Meeting of Frontiers

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• Learn more about American history, cultural awareness, geography, global education, Russia, and world history.

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Library of Congress’s, Meeting of Frontiers, is a “bilingual, multimedia English-Russian digital library that tells the story of the American exploration and settlement of the West, the parallel exploration and settlement of Siberia and the Russian Far East, and the meeting of the Russian-American frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. It is intended for use in U.S. and Russian schools and libraries and by the general public in both countries.” “The site is designed to operate on three levels. First, it provides an overview of the historical experience of the frontier in Russia and America through six narrative sections: Exploration, Colonization, Development, Alaska, Frontiers and National Identity, and Mutual Perceptions. Each of these sections includes images that illustrate major events and themes, a bibliography with suggestions for further reading, and links to other web sites with related content.Second, within each narrative section there are several modules that present in greater depth themes relevant to that section. These modules contain many more images and additional explanatory text. They highlight both the similarities and the differences in the American and Russian frontier experiences.Third, Meeting of Frontiers contains complete or substantial parts of many collections that have been selected for digitizing because of their relevance to the American West and Siberia and the Russian Far East. Items used to illustrate the narrative sections and the thematic modules are drawn from but represent only a small portion of these collections.Users who are new to the subjects treated in Meeting of Frontiers are advised to follow the narrative text and then explore the collections in depth. Users who already have a general grasp of the subject or who are interested only in a specialized aspect of American or Russian history may want to proceed directly to the collections.”