Heritage History (electronic library)

Heritage History

Heritage History began as a website featuring the full text of out-of-print history books. At the website, students can still read any of the hundreds of books available. However, many parents want their children to either not read from the computer or not have to be connected to the internet, so Heritage History created CD collections of their books.

Thus far, they offer five collections that each include between 60 and 86 books per CD. Collection titles are:

Young Readers Collection - features stories from both World and U.S. History, biographies, legends, fables and folk tales, adaptations of classic literature (e.g., Stories from the Iliad by Jeanie Lang), historical fiction, and Bible and saint stories. For approximately ages 8-12.

Intermediate Readers Collection - World and U.S. History (including specific books on African and Asian History), legends, historical fiction, science and invention, and Bible and saint stories. For junior high level.

Greek and Roman Collection - Greek and Roman History, historical fiction, mythology, adaptations of classical literature (e.g., Stories from Greek Comedians) military history, and biographies. This collection of books is narrower in focus, but it targets a wider audience range (approximately grades 4-12).

British Collection - the theme uniting this collection is the British Isles and the British empire. It covers English History, British Imperial History, biographies of famous Britains, legends, military history, historical fiction and adaptations of classical works (e.g., Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb).

Mature Readers Collection - The content of this collection is eclectic. It primarily features series of books: Charles Morris Historical Tales (12 volumes), the Abbott's Makers of History (25 volumes), and Frederick Ober's History of American Explorers (8 volumes). In addition, it has a collection of World War I battle stories and histories of the Netherlands, Mexico, and North American Indians. The audience would be high school and above.

For each collection, Heritage History has also scanned in some of the outstanding illustrations separately. You access them separately from the books themselves. Illustrations still show up on the book pages, but students might want a better look at some of the illustrations than is possible in the PDF format. The Greek and Roman Collection and British Collection both include separately scanned map files. These should be especially helpful to print for reference as students read through the books.

Students might read directly from the computer, even though they need not be connected to the internet. However, you might prefer to print the books for reading away from the computer. On the CDs, pages are scanned as two-page spreads and laid out for printing on 8.5" x 11" paper. Pages could be bound at the top or side. The scanning has been done more carefully than I've seen in some other such collections. Pages are straight and the text is clear and easy to read on all the books I pulled up.

When each CD is inserted in the computer, it should run automatically (although it didn't do so on my default Firefox browser and I had to access it through Windows Explorer). The CDs include links to the internet where it will pull up lists of books by genres and "civilizations," descriptions of each book, and recommendations for books for various levels

Heritage History does not present these as complete history courses, but rather as supplements. However, you might well find that coupling reading from one of the CDs with your own assignments might easily form the basis of a complete course, particularly for the elementary grades.

The Heritage History website continues to provide free access to books online as well as the convenience of the CDs. Since the appearance of pages on the CDs differs from that of the books to be read via the internet, free sample pages are available so you can see the difference. Even though web-based books may be accessed at no cost, the CDs are so economical for the number of books included that the cost seems very low for the convenience and extras provided.