View of the Alhambra palace, Grenada, Spain. Photo courtesy Michelle Hidalgo.

Short introduction

Earlier in the course we looked at online historical resources, such as library databases. (Databases that are often gated.) In this unit we'll examine some tools that can be used to create online, archival databases. This is something that is pretty easy to do now, using the Omeka software. See Amy Bertsch's Charles M. Robinson's Schoolhouses in Northern Virginia.

What you must do in this unit

• Read Rosenzweig's Collecting History Online.
• Read this week's note. In my note I list just a few digital archive sources.
• Watch the video for this unit of the course on Digital Online Archives.
• Look at the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank and the Omeka software project site.
• Please have a look at the Northern Virginia Digital History Archive, my experimental, Omeka-based, online archival project. Try posting some images to the archive using the contribute feature (sometimes it is a bit slow). You can also look at my other Omeka projects.
• Check out the Omeka.net hosting service (if you are interested).

SUBMIT

• Submit the Pinterest Board assignment (100 points). Since you've already completed the Online Exhibit assignment, I suggest that you do this assignment on the same topic.
• Post the URL, title and short description of your Pinterest Board assignment on the discussion board in Canvas.

Extra credit options

• Please suggest any materials relevant to this unit of the course.

Unit learning objectives

• Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to (1) explain the use of a digital tool to create an online collection of historical materials and (2) show how such a tool can use social media to expand the gathering of related materials.