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Darwin is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with the Museum of Science, Boston; The Field Museum, Chicago; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada; and the Natural History Museum, London, England. The American Museum of Natural History gratefully acknowledges The Howard Phipps Foundation for its leadership support. Significant support for Darwin has also been provided by Chris and Sharon Davis, Bill and Leslie Miller, the Austin Hearst Foundation, Jack and Susan Rudin, and Rosalind P. Walter. Additional funding provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Dr. Linda K. Jacobs, and The New York Community Trust—Wallace Special Projects Fund.

On a Sunday morning in November, six students studying Arabicare crowded around a television set in the Paul and Edith Cooper International Learning Center (ILC), waiting for a video conference with students in Saudi Arabia to begin. The conference, which was organized by Barbara Sawhill, director of the ILC, and Wafa Hameedi, director of technology at Effat College, is just one example of the way faculty members are using technology to revolutionize the teaching of foreign languages at Oberlin. “This is just one example of how technology can create bridges between schools, cultures, countries,and languages,” Sawhill says. “It is extremely difficult for an American to travel Saudi Arabia, but technology can take us there – and once we are connected, we are able to experience an entirely different world.” Sawhill has also started using Skype, a free, voice-over IP tool that makes computer-to-computer long-distance “telephone calls,” as a way to bring additional native speakers to the students. She recently organized a conference call between Buthaina Al-Othman, a native speaker of Arabic and a professor of English as a Second Language (ESL) at Kuwait University, and the Oberlin students who are studying Arabic with Assistant Professor of French Ali Yedes, also a native speaker of Arabic.

This report will be useful to anyone interested in the current state of online American literature resources. Its purpose is twofold: to offer a sampling of the types of digital resources currently available or under development in support of American literature; and to identify the prevailing concerns of specialists in the field as expressed during interviews conducted between July 2004 and May 2005. Part two of the report consolidates the results of these interviews with an exploration of resources currently available. Part three examines six categories of digital work in progress: (1) quality-controlled subject gateways, (2) author studies, (3) public domain e-book collections and alternative publishing models, (4) proprietary reference resources and full-text primary source collections, (5) collections by design, and (6) teaching applications. This survey is informed by a selective review of the recent literature. Daphnée Rentfrow assisted in writing and editing the report. This 176 page report is also available from purchase for $30 from CLIR or the DLF. It is freely available in html or pdf formats from their web sites. This publication was deposited with permission of the publisher who holds copyright (Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources Washington, DC.).