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And with a few clicks on his computer's keyboard, the 80-year-old Connellsville man has helped to chronicle his service in a searchable database that will preserve the information for all time.

Cable recently plugged into the National World War II Memorial's Web site (www.wwiimemorial.com), where he clicked on the old soldiers' registration page. He entered his name, hometown and branch of service. In the space reserved for "activity during WWII," Cable noted simply, "Served with the 5th Army in Italy."

He also remembered a friend and fellow draftee, Robert Burns.

"We were both 18," Cable recalled. "We went to basic training together. We left the States together. Then, in North Africa, we went our separate ways."

Burns' life ended in front of the Catholic monastery known to history as Cassino, a bloody bottleneck in the Allies' rush to wrest control of the Italian peninsula from the Germans. While on duty in Italy, Cable visited Burns' grave.

More than 60 years later, Cable paid a final tribute to Burns by placing his name on the national registry.

Dick Couture, director of data management for the National World War II Memorial, said more than 1.3 million veterans have been listed on the electronic roll call. Couture helps family members and veterans post names and photos on the site that captures a generation inexorably passing from the scene.

The registry is meant for the ages.

It is one way the Internet and electronic digitization, which allows for indexing and searching, are helping to shape the past that we remember.

Educators say online access to primary sources -- letters, diaries, even old newspapers -- is changing the way students conduct research. Professional scholars and amateur family genealogists alike are finding the electronic posting of historical documents and the ability to access specific information quickly to be an indispensable tool.

"My sense is that digitization and online access is a true boon for learning and researching history," said Joseph Corn, who teaches the history of early 20th century technology at Stanford University.

"I think the Internet and digitization, like most technologies, is being used to do what people were doing before it arrived, only more so and somewhat differently."

Bill Simpson, who taught American history at Laurel Highlands High School, in Uniontown, until his retirement this year, said textbook publishers are creating Internet pages to complement, and in some cases deepen, the information contained on the printed page.

Simpson relishes the capacity of Internet-posted information to transform classroom routine and boost interest in what for generations of students was a dull, dry topic.

"Primary sources bring things to life," Simpson said. "I remember we were talking about a plague of locusts in the West in the 1870s. We came across a newspaper item which said the locusts were so thick they stopped a train from operating. Stopped a train! That really brought it home."

Douglas Colcombe, a teacher of world history at Greensburg-Salem High School, said when his students study the French Revolution, he directs them to online indexed editions of the Times of London from the late 1700s. There, they get the contemporary English take on the revolt that cost King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, their heads.

For students accustomed to reading about events secondhand, these first-hand accounts can be eye-popping, Colcombe said. Sometimes, it's too much, he said, referring to sexual slurs directed at Marie Antoinette by the London press.

Colcombe echoed a common complaint among educators: Without sufficient background, students can lose their way.

"Students need to consult secondary sources," Colcombe argued, because they need exposure to the opinion of trained, professional historians.

Colcombe cautions his students to sift through the frequently conflicting claims on the contemporary record.

Primary sources can be as confusing as they are fresh and exciting, he said. Newspapers, being the first draft of history, fall into this category.

HISTORY COMES ALIVE

The Internet can be history with whistles and bells.

The best-selling author/historian Stephen Ambrose founded the D-Day Museum in New Orleans, La., as a sober reflection on the sacrifices of brave men. Four years ago, the museum's Web site went online.

Stacy Peckham, the museum's marketing director, said the Internet version of the museum is designed largely for outreach, as a way to grab a passerby by the lapels and pull him in.

Marketing is just about the sole intent of a screen called "Leave Your Legacy," she said. Here, veterans and others are encouraged to post war-related anecdotes.

In a recent posting, contributor Jeff Rauso submitted several paragraphs about his father, who saw action on the Normandy beaches in 1944. Rauso referred to his father as a "silent hero."

"These are original documents in that they tell stories that have never been told before," Peckham said.

Peckam agreed that no one can verify the accounts rendered on the "Leave Your Legacy" screen. On the other hand, she asked, what percentage of anecdotal information appearing in books is 100 percent correct?

Holly Mayer, an associate professor of history at Duquesne University, cautioned that even highly reputable Web sites, such as those maintained by the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov) and the National Archives (www.nara.gov), need to be scrutinized.

"The user must always beware," Mayer insisted.

She suggested consumers ask the following questions: How well was the document in question digitized? Was "the whole piece done or only part of it, and how clear (and thus usable) is the material?"

"If only part of the document was digitized, was it due to physical reasons (was the document too fragile to be scanned in its entirety), a matter of time and/or space, or an ideological bent (the editor chose only the sources or parts of a source that fit a particular agenda)?

"The digitizer should note why choices or cuts were made," Mayer said in an e-mail, "and the user should keep them in mind so as to take into account possible bias."

IMPRESSIVE COLLECTIONS

There is an impressive array of documents, vintage photographs and historic audio and film resources increasingly available on the Internet.

The National Archives is the official repository of U.S. government documents -- from presidential papers to patent applications. Headquartered in downtown Washington, D.C., it has a general-interest branch in College Park, Md., and additional branches, in the form of presidential libraries, stretching across the country.

It still is necessary to be physically present at one of the locations to see most of the documents held by the National Archives. However, an impressive amount of material is now online, and more is being made available almost daily.

For example, the Zimmerman Telegram sent by the German government to the Mexican government in January 1917, a prelude to the United States' entry into World War I, is available online, beginning with the words "We intend to begin on the first of February unrestricted submarine warfare."

Both the coded original and the uncoded version clandestinely transmitted to Washington and read by President Wilson are available on the site.

"I am very sure that the people of Wisconsin are extremely sorry that they are represented by a person who has as little sense of responsibility as you have," Harry Truman informed Sen. Joseph McCarthy in a 1950 message now online.

"Local time is 8 in the morning" is how Gen. Dwight Eisenhower at Allied headquarters in Great Britain greeted Gen. George C. Marshall at the Pentagon on June 6, 1944, D-Day, via a "top secret ... eyes only" military telegram displayed at on the Web site.

"I have as yet no information concerning the actual landings nor of our progress through beach obstacles," Eisenhower wrote.

The Web site and digital documents of Academia Sinica are described by Duquesne University's Anthony Barbieri-Low as "the premier research institution in Taiwan."

Barbieri-Low, an assistant professor of early Chinese history, said Academia Sinica has digitized all 24 dynastic histories of pre-modern China, amounting to "many millions of words."

"These are now full-text searchable, which allows us to search on a name or a term spanning 2,000 years of written history," Barbieri-Low said.

Meanwhile, the University of Pittsburgh, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Museum of Art have developed the Historic Pittsburgh Web site.

In business since 1998, Historic Pittsburgh has digitized more than 500 historic books, 26 volumes of maps and U.S. census figures for Pittsburgh and Allegheny County from 1850 through 1880.

In addition, Historic Pittsburgh provides a detailed online chronology of Pittsburgh and an archival finding aid for 300 collections. All locations are indexed and searchable.

The book, or full-text, portion of Historic Pittsburgh offers a browsing option along with a key word option. Choosing, for example, "Forbes Field" as a key word, 40 article and book possibilities fill the screen, including "The Challenge of Pittsburgh," published in 1917, and "Pittsburgh, Its Resources and People," by Frank C. Harper, which rolled off the press in 1932.

Another title is a 1910 report by the city's Planning Commission, "Pittsburgh's Main Thoroughfares and the Down Town District." The author is Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed city planner and architect who designed, among other jewels, New York's Central Park.

In the report, Olmsted criticizes the bridges of Pittsburgh, which "compared with other great cities, are rather unusually limited in capacity and lacking in the qualities of impressiveness and beauty."

Historic Pittsburgh also offers thousands of online photographs.

The collection includes the work of Teenie Harris, the African-American photographer who chronicled life in black Pittsburgh in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. An even larger selection of Harris photographs are available online at the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Louise Lippincott, the museum curator, explained the unusual approach she and her colleagues are taking with the Harris photographs.

In addition to the thousands of prints that can be viewed on the museum's Web address (www.cmoa.org), the Carnegie is inviting online users to help identify the people and locations Harris photographed but sometimes failed to name.

"We're getting a pretty good response," Lippincott said. "The most exciting thing is when people recognize individuals."

SPECIALIZED SEARCHES

For nearly a decade, Raymond Washlaski, of Derry Township, has operated a Web site devoted to western Pennsylvania coal mining. The Virtual Museum of Coal Mining (theoldminer.virtualave.net) features hundreds of screens with thousands of coal miners' names, sorted by mine and mining companies.

Hardly a day goes by, Washlaski said, that he doesn't receive a dozen or so e-mail inquiries from relatives trying to track down information on miners from the 19th and early-20th centuries.

Digitization is aiding in the search for the roots of the past. One location nearly synonymous with genealogy is www.ellisisland.org, operated by The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation.

John Jennings resides in California but has family roots in western Pennsylvania. As keeper of the family tree, he maintains a family Web site.

"Gathering data from aunt and uncles was the place to start," said Jennings in an e-mail. "They also had a lot of pictures that I used on my site."

Jennings credits the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Web address for the information he gathered on the first of his relatives to set foot in America.

He learned that Bela Gomori was 38 and married on May 18, 1902, the day he stepped from the passenger liner The Statendam into the bustling streets of New York. Gomori eventually settled in Ross Township, Allegheny County, where he died in 1932.

Jennings called the Ellis Island site "the best of all," because "we could get pictures of the ship, the actual names they came over as and see the names of friends of the family they traveled with."

Jennings also found original documentation at a Mormon Church site, www.familysearch.org.

Census records are a valuable genealogical tool -- "your best bet," said Jennings, who went straight to the source -- the National Archives census records, accessed via www.archives/gov/facilities/index.html.

"Actually," Jennings said," going to the record source in person is the best way, but the online services are getting better."

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