The LOUISiana Digital Library selected as a top online resource

In June, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced that it had selected the LOUISiana Digital Library for inclusion on EDSITEment as one of the best online resources for education in the humanities.

Built on OCLC's CONTENTdm^® Digital Collection Management Software, the LOUISiana Digital Library is an online library of over 84,000 digital materials about Louisiana's history, culture, places and people. Its purpose is to make unique historical treasures from Louisiana's archives, libraries, museums and other repositories in the state electronically accessible to Louisiana residents and to students, researchers and the general public in other states and countries.

EDSITEment, with NEH and the Verizon Foundation's Thinkfinity as its partners, serves as a gateway to the highest quality humanities-related educational content on the Internet. It provides a central resource bank for teachers, parents and students across the country seeking excellent, humanities sites from among the thousands of educational sites now available on the Internet. EDSITEment also provides lesson plans, a special section for educators, a monthly calendar, "This Month's Feature," the "NEH Spotlight" and a search engine. EDSITEment typically gets more than 400,000 visitors per month.

The LOUISiana Digital Library was nominated for inclusion in the EDSITEment project in response to an open call for nominations posted on the NEH Web site and on several humanities listservs. The site was then reviewed by a Peer Review panel composed of teachers and leaders in education and non-profit organizations. Panelists determined that the LOUISiana Digital Library met the EDSITEment criteria for intellectual quality, content, design and most importantly, classroom impact.

(2008 07 21)