Alaska students have many opportunities to work with original and facsimile documents at the local, state, and national levels. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Archives contains a vast amount of material on Russian America and on the 19th century American era in Alaska. It also houses an extensive oral history archive. The archives at the University of Alaska Anchorage and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, as well as the Alaska State Library in Juneau, contain large photographic collections. The National Archives in Anchorage and the Alaska State Archives in Juneau house documents relating to government agencies and activities.
Some municipal libraries contain holdings relevant to the local community.
All these repositories are eager to work with students, teachers and school districts in curriculum development and instruction. Unfortunately, in many parts of the country history courses are textbook-driven, and few textbooks contain primary resources. As a result the history curriculum in public schools often revolves around the reading of secondary narrative history. There is an advantage to this approach more of the content can be covered. Furthermore, when students read textbooks they are not allowed to devise their own theories about what happened and why, but instead must accept the pronouncements of unknown scholars or writers.