Links for the May 28, 2009 presentation, Digital History, at UMW Alumni College

What is “Digital History”?

• Online scholarly article with all the sources included
  • Ed Ayers & Will Thomas – http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/AHR/
• GIS/imaging and historical maps
  • CW in 4 minutes – http://www.idkwtf.com/videos/latest-videos/the-civil-war-in-four-minutes
  • Frederick Douglass’s escape in Google Earth – [Must have the free software on your computer to work — LINK]
    • Frederick Douglass’s Escape.kmz
  • Historian Mills Kelly’s writings on using Google Earth historically.
    • http://edwired.org/?p=164
    • http://edwired.org/?p=170
• Archival collections of the recent past
  • Hurricane Digital Memory Bank – Katrina & Rita
    • http://hurricanearchive.org/
• 3-D rendering
  • Rome Reborn – Collaboration of UVA and UCLA
    • http://www.romereborn.virginia.edu/
  • 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition – “White City”
    • http://www.ust.ucla.edu/ustweb/Projects/columbian_expo.htm
• Data-mining/Text mining
  • Tag Clouds
    • Wordle
      • My notes for the history methods class as a tag cloud – http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/39965/299
      • Gettysburg Address – http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/886521/G-burg_Address
    • Key American Studies texts changing over time – http://tagline.davelester.org/
  • MONK
    • http://monkproject.org/ – “to discover and analyze patterns in the texts [humanities scholars] study.”

University of Mary Washington Digital History

• UMW Digital image archives – http://archive.umw.edu:8080/vital/access/manager/Index
  • Examples
    • Aerial view from 1965 – http://archive.umw.edu:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/umw:616
    • Monroe Hall Swimming pool – http://archive.umw.edu:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/umw:376
  • Centennial blog
    • http://centennial.umwblogs.org/
  • UMW Centennial site at umw.edu
    • http://www.umw.edu/centennial/default.php

• UMWblogs – http://umwblogs.org

• History & American Studies Department work in blogs
  • 1) To extend class discussion beyond the classroom
    • Jess Rigelhaupt’s Politics and Culture of the 1960s – as class reading reactions
    • US History in Film
      • Scroll down to see post-class discussion of Pocahontas
    • Sue Fernsebner’s Freshman Seminar: Toys as History – blog as course management tool
  • 2) As Museum
    • Krystyn Moon’s 19^th-Century Museum – http://amst312.umwblogs.org/
  • 3) As resource guide
    • Steve Harris’s Hist 485: Researching Russian and Soviet Resources

• Other departments’ history-related blog projects
  • Marie McCallister’s 18th-Century Audio Blog
    • Phillis Wheatley poem, read by Prof. Mara Scanlon – http://ecaudio.umwblogs.org/wheatley-on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america-read-by-mara-scanlon/
  • Marjorie Och’s Online Venice Exhibit – http://venice.umwblogs.org/

• My students’ digital history work
  • Digital History Class – http://digitalhistory.umwblogs.org/
    • Background
      • Valley of the Shadow at UVA – http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/
  • Projects
    • Historical Markers – http://fredmarkers.umwblogs.org/
    • James Monroe Papers Project – http://monroepapers.umwblogs.org/
    • Farmer Project – http://jamesfarmer.umwblogs.org/
      • Introductory Farmer video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YJXFKjzHLg
    • Alumni Project – http://projects.umwhistory.org/alumni/

• History of Tech Museum Exhibit – http://historyoftech.umwblogs.org/

What can you do?

• Transcribe a letter and make it available.
  • e.g., http://nowviskie.org/2009/hidden-history/
• Individual approaches you can take:
  • Scanning old photos or sharing new digital ones
  • Flickr.com, Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/)
    • My pictures on flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/52355157@N00/
• Blogs as publishing platforms
  • WordPress.com
    • Manuals for UMWblogs – http://umwblogs.org/support/
  • Blogger.com
  • Typepad.com (Not free)

UMW’s explorations in digital humanities and academic technologies have been featured in:

• EDUCAUSE’s “7 Things You Should Know About…” series
• May/June 2009 EDUCAUSE Review article on cutting-edge solutions to problems of 21st-century teaching and learning
• 2006 InfoWorld article about UMW’s use of low-cost, high-impact technology in teaching and learning
• Horizon Report (featuring cutting-edge technology people in Higher Education need to be aware of in the next 1-5 years) – UMW cited in paragraph 16
• Whitman 2.0 — NEH grant with three other schools to explore place in Walt Whitman’s writings. [See Chronicle of Higher Education article as well.]

Also UMW people cited by numerous sources on a variety of digital topics: as leading economics bloggers; as experts in the semantic web and information analysis (see p. 14).