Like entering a dream. Someone nudges a stone away and there's a story.
Evidence is everywhere.
For the author, historical truth lies in their intersection. Practicing historians use firsthand stories or direct evidence to reconstruct not only what happened in the past, but what meanings can be derived from such artifacts. But until recently, K-12 students and perhaps many of their teachers understood history as textbook collections of facts to memorize. Digital libraries like the American Memory collections at the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration collections of primary sources profoundly changed my teaching of history when I teamed with a humanities teacher to create Turn of the Century Child . Our students were able to examine speeches, journals, songs, photographs, oral histories, and other objects of material culture previously accessible only to scholars.