September 29, 2005
IMLS awards funding for "Firefox Scholar" and "The Object of History"
CHNM is pleased to announce two new awards from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for Firefox Scholar and The Object of History.
The Object of History, a joint project of CHNM and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, will develop a new model for bringing museum objects and expertise to students in remote classrooms and for teaching them how to engage and analyze these artifacts. Through virtual representations and interpretations of iconic objects chosen from the NMAH collection, students will learn about key themes in American history. CHNM plans to develop six interactive web-based object lessons and virtual field trips that provide not only an educational resource for students and teachers nationwide but also provide a cost-effective, innovative, and replicable model for history museums seeking new ways to educate audiences and disseminate collections.
Firefox Scholar, a collaboration with the Virtual Library of Virginia, will create a set of free, open source web browser tools, which will enhance scholars’ access to and use of digital library and museum collections. Firefox Scholar operates within the browser window and allows users to recognize and capture metadata from online objects, collect documents, images, and citations from the web. Firefox Scholar will relieve libraries and museums of the need to build personal collection tools for their users and greatly leverage the substantial investment they have already made in digitizing collection materials. Like the Firefox browser, Firefox Scholar will be open and extensible, allowing others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand on the platform.
September 19, 2005
Public hearing for new CHNM project: "Virginia History Here"
The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University will host a public hearing to consider its planned proposal to the Virginia Deptartment of Transportation's enhancement program for a new project, "Virginia History Here." The project plans to use new mobile communications technologies to improve access to Northern Virginia's rich stock of historical roadside markers. The meeting will be held at George Mason University on October 3rd in Student Union Building I, Room C, from 7pm-9pm.
Please contact Heather Velez with any questions at (703)993-4585.
NEH awards funding for "Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives"
The Center for History and New Media and the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University are excited to announce that we have received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a premier bi-lingual Russian-English interactive web-based exhibit entitled, "Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives."
Drawing on the research of historian Steven Barnes at GMU, this web exhibit will provide an innovative, multifaceted consideration of the human struggle for survival in the Gulag, the brutal and often lethal Soviet system of forced labor concentration camps and internal exile. The Gulag was an inhuman system that consumed millions of lives, and the web exhibit will reveal that stark brutality while engaging the public to think about the diversity of the Gulag experience, the ethical quandaries of survival in extreme situations, and the difficulties entailed in overcoming the legacy of past injustice.
"Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives" will provide visitors with a clear, accessible, and engaging history—accompanied by rich visual, audio, and film resources and grounded in the most recent scholarship.