Fathom :: The Source for Online Learning — If you haven’t seen fathom.com you’ve been missing out on some great free online learning courses. Some are pretty esoteric such as those presnted at this link by the British Museum. Better way to spend time than watching TV.

In this seminar, Marjorie Caygill, historian for The British Museum, introduces us to some of the great British collectors of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, whose appetites for acquisition have been of great benefit to the viewing public ever since. Rather than a definitive study of English collecting, or a complete list of collectors whose donations have enriched The British Museum, this seminar provides interesting vignettes on the lives of several collectors, and attempts to address the question, ‘What is a collector?’ What emerges is also a portrait of collecting itself–its passions and eccentricities–as well as the diminishing opportunities in our day for vast accumulation of materials by a single individual.

There is a lot of great material for home schoolers too.