Working alone or in groups, researchers can now apply 21st-century tools to the study of the past with Crossroads: A Community for Students, Teachers and Scholars. Users at academic institutions can create their own collections of primary documents from online databases, permanently bookmark documents and easily tag, annotate and comment on a vast range of materials. And by enabling researchers to create scholarly communities—whether around the world or within their own institution—Crossroads will facilitate research, encourage debate and contribute to the sharing of information, ideas and discoveries.

Blending the past with the present
Crossroads enhances the value of primary source collections by allowing users to add background and context to books, broadsides, newspaper articles, government publications and related materials. Crossroads can be used for everything from creating and sharing lists and bibliographies to creating customized groupings of available materials on any relevant topic. In addition, Crossroads empowers users to make valuable connections to each other and to primary documents in the study of history, literature, culture and related disciplines.

How does Crossroads work?
Crossroads can be used to meet a variety of research, teaching and collaboration needs in academic settings. Privacy functions allow project creators to keep their work private or to permit viewing and/or editing on a limited or unlimited basis.

For researchers who prefer working alone, Crossroads offers the ability to organize online research materials, to tag and describe documents for easy reference and to permanently bookmark ongoing projects for subsequent use. Scholars can browse Crossroads to find other experts in their field or discover projects similar to their own.

For researchers interested in collaborating with others and sharing knowledge, Crossroads can act as a platform for posting new research findings and sparking scholarly debate.

In support of a course syllabus, teachers can create compilations of specific documents and customize those selections by annotating documents to define unfamiliar words, draw connections to other works or pose discussion questions.