Highlights Archives
"Turning Points" Provides Educational Bounty
Educators and students get an early present this week. Eyewitness accounts of pivotal historic events that shaped the state of Wisconsin as we know it today are now available online — free to all for nonprofit use — on the Wisconsin Historical Society's new Turning Points in Wisconsin History web site.
Still in its formative stages, Turning Points in Wisconsin History already provides easy online access to some 200 original letters, photographs, rare books, diaries, newspaper articles, museum artifacts and maps relating to 50 pivotal historic events. Organized in a streamlined, searchable database, these one-of-a-kind primary research resources are now available to every classroom, home and library in Wisconsin.
Handwritten manuscripts can be viewed as they were written or as typed transcripts. Early French documents can be read in the original or in English translations. Pictures and maps can be examined at close range or in their entirety through the site's zoom and pan feature.
In addition to the original documents, Turning Points offers tools such as background essays, reference maps and an online Dictionary of Wisconsin History to help people enjoy and better understand the documents. Everything can be viewed, printed or downloaded for free.
These resources illustrate the 50 topics chosen in an online poll last spring, when schoolchildren, parents, educators, Society members and other interested citizens cast more than 100,000 votes for their favorite events from Wisconsin history. Since then, Historical Society staff have selected, digitized and interpreted materials from Society collections to document those topics. Many relevant materials from other collections, hosted elsewhere on the Web, are also included.
To make the site a useful resource for teachers and students, each of the 50 chosen topics are organized under one of the 10 educational themes for social studies identified by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Examples of pivotal events for which anyone can find documentation on the site include Louis Jolliet's harrowing description of narrowly escaping death at the end of his famed Mississippi River voyage in 1674 and a Ho-Chunk elder's 1850 dictation of his people's creation story.
This initial release of Turning Points is strongest for the period up to and including the Civil War. New documents, ranging from rare "Jesuit Relations" volumes to emigrant guidebooks and early political campaign literature will be added daily until the collection is brought up through the late 20th century.
For a look at the wealth of eyewitness Wisconsin history accounts now available online, visit Turning Points at www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/.
:: Posted November 29, 2004
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