CHNM Essays
Sending Your Courses into the Blogosphere: An Introduction for “Old People”
T. Mills Kelly
This article originally appeared in the August 2006 issue of NewsNet 46/4 (August 2006): 49-52 and is reprinted here with permission.
Not long ago, one of our graduate students at George Mason University gave me some bad news. During a conversation with undergraduates in a class she teaches, a student told her that email was “just a way to stay in touch with old people.” The other students in the room agreed—you know…old people…like professors.
Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web
This book provides a plainspoken and thorough introduction to the web for historians—teachers and students, archivists and museum curators, professors as well as amateur enthusiasts—who wish to produce online historical work, or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started in this important new medium. It begins with an overview of the different genres of history websites, surveying a range of digital history work that has been created since the beginning of the web. The book then takes the reader step-by-step through planning a project, understanding the technologies involved and how to choose the appropriate ones, designing a site that is both easy-to-use and scholarly, digitizing materials in a way that makes them web-friendly while preserving their historical integrity, and how to reach and respond to an intended audience effectively. It also explores the repercussions of copyright law and fair use for scholars in a digital age, and examines more cutting-edge web techniques involving interactivity, such as sites that use the medium to solicit and collect historical artifacts. Finally, the book provides basic guidance on insuring that the digital history the reader creates will not disappear in a few years.
On this website, we present a free online version of the text.
Omeka is a simple and flexible system for organizations, cultural institutions, and individuals to manage and publish items, collections, and exhibits on the web. Omeka is free and open source. Learn more.
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) is partnering with the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) to develop Omeka as a next-generation web publishing platform for museums, historical societies, scholars, collectors, and educators.
Omeka is currently in private beta. If you are interested in getting on the invitation list to download and test Omeka, please email us and we will notify you when there are additional spaces for this testing period.