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Rationale
Currently, many of the primary sources planned for the site are not available over the web. More popular figures, such as Marco Polo, Matteo Ricci, and a few Jesuit sources are available, but only “snippets” of other accounts, texts, and writings can be found. Since many of these texts are available through the library and are old enough to not pose serious copyright issues, this is somewhat surprising. Scanning the texts and using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, or typing up the texts in some cases, and storing them in a database for presentation over the web would make these texts accessible to more people (especially for those without easy access to interlibrary loan). Also, most secondary sources used by teachers for analysis of these primary sources (such as course readers) are expensive and sometimes difficult to acquire. They often involve paying a substantial amount of money to a textbook publisher to mail the materials.6 This site will be free to use and will not advertise materials that must be ordered and mailed to the user.
Another new online resource will be the lesson plan section. These plans will directly tie the newly accessible sources to history standards that teachers are expected to meet. Most course textbooks cover “China and the West” in one chapter or only at specific time periods without comparing and contrasting what people wrote over time, or exploring many embedded issues any further.7 Teachers will be able to use the interactive timeline on the site to quickly navigate centuries of materials and cover comparative analysis without having to conduct extensive research of their own to compile the materials.
The site will fill a large gap for teachers and professors looking for accessible materials to discuss the complicated cross-cultural exchanges that occurred prior to the twentieth century.8 None of the current websites available accomplishes this task, and none attempts any significant comparative analysis. Though the current National History Standards call for discussion of cross-cultural issues, many sites lack the breadth and depth required for understanding these issues and they all fail to look at multiple perspectives. A thorough discussion of Marco Polo, for example, does not address how his views might contrast those of another European visitor a century later, when a different Chinese dynasty was in power.
Over time, either with more funding, more interest, or both, it may become necessary to add new entries both to the lesson plans and the primary sources. This will be very easy since the site will house both of these items in a database format. Unlike a publication, which would require a significant amount of money to put out a new edition, a database is relatively easy and very cheap to edit. A database can also hold a large amount of data and offer quick methods for searching by specific keywords or on fields. This allows for multiple sorts of the information and a multi-linear way through the materials.
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6 Asia for Educators posts prices of several resources they sell - see for example http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/china_history1_e.htm
7 A good example of this type of textbook: Murphey, Rhoads. East Asia: A New History (New York: Longman, 1997).
8 Discussion of how digitizing these sources would be beneficial for teachers came from an interview with Michael Chang, Professor of Chinese history at George Mason University, October 31, 2003.