History of AAM
In 1999, Congressman Charles Taylor, North Carolina 11th Congressional District was successful in shepherding through the Congress a first-in-the-nation pilot program to instruct Western North Carolina's school teachers in how to use the resources of the Library of Congress' American Memory Program. The American Memory Program is a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States. Over 7 million of our nation's most important historical documents, photographs, recordings, and movie clips have been included and organized into over 100 collections of digitized materials.
The project includes public, private and charter schools located in Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina that will be on the leading edge of the development of a classroom technology program that will become a national model. Additional public, private, charter and home-based schools, as well as regional universities and community colleges will be added. Congressman Jim DeMint of the South Carolina 4th Congressional District was intimately involved with getting the AAM program extended first to Furman University and also to the University of South Carolina Spartanburg. The project is coordinated through the education departments of Montreat College, Mars Hill College, Western Carolina University, Brevard College, Furman University, and USC Upstate.