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HIST689 Project Proposal

I am still unable to speak with specificity about my final project because it involves working with other teachers in other disciplines and those meetings are scheduled for next week. However, I do plan to create two projects with a Latin teacher that overlap with history. The first is a project that involves ORBIS and also makes use of several historical primary sources including Diocletian’s Price Edict. This project will be designed with an interdisciplinary focus that includes economics, Latin, and history. The second project involves the use of open-source programs such as Voyant, Knot, and Palladio.

The other group I am working with includes US History teachers (both AP and non-AP), English literature teachers, and AP English language teachers. I also envision designing a project with them that use Voyant, Knot, and Palladio using primary sources that service both disciplines. However, I would also like to create a crowdsourcing project, perhaps using oral interviews uploaded and marked using the University of Kentucky’s OHMS database. The details of this project should emerge more next week.

1. How will digital media and/or digital tools be important to teaching my target audience one of the essential lessons I’ll be focusing on in my project?

All of these projects will involve students as both consumers and producers in terms of digital media and digital tools.

2. What, specifically, about the digital environment will influence what you do and why?

I intend to use the digital environment to give create student-teacher learning whereby there are general outcomes but the mode, manner, and method will be shaped by a process of discovery. I would like to follow both Wineburg and Caldor’s models of empathy and uncoverage. I will also need to make sure that the digital tools used in these projects enhance and enrich the curriculum rather than diminishing or detracting from it.

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OHMS Annotating Oral History

Click on the image to access the OHMS interview file.

For this activity, I uploaded an interview I did recently with the West End Home Foundation’s Executive Director, Dianne Oliver. The WEHF is a non-profit which funds grants for programs that assist senior services related to elder care and support. From 1891 to 2013 the foundation was also residential, but has now shifted solely to indirect services. They are working with the MHC to erect a historical marker at the site of their original “home” which was razed and replaced by a shopping center (sigh).

I was able to upload the OHMS and create metadata. While I have a written transcript and saved it in .txt (as instructed by OHMS), it caused my record to have a fatal error. So I removed the written transcript and the interview shows in OHMS here:

https://ohms.uky.edu/preview/?id=35093

I created an index tag as part of my attempt to annotate. I used the key word “consortium” — which was part of our conversation about the WEHF’s current work with the state of Tennessee and other agencies outside of Middle Tennessee.

Here is another article I found useful, it talks about the experience of UNCG in working with OHMS on a digital oral history project. They have synced and indexed over fifty interviews that are now available with enhanced access through OHMS.

Article: http://www2.archivists.org/sites/all/files/OralHistoryMetadataSynchronizer2.pdf

And here is the project. It really looks and works great:
http://bit.ly/1Q2XbaM

 

 

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Oral History and Public History

Oral history has, in the words of Doug Boyd, “grown as a resource for historical and cultural documentation by both academic and community scholars” (OMHS: Enhancing Access to Oral History for Free). However, public historians, librarians, and archivists are still determining the best and most cost-effective way to publish oral histories online and making them available and navigable to the general public as well as scholars. Boyd’s work with the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the Kentucky Digital Libraries is making great strides in achieving the above goals. This is due in large part with the development of the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), which made its online debut in 2008. The OHMS “inexpensively and efficiently increases access to oral histories by locating precise segments of online audio or video that match a search term entered by a user” (Ibid). The OHMS system is open-source and can be linked to other course management systems and platforms such as Omeka via plug-in. OHMS and how it works is best described in a two-minute video (OHMS Tutorial) that features the following graphic:

The American Folklife Center launched the Occupational Folklore Project (jointly sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services). It engages folklorists, oral historians, librarians, museum professionals, independent scholars, and other researchers according to Nancy Groce and Bertram Lyons. It is an amazing, and amazingly ambitious project that ultimately seeks to engage larger institutions including non-profit organizations, large libraries, and universities. They have divided the project’s online instructions and protocols into two parts: publicly accessible pages on the AFC/LOC website and the custom-designed online catalog IDF template (Interview Data Form). While very specific and detail-oriented, this five-step process might prevent participation because it requires some technical expertise and extensive time beyond just the interview and oral history indexing/transcription itself.

Another project that is managed by the American Folklife Center is the Veterans History Project. While the Occupational Folklore Project is still in the beta-stage, the Veterans History Project has achieved success using a slightly different, less technologically sophisticated but more straightforward model. Those interested in participating or conducting an interview simply request a Veterans History Project Interview Kit. There is also an accompanying 15-minute video tutorial (Veterans History Project). In my opinion, the Veterans History Project protocol and process is more appealing and will attract greater participation from the general public.

Digital technologies have simplified and complicated the practice of oral history. Oral history as part of digital projects is more accessible and user-friendly (for consumers and well as crowdsourcing participants) because of open-source systems and programs such as OHMS. At the same time, incorporating oral history into digital projects adds another layer of technology that must be maintained, updated, and made compatible with the larger project cms or infrastructure. While oral history is not a major focus of Nashville Sites, it could be a consideration down the road. Finding Nashvillians who witnessed a historic event or have family connections to important figures connected to the historical markers could enhance the project. It would also be a way to make the project more attractive and relevant to residents of Nashville (as a target audience).

Works Cited:

Boyd, Doug. “OHMS: Enhancing Access to Oral History for Free.” Oral History Review 40.1 (2013): 95-106. Published on March 20, 2013.

Bertram, Lyons and Nancy Groce. “Designing a National Online Oral History Collecting Initiative.” Oral History Review 40.1 (2013): 54-66. Published March 26, 2013.

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