lifelong partnership of two early nineteenth-century Weybridge women, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, exemplifies the accomplishments of the 2004 course. In order to create their web exhibits, students labored over nineteenth century handwritten documents that were often difficult to decipher. Working in small groups, they came to enjoy the challenge of reading and transcribing personal letters, diaries, and poems. And, having worked hard to understand and digitally preserve archival materials, they took pleasure in arranging those materials into exhibits utilizing their newly acquired web design skills.
     The 2004 course explored a broad range of topics. In 2005, we attempted to achieve greater class-wide collaboration through a narrower thematic focus. We addressed how Middlebury College and the surrounding community reacted to and participated in U.S. military conflicts ranging from the War of 1812 to the Vietnam conflict. Once again, small groups of students worked with archival materials to construct exhibits that reflected their particular interests and abilities.
     Building on the success of the 2005 project, the 2006 and 2007 courses similarly adopted narrower themes. In 2006, students examined materials in Special Collections and the Sheldon Museum relating to gender and private life in nineteenth-century Vermont. An example of this group's accomplishments is an exhibit on the diary of Francis Paine, a nineteenth-century Vermont schoolteacher and farmer. In 2007, working primarily in Special Collections, students focused on the diaries and letters of Americans who traveled abroad between 1820 and 1920. An example of their work is the travel diary of Mrs. R.P. Eaton, who visited Europe, Egypt, and Palestine around 1857.
     The American Studies Web Museum, because it is a collaborative learning project, differs from the College's other digital collections. A notable difference is the lack of a uniform design template. Students are allowed creative license in designing their exhibits. This makes navigating the web museum more challenging, but it also enhances students’ sense of their own authority and enriches small-group collaboration.