At the June, 2000 meeting of the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges, Kenneth Kirkpatrick of DePauw University offered the following example of how increased access to primary sources via the web has facilitated student learning.

In my class studying hate groups, such as the KKK, students have long read critiques of these groups, their recruitment tactics, and their illegal activities, but very few students have any first hand experience of the Klan upon which to contextualize these critiques. Likewise, few College libraries bother to include Klan literature among their holdings.

With the emergence of the web, I now assign my students to surf the web sites for the Klan and other similar hate groups. I find that the students emerge with a better appreciation for why many individuals choose to join such groups as well as a deeper understanding of the critiques of their practices.