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Sources on the Web
Digitising policies implemented in the last years by public and private institutions focus on different type of documents, books, and objects of the historical heritage of different societies. These policies allow, on the one hand, the historical preservation, and on the other, the free availability of consultation in internet. The digitising of school textbooks is also affected by these policies and that is why a large number of manuals are available in the web to be consulted, with freedom and costless by students, teachers, researchers, and all those interested in such school heritage. Digitising policies implemented in the last years by public and private institutions focus on different type of documents, books, and objects of the historical heritage of different societies. These policies allow, on the one hand, the historical preservation, and on the other, the free availability of consultation in internet. The digitising of school textbooks is also affected by these policies and that is why a large number of manuals are available in the web to be consulted, with freedom and costless by students, teachers, researchers, and all those interested in such school heritage. In some cases, finding a particular school book is easy if we know the institution where it is being kept. The Virtual Library of the Bibliographic Heritage (http://bvpb.mcu.es/es/estaticos/contenido.cmd?pagina=estaticos/presentacion) of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, for example, allows for an “Advanced search” which in the field “Library”, gives the possibility of choosing amongst a number of libraries, including the library of a Secondary Education Institute. Having said this, it is very important to read the bibliographical record of the book to confirm that it is a school textbook, because even if their source is a school library, they may not be school textbooks. Other digital libraries are exclusively on line libraries and servers. Such is the case of Google books (http://books.google.es/) and Wikipedia (http://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page). Digital libraries specialized in school textbooks usually contain specific school textbooks catalogues organized by their own specific fields: discipline or subject, school level, etc. These libraries are normally part of a broader content inside a web page or portal which offers other sources related to school culture and useful for the historical research on school textbooks: bibliographic catalogues, bibliography on the research carried out on the subject, and other related web pages which share the field of knowledge. Some of these portal and web pages or sites are called school museums. Here, we provide two clear examples of these portals. Firstly, the portal of the MANES Research Centre (http://www.uned.es/manesvirtual/portalmanes.html) offers a wide variety of sections related to school textbooks: a data base, a virtual library with many school books which have been partially or completely digitised, and bibliography. Secondly, the portal of the PATRE-MANES WEB (http://www.uned.es/manesvirtual/bibpatremanes.html) contains a virtual library of European and Latin-American schoolbooks where the texts which have been used as primary sources are displayed as well as the research projects which have been carried out with them. At this point, there is a large variety of different websites which contain collections of digitalised school textbooks. |
