Using the "106 Americans" and "American Generations" web-based data projects, undergraduates in Prof. Eric Sandweiss's H106 class gain experience using real US government data. They can then compare their own life and family experiences to the "official" data and draw conclusions from this comparison.

One of the main objectives of the class is to help students realize that the H106 class (students and instructors), like any group of Americans, did not come together by accident. Instead, all are in it, in some way, because of decisions made by previous people. From those people, we have inherited the challenge of what Abraham Lincoln, speaking at Gettysburg, called "unfinished work": the work of living freely in a nation comprising many kinds of people with competing interests.

The class employs two related databases. For the first, "106 Americans," students begin with a web-based matrix of prominent Americans from throughout US history. The data includes the dates and places in which these Americans lived as well as their occupations. Into that matrix students then insert individuals of their choosing, showing how ordinary Americans fit in with and compare to the original set of notable Americans. Using the online matrix, students sort the data by occupation, year, place of birth, and place of death. They further investigate individuals on the list by searching for them on an online site of photographic images of pages from the actual manuscript census through 1920.

The second database, "American Generations," uses aggregate data from US censuses to profile four generations of Americans corresponding to the students' parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. In this way, students can see how trends progress and vary through the generations. Students input data about their own families onto this site, then compare the class's demographic profiles to the national information taken from government data. An important element of this project is the integration of the online database into class assignments.

Prof. Eric Sandweiss (History Department), the Government Documents and Geography Collections of IU's Herman B Wells Library, and the Teaching and Learning Technologies Centers collaborated to develop this project.