In September 2005, the Ralph W. Steen Library at Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) was awarded a three-year Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant in the National Leadership (NLG)/ Advancing Learning Communities category (http://www.imls.gov). With these funds, SFASU library faculty have initiated the Texas Tides Digital Learning Consortium (http://tides.sfasu.edu). The Texas Tides model is being expanded to serve as the framework for helping build successful learning communities for public schools, colleges and universities, and memory institutions. The impetus for the Texas Tides program is primarily increased access for educators, students and other researchers to Texas related primary resources with emphasis on history, science and multicultural resources. This program has focused on English/Spanish translation of primary historical resources in the original Texas Tides collections, addition of new images and collections (including video), creation of virtual expeditions, creation of additional curriculum materials and formation of partnerships with schools, museums and wildlife preserves in Mexico.
In 2005, Texas Tides joined other cultural heritage institutions in Texas to form the Texas Digital Heritage Initiative (THDI). The THDI is a cooperative project to identify, describe, digitize, preserve, and make broadly accessible special collections of history and culture held by libraries, archives, museums, historical societies, and other institutions in Texas . In this initiative, the Texas Tides program serves as both a regional center for the imaging of East Texas humanities collections and as a model for testing and implementing concepts to help make digital collections useful to K-12 teachers and students. THDI will adapt successful models for use to help solve this problem at the state level. Future THDI projects will include repositories from border communities and relevant Mexican collections; Tides models will likely be beneficial to these state efforts.
In June 2005, in response to the IMLS grant, the library at SFASU formed a Digital Projects department. The Texas Tides project gained administrative support and a staff of three librarians, one technical specialist, one administrative assistant and a staff of 13 student workers. The Texas Tides project transitioned from a project to a program with University administrative support.
Information about the Texas Tides program has been added to the IMLS Digital Collections and Content (DCC) project. The DCC project contains descriptions of digital resources developed by IMLS grantees. The overriding purpose of this project is to help make National Leadership Grant projects more visible and useable.
Focus groups and workshops illuminated Texas teachers’ need for culturally-sensitive teaching tools. While teachers involved with the project acknowledge the value of translated materials on the website, they have expressed a need for guidance in making those materials relevant and engaging to students whose cultural background is different from their own (primarily Hispanic students). In addition, they have discussed the importance of instilling cultural awareness and appreciation in their students’, regardless of background, as a means of encouraging their social and civic growth. Luckily, a new partnership with a school in Mexico City allowed project staff to include a Mexican teacher in the current grant; she has served as a cultural mentor to Texas teachers and demonstrated the value of such international exchange to K-12 educators.
New Mexican partnerships also allowed project staff to pilot teacher enrichment activities; elementary school teachers accompanied staff on several trips to Mexico to explore new partnerships and gather video and photographs of Mexican cultural events and natural history. Teachers involved with these trips reported a renewed sense of excitement about their jobs and the subject matter that they teach. Interestingly, their students’ enthusiasm matched or exceeded their own, indicating a twofold benefit to such experiences.
Program growth is also occurring as a result of the inclusion of the Texas Tides program as a valuable resource for other grant applications. The Texas Tides program is part of the pending Teaching American History grant (Dr. Jennifer Beisel SFA History department –lead applicant) and a Preserve American Grant (Brian Bray Historic Sites Manager for the City of Nacogdoches –lead applicant). Both grants draw on the model the Texas Tides program has developed for building successful learning communities for public schools, colleges and universities, and memory institutions. Program work with the K-12 community is of particular importance to these projects.
In January 2006, the Texas Tides Website was selected for inclusion on the EDSITEment Website. Information about EDSITEment from the EDSITEment Website:
EDSITEment: National Endowment for the Humanities
EDSITEment is a partnership forged in Spring 1997 among the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of the Great City Schools, MarcoPolo Foundation and the National Trust for the Humanities.
EDSITEment offers a treasure trove for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies.
All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. They cover a wide range of humanities subjects, from American history to literature, world history and culture, language, art, and archaeology, and have been judged by humanities specialists to be of high intellectual quality. EDSITEment is not intended to represent a complete curriculum in the humanities, nor does it prescribe any specific course of study.