The original purpose of this project was to develop a tutorial with a set of on-line materials to enable juniors majoring in history to use the Web as a way of honing their skills in bibliographic historical research. As a result of rapid changes in technology, especially the proliferation of new and useful Web sites in relevant fields, I revised the focus of the project several times from its inception in 1996. The final project includes sections on how to write a historical research paper authored by Leslie Butler, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Reed from 1997-98 and Marilyn Kierstead, Reed librarian. Happily, this expansion of the project did not increase costs &endash;&endash; in fact, I was able to decrease the overall budget requirement from $20,504 to $12,000.

Though the project is fundamentally complete, materials for the project are still being developed and several other tasks remain to be done. These include editing and making the Web site more interactive, completing all of the exercises and polishing the tutorial. When the Web site and tutorial are finished, they will be used in courses scheduled for 1999-2000.

The original proposal described a bibliographic tutorial to be used in conjunction with the History department's required Junior Seminar, which is offered twice each year. (Several other Reed departments offer similar junior seminars, and I hope that they will ultimately be able to use parts of this project as a model.) These seminars are designed to develop students' research and writing skills in preparation for the year-long, required senior thesis. While junior seminars provide instruction in research methods in particular disciplines, they also include intensive study of texts in that discipline. The History junior seminar combines ten weeks of reading and conference participation with seminars on library research as well as brief lectures and hand-outs on writing. Because so much is demanded of them, students frequently need extra instruction, especially in research techniques.

The main goal of the course is to enable students to successfully plan and execute a thirty-page history research paper over the course of one term. Most instructors ask students to break this task into steps, which are evaluated as they submit an initial research proposal, an annotated bibliography, a first and final draft of the research paper, and a final oral presentation to their classmates. The course also features two seminar sessions on library research techniques, usually conducted by Reed librarian Marilyn Kierstead.

The annotated research bibliography, library research seminars, and final paper are the key elements of the course. Despite their relatively high frequency of library use, Reed juniors vary widely in their actual research and writing skills. Many students have never used guides to research topics and cannot locate hard copies of these in Reed's Hauser library. With the advent of Internet sources, comprehensive data bases and on-line library catalogues, the task of researching has become both easier and more difficult. While many sources appear to be at students' fingertips, they must still gain access to and critically evaluate primary and secondary materials, and do so early in the term in order to have adequate research upon which to base a long paper. For many topics, increased access via the computer means that students can find a bewildering number of sources. Those who already have research skills simply adapt evaluative criteria to these new sources. Increasingly, the challenge of teaching the junior seminar has required faculty to introduce students to research skills in new and old technologies and get them to critically evaluate all of their sources, including those found via the seductive wonders of the Internet.

I initially focused on ways to help students discover and evaluate historical sources available via the Internet. I soon realized that technological innovations encompassed the other components of the course as well. Librarians and archivists increasingly rely on on-line catalogues and descriptions of archival holdings; some libraries and archives (e.g., the Library of Congress) are now making full-text documents available. College instructors regularly use Internet resources to teach writing and give students access to everything from individual instructions to general style manuals. Hence the expansion and modified nature of my final Mellon project.

The first component of the project is a Web site which includes class hand-outs, a glossary of terms, research topics chosen by students in previous junior seminars, and answers to students' most-asked questions about historical research and writing. The second component is a short exercise in how to conduct library research. The latter is designed to supplement (and repeat parts of ) Marilyn Kierstead's Reed library seminar on historical research by asking students to choose the most appropriate source for answering a particular question. Leslie Butler has crafted a guide to historical writing and research that also includes short exercises, for example, on how to structure paragraphs. These Web components are still being edited while additional material is being integrated into the site. All of these materials and exercises ask students to make critical judgments about sources and their use in preparation for their history research papers.

The tutorial has taken shape as a quiz in which students are asked to evaluate eight to ten selected Web sites and evaluate their use according to stated criteria. Students send the answers back to me for my comments. The second part of the tutorial asks each student to identify one new historical Web site and send it to me for evaluation. It is my hope that this will help resolve one of the central problems that has emerged. Those who have research and critical thinking skills simply apply that knowledge to new resources. This is not true of students who are still learning how to evaluate and use sources &endash;&endash; in fact, the greater number and kind of sources available tend to interfere with the development of such skills. The tutorial will provide a way to creatively present the evaluative criteria taught in the rest of the course, while also demonstrating the limitations of on-line research along with its advantages, and the need to combine it with more traditional methods. The tutorial will allow me to get feedback about how well my students understand how to use the Web.

The design of the tutorial also provides me with a manageable way to review new historical sites. In addition to those sites and resources reviewed in professional historical journals, the students' submission of new sites will identify about thirty new sites a year (in responses to the second half of the tutorial) as well as those sites that they ultimately use in their research papers. Though these are modest numbers given the proliferation of sites, it is a reasonable commitment of faculty and student time that will ensure the maintenance of the Web site and tutorial. The permanence of the Junior Seminar in Reed's curriculum &endash;&endash; plus the above named mechanisms &endash;&endash; bode well for the continued utility of the project.

Eventually, I hope that other Reed departments, especially smaller departments that do not have the personnel to offer twice-yearly courses to prepare juniors for the thesis, may be able to adapt the History Junior Seminar Web site and tutorial to their needs. I believe that instructors outside of Reed College will also find the completed project to be useful. While the scope and intensity of Reed's junior seminar is unusual (since few colleges require a senior thesis of all students as a condition for graudation) many colleges and universities that offer methods seminars in history and other disciplines may benefit from this model. In my ongoing research for the Mellon project, I have been astonished to find that despite the proliferation of Web sites that provide access to documents and other materials, those that include evaluative criteria used in the discipline of history are still scarce. Because of this, I believe that this project will indeed have value beyond Reed College.