The theme for the two-day WebWise conference will be “Tradition and Innovation,” as panelists and presenters investigate the use of digital technologies especially in the field of history. Recognizing that history museums, historical societies, and other history-focused institutions are poorly represented in national discussions of digital libraries and museums, WebWise 2012 will make a concerted effort to surface the challenges historical organizations have faced in doing digital work and the under-appreciated contributions they have made in this area. Prior to the conference, CHNM and BPOC will organize a day-long unconference, similar to THATCamp.

“We are pleased to be working with these two national leaders in the field of technology integration into the services of libraries, museums, archives, and living collections,” said IMLS Director Susan Hildreth. “George Mason University and Balboa Park have been at the forefront of some of the very issues that we hope to explore further during our conference.”

Since 2000, the WebWise conference has brought together representatives of museums, libraries, archives, systems science, education, and other fields interested in the future of high-quality online content for inquiry and learning. A signature initiative of IMLS, this annual conference highlights recent research and innovations in digital technology, explores their potential impacts on library and museum services, and promotes effective museum and library practices in the digital environment. It also provides recipients of technology-based grants from the Institute with an opportunity to showcase their exemplary projects.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks, we at CHNM are directing our efforts towards preservation and are collecting once again.

We are re-opening the collecting portal and want to hear how your life has changed since September 11, 2001. By collecting reflections at this commemorative moment, we hope to further the life of the Archive as one that not only includes the most immediate reactions to the attacks, but also shows change over time as individuals reflect at different points in the post-9/11 world.

Simultaneously, a Saving America’s Treasures grant, jointly-administered by the National Park Service and National Endowment for the Humanities, will help pay for our preservation efforts as we transfer the aging collection to the Omeka platform, a more stable and standardized archival system. This is an essential step to making the contents of the Archive more accessible to scholars, students, policy makers, and the general public in the coming years.

Finally, we added a blog to the Archive to update you on our progress and detail some of the work required to transfer a large digital collection using one data model to another system with different one. We also plan to highlight some of the collections and items that have intrigued us as we sort through the Archive.

We invite you to share your reflections and follow our progress as we move forward with preserving the history of September 11.

Cutting edge at its launch nearly ten years ago, the Archive now is showing its age. This award will pay to transfer this groundbreaking digital collection to a stable, standardized, up-to-date archival system. This data transfer is an essential first step in guaranteeing that the world’s largest public collection of digital materials related to the events of September 11, 2001 will be available to scholars, students, policy-makers, and the general public in the coming decades.

Launched in 2001 as an effort to capture the personal experiences, responses, and images produced in the wake of 9/11, staff at CHNM and the American Social History Project (ASHP) at the City University of New York Graduate Center used electronic media to collect, preserve and present the history of those events and the public responses to them. CHNM and ASHP built a simple portal to accept electronic submissions of first-hand accounts, emails and other electronic communications, digital photographs, artwork, and a range of other born-digital materials. Through partnerships with local community groups and national cultural institutions, the archive grew to its current size of more than 150,000 digital objects.

The Save America’s Treasures program is one of the largest and most successful grant programs for the protection of our nation’s endangered and irreplaceable cultural heritage. Grants are awarded for the preservation and/or conservation work on nationally significant intellectual and cultural artifacts and historic structures and sites.

Omeka.net will expand Omeka’s current offerings with a completely web-based service. No server or programming experience required. Similar to services offered by WordPress, the popular open-source blogging software, with the launch of Omeka.net users will be able to sign up for a free hosted Omeka site. Just create a username and password, and your online collection or exhibition is up and running.

This new hosted web service will further the Omeka project’s mission to make collections-based online publishing more accessible to small cultural heritage institutions, individual scholars, enthusiasts, educators, and students.

With Omeka.net, your online exhibit is one click away.

Sign up today.

Cross-posted at http://omeka.net

A survey of the field shows that for many years art museums have been at the forefront of offering their visitors learning experiences that extend beyond traditional exhibit labels. That trend continues as art museums add cell phone tours, podcasts, and platform-specific applications in an effort to capitalize on the commonly-owned portable devices—iPods, MP3 players, Blackberries, cell phones—that visitors already carry in their pockets.

CHNM found that while all genres of museums are very interested in offering content and unique experiences using mobiles, their biggest challenge is working with small budgets and a small staff, limiting their ability to develop content for mobiles.

To address these needs, Mobile for Museums offers recommendations and free, replicable prototypes based on this research on how to economically provide mobile users with positive experiences in and outside a museum.

These prototypes include:

• New plugins for the Omeka http://omeka.org software package allowing institutions to use already-created collections content and re-purpose it with plugins for use inside the gallery, including: Send to Mobile, Bar Codes, and Social Bookmarking.

• Website design optimized for cross-platform mobile browsers that is accessible by a variety of mobile and smart phones, for possible use outside of the gallery.

• A cross-platform application built in PhoneGap that harnesses the functionality native to a mobile device.

These examples are simply proofs of concept, but we hope that by making them and the code available http://code.google.com/p/art-in-the-city/ we will provide the museum community with some fresh possibilities for mobile development.

Finally, the report site includes a dynamic Resources section http://chnm.gmu.edu/labs/mobile-for-museums/resources/, with a Yahoo Pipe of feeds from museum-related websites discussing mobile topics. A public Zotero group offers a growing, annotated bibliography of current resources, and is open for all to join and to contribute other research in the field: http://www.zotero.org/groups/mobile_museums/items.

CHNM encourages collaboration and discussion of our findings and prototypes, through commenting directly on the site. We hope that this research and development will encourage more institutions to share their development and experiments with the greater museum community.

Many Days, Many Lives draws visitors into the Gulag’s history through bilingual exhibits (English and Russian), a rich archive, a series of podcasts, and other resources. Exhibits are presented with a thematic approach that illustrates the diversity of the Gulag experience through original mini-documentaries, images, and the words of individual prisoners. A searchable archive includes archival documents, photographs, paintings, drawings, and oral histories that give visitors the opportunity to explore the subject in much greater depth. Later this summer, Many Days, Many Lives will also feature a virtual visit to the Gulag Museum at Perm 36.

In addition, this site offers a variety of resources related to the study of the Gulag. Episodes in Gulag History is a new podcast series featuring scholars, survivors, public historians, and others in conversation with historian George Mason University historian Steven A. Barnes. Each podcast will be followed by an online conversation in which the featured guest will answer questions from listeners.The inaugural episode features Lynne Viola discussing The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. Other resources include a select bibliography for further reading, and a teaching unit prepared at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies intended for use in middle and high school classrooms.

Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives is the first online exhibition produced by CHNM for general audiences under the Division of Public Projects. Others will follow in the months and years ahead, including a major exhibit in partnership with Mount Vernon on the life of Martha Washington and the women of the Revolutionary generation.