History Harvesting: A Case Study in Documenting Local History (original) (raw)
Related papers
The History Harvest: An Experiment in Democratizing the Past Through Experiential Learning
International Association for Development of the Information Society, 2013
The History Harvest project (http://historyharvest.unl.edu) is an open, digital archive of historical artifacts gathered from communities across the United States. Each year, The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of History partners with local institutions and community members within a highlighted area to collect, preserve, and share their rich, but often hidden, histories. Advanced undergraduates, working as a team and with the guidance of faculty members and graduate students, "harvest," digitize, and curate the artifacts and stories they collect. The History Harvest project is rooted in the belief that our collective history is more diverse and multi-faceted than most people give credit for and that most of this history is not found in archives, historical societies, museums or libraries, but rather in the stories that ordinary people have to tell from their own experience and in the things-the objects and artifacts-that they keep and collect to tell the story of their lives. The History Harvest, then, affirms the importance of local people, local communities and everyday experience in the broader narrative of American history by providing an innovative opportunity for ordinary people to share their historical artifacts, and their stories, for inclusion in a unique digital archive of what we are calling the "people's history." This new public resource is then available for educators, students and anyone else interested in engaging U.S. history from this more democratic, or grassroots, perspective. This short paper on our workin-progress examines the experiential learning basis for The History Harvest project and its rationale for democratizing history in a digital age.
Review: The History Harvest ed. by University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Public Historian, 2019
The coming of the so-called Information Age has provided scholars in the humanities and social sciences with a variety of significant challenges and opportunities. Indeed, while some have loudly condemned computer-assisted technologies for their destructive impacts upon ‘traditional’ modes of academic research and instruction, many others have embraced their potential for democratizing scholarly institutions, practices, and knowledge. Among academic historians, nobody has had a greater influence over the shaping of this polemic than the late Roy Rosenzweig who in 1994 founded the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University. Utilizing “digital media and computer technology to democratize history,” the RRCHNM supports the development of digital software and platforms which aim to “incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences,” and, perhaps most significantly for technology-oriented public historians, “encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past.” While RRCHNM has sponsored the development of a variety of useful open source technologies, the organization is perhaps most well-known for Zotero, a reference management software, and Omeka, a “web publishing platform for digital collections.” Although many Omeka-supported open access digital archives, exhibits, and collections are well worth exploring, one of the most noteworthy examples of the conjoining of technology with historical preservation and public engagement is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UN-L) public history and “digital learning initiative,” The History Harvest.
2016
During the Fall of 2015, the Kent State University Library worked with the local Kent Historical Society to create a digital archive of oral histories from their collection. Faculty from the library offered services to assist with workflow in digital media production and metadata decisions to the small, non-profit staff, along with the assistance of an intern from the School of Library and Information Science. Since the Kent State shootings on the campus in May of 1970, there has been a divide between the campus and the town, a divide that has been slowly healing for forty-five years. One hope with the project is to continue the healing with a collaborative project focused on regional history (including the town response to the shootings), and lending specialized skill sets to assist with a digital initiatives project. An additional goal of the project is the creation of a metadata template for oral histories and a workflow for transferring audio content, which is available for othe...
Journal of New Librarianship
Libraries have long participated in collecting, preserving, and providing access to materials. The advancement of technology has allowed libraries to expand collection building and preservation by providing access to anyone with an internet connection. Local histories of unique and hidden stories can now be shared with a greater audience, contributing to new national and international understandings of the forces of culture, society, and government. Such is the case with the Downwinders of Utah Archive, a collection of government documents, letters, newspaper articles, and oral histories sharing the devastating effects associated with living downwind from nuclear testing. While these individual items are available to the public, bringing together geospatial visualizations, statistical information, and storytelling creates an unforgettable and engaging learning experience.
Book Review: Creating a Local History Archive at Your Public Library
Reference & User Services Quarterly
Faye Phillips, a well-known consultant and author of the 1995 manual Local History Collections in Libraries (Libraries Unlimited), coalesces her expertise into this readable primer on starting an archive in a public library. This text represents a welcome addition to the growing number of books and articles focused on archives in public libraries published since 2010, when the Public Library Archives/Special Collections Section of the Society of American Archivists was formed.
Georgia Educational Researcher
This article details an experiment in an 11 th and 12 th grade 3-week intensive course, the Science and History of Contagious Disease. The course was an interdisciplinary survey of how diseases are spread along with an examination of social responses. Although both lecture and discussion based, the course revolved primary around a trip in which we led approximately 22 students through archival research in the City of Savannah Municipal Archives on the Yellow Fever epidemics of 1820, 1854, and 1876. The article describes the numerous advantages of archival work, from direct contact with rare and unique primary sources to the frustration students felt struggling with nineteenth-century handwriting. The article also addresses some of the stumbling blocks experienced by students as well as the strategies and prompts used to foster student engagement with direct primary documents that led to a critical assessment of a group of sources and a new appreciation for local history.
Making Medieval History digitally at the University of Lincoln
The ‘Making Digital History’ project at the University of Lincoln involves getting students to produce online resources that teach others about the work they have been doing in the curriculum. It has been assessed across all levels of the curriculum and in different types of module and through collaborative and individual work too. The key aim is to shift students from consumers to active producers/communicators of historical knowledge to audiences beyond academia.
“Save Our History!” Collaborating to Preserve the Past at UMass Boston
2015
Sparked by the 50th anniversary of the founding of the University of Massachusetts Boston in June 1964, University Archives and Special Collections (UASC) staff in the Joseph P. Healey Library collaborated with departments across campus to carry out a wide range of initiatives, all focused on locating, accessioning, preserving, and sharing the physical evidence of the university's history. This poster outlines the various collecting activities, outreach methods, digitization projects, and dogged detective work that resulted in the addition of more than 2,500 linear feet of unique historic materials to the University Archives, as well as a number of well-received public events and exhibitions.