ed difficulties with both content and technology. Others did not. Judging from student evaluations, the experience was positive for most students and spectacular for some. For an example of one of the better student Web projects, click on The Space Race. See also the evaluation of the project by its student Webmeister, Team Three (Space Race) Evaluation. Summary and Conclusion What are we to make of all of this? To be sure, what is available on the Web is but a fraction of what constitutes the body of evidence and scholarship on the Cold War. For Cold War scholars, as for scholars in general, the Web is not likely to replace libraries and archives soon, if ever. Technology is no substitute for mastery of content or commitment to good teaching; nor will it turn uncommitted students into good learners. Indeed, the Web may encourage poor intellectual habits: the failure to exercise critical judgment in evaluating Web based sources for one; or plagiarism -- all too easy given the point and click character of the Web-- for another. The Web can also be a chaotic and confusing place: at times seemingly ephemeral, as sites wink in and out of existence, sometimes difficult to navigate, and filled with trivia and worse. Many of the sites noted above are heavily freighted with special pleading for some of the major institutional actors in the Cold War; and not a few are suffused with the triumphalism that characterizes our current, post Cold War moment. Historians and their students will have to work especially hard to sustain the critical approach that such materials require. Moreover, as traditionalists will immediately recognize (and deplore), the boundaries that once separated students from scholars and amateurs from professionals have eroded, as have many of the traditional markers of intellectual quality and integrity. In such an environment, historians will find it increasingly difficult to create and sustain authoritative narratives, as they once at least imagined they could do within the seemingly self-contained world of scholarly publication. In short, the world will never quite be the same. The challenge for all, including those who study the Cold War, is how to sculpt order, meaning and community from the ceaseless buzz and flow of the Web. Happily, many of the sites noted here not only provide unprecedented access to an extraordinary range of resources, but also help define (and link) an emerging and potentially vibrant community of scholars, students and ordinary citizens.
Un-Tangling the Web of Cold War Studies; or,
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