The collection of an archive of primary source materials constitutes the principal activity of a year-long American Studies class focusing on historiography and the use of primary sources.
Students collect primary source materials from their families or local communities.
In analyzing these primary sources, students examine the interplay between national, state, local, and personal history. Over a period of several weeks, students produce a digital collection modeled on the Library of Congress' American Memory . In the culminating unit of the Arkansas Memory Project described here, students built a Web page based on the analyzed archival collection, and made their own projects available online to other Arkansas schools. Many students provided a lesson plan linked to their Web page. The Arkansas Memory digital collections produced by members of the class may be viewed at the Web site of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences.