The Virtual Past

Click here to see screenshots of the final project or click on the link under “pages” to your right. To browse through the actual website click on the link below. 

This semester I worked with Linda Neylon to develop a collecting website entitled Collecting the Past: Remembrances of the AU History Department. In the beginning, our intention was to develop a test collecting site on American University as a whole—and after listening to various advisors decided it would be better to just focus on the History Department. I think it ended up to be a good choice-partially because it narrowed our focus, and increased the chances that we would get clear and coherent responses. This project obviously required us to do research in the actual documentation of the History Department. Our sources included Bender library, and also the university archives where we gained access to course catalogs and other paperwork related to the department. Much like a history paper—research was imperative not only to seeing what visual media was available (in terms of graphics) but also to see what sort of approach we would take to the site as a whole. In the end our purpose of this site was to collect data so that at some point a history of the department could actually be produced.

In developing this project, the new media was extensively helpful. Not only did we learn about creating a survey that serves as a gateway, but we were also able to able to e-mail out the URL and get some really great responses (though we were only able to advertise to graduate students and professors for the trial period). The benefits of working with digital media for a project like this are that it allows for great access by a larger number of people. At the same time though, as we discussed in class, it was imperative to be as clear as possible in the minimal amount of text—a challenge that really only existed in our history section. In order to create this site, we took advantage of tools like CHNM’s survey builder, Dreamweaver and Photoshop, while at the same time getting images from American University’s digital archives.
There are a few things that I would probably change if I were to have unlimited resources:

1) Our stated purpose was to gain sources for the creation of an AU history of the history department—on some to level develop an institutional history. Of the responses we have gained, many of these memories are linked directly to the last 30 years, and some answer our questions as if the future “researcher” will automatically know what the context of the memory is. Obviously, much like oral history that often happens, and so I would hope that we could revamp and revise the survey to urge individuals to get more contextual information.

2) This past semester I took a course on visual culture—so if there was more time I would have liked to have integrated that knowledge into the images we used on the front page of the site as well as in the top toolbar. In doing so I would hope to integrate that into a larger discussion about the place of the Department in Washington DC.

3) Also, in the same vein, I would have liked to have a place where digitized documents could have been uploaded—possibly and extension of the images page. As you can see that is the least developed of the site and I think more could have been done there.

4) And lastly, on an aesthetic level, probably tweak the colors some more—there are places where the red doesn’t work quite as well with the eye as we initially thought it would.

In the end though, I believe that this has become a successful endeavor, in that despite its possible short-term existence it has become a vehicle for individuals in the department to remember particular aspects of their academic careers. The shared memories are insights not only into individual professors, but also into the social interaction between professors and students.