The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html. Created and maintained by the Library of Congress. Reviewed May-June 2009

Abstract

This astonishingly rich web-based archive captures some of the central issues shaping the American conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Expansive, like its subject, the Web site draws on the voluminous records at the Library of Congress (loc), linking readers to “62 books and pamphlets, 140 Federal statutes and Congressional resolutions, 34 additional legislative documents, excerpts from the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record, 360 Presidential proclamations, 170 prints and photographs, 2 historic manuscripts, and 2 motion pictures.” This multimedia array of primary sources and the accompanying “critical thinking” exercises provide a wide-angle perspective on the federal government's commitment to conservation and what the site editor Jurretta Jordan Heckscher calls the “generative cultural milieu” that nurtured the conservationist ethos. First, some caveats: for all of its range, The Evolution of the Conservation Movement does not include key data in the loc archives. As...