INC NEWS - Fw: Duke student interest fuels website on Post-Civil War Durham

[Mike - Hotmail]

Duke Durham Neighborhood PartnershipLast night this Digital Durham website was launched!

It was a great celebration.

If you are interested in learning more about post Civil War Durham and some of the most detailed pictures that have been digitally archived with audio and written records (census data, etc) please take a few minutes to visit this new site.

It's for researches as well as us amateurs!

mike shiflett
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership 
To: mwshiflett at hotmail.com 
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 11:04 AM
Subject: Duke student interest fuels website on Post-Civil War Durham


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www.community.duke.edu

      Site unearths historical gems

       
       


      Published in The Herald Sun, 10/25/06
      BY GREGORY PHILLIPS

      DURHAM -- A new Web site drags post-Civil War Durham into the 21st century for schoolchildren, teachers, college professors and history buffs alike. 

      "I was thinking about this immense audience," said Trudi Abel, scholar-in-residence at the Duke University Department of History and director of the newly revamped Digital Durham Web site. Although some of its new features have been live for a week, the site gets an official public launch Thursday evening at Duke. 

      The site contains more than 1,000 digitized pages of manuscripts, letters, photographs and business records from Durham circa 1872 to 1926, including maps, letters, photographs, printed works and 1880 census data. The materials combine to illuminate Durham's storied history, from the emergence of textile manufacturing and tobacco production to child labor and education. 

      The effort was fueled by undergraduate and master's students at Duke who Abel said uncovered "gems" while digging through records in Duke libraries and elsewhere during research to support their papers. Some of the materials give an idea of what life was like in 1880 for people who didn't write their experiences down, Abel said, such as account ledgers from Atlas M. Rigsbee's general store "that tell us who was buying what." 

      A teacher's corner reference section contains lesson plans tying the material to the state-mandated teaching of local history. Among Abel's aims was to give teachers "authentic source material to study the history of their community, instead of those crusty old textbooks," she said. 

      Abel and her students road-tested the new Web site, as well as an earlier version containing only census data, on Helen McLeod's eighth grade social studies classes at Durham School of the Arts. 

      "Before it was even finished it was impressive," McLeod said. "The whole thing is about connections -- connections to their history. Looking at primary sources makes history come alive." 

      The interactive digital format has helped motivate pupils who had never expressed much interest in history, according to McLeod. 

      "Sometimes a student will see a family name and it would excite them," she said. "Even as a teacher it got me looking at primary sources and how I can use them, they just have so much more meaning for kids." 

      Abel created an embryonic version of the current Web site from 1880 census data in 2001, using two grants totaling $31,500 from Duke's Center for Instructional Technology. The center was founded in 1999 to encourage the use of technology to support learning. 

      Abel and her students digitized 110 pages of microfilm containing census data on the 5,507 people who lived in Durham in 1880 into a searchable online database that showed how people worked, where they lived and whether they were educated. 

      A $50,000 digitization grant from the State Library of North Carolina, plus $25,000 from the dean of Duke's Trinity College, allowed Abel and her cohorts to completely overhaul the site. Some students also created National Public Radio-style audio postcards for the site, mixing interviews and commentary. Senior Theresa Mohin interviewed lifelong Durham resident Gwen Phillips for an entry as part of her work in Abel's history class. 

      While many of her classmates focused on Durham's emergence during the period as a hub of black enterprise, Mohin chose to feature the black female experience, which she found had been especially under-researched. A Durham native who moved to Arizona at 14, Mohin said the interview was enlightening. 

      "As a Duke student I don't have much interaction with the town," she said. "She really filled it out for me." 

      Abel sees the site as an organic endeavor that can continue to grow as undergraduate students researching papers unearth more novel source material on Durham. With piles of Durham's history waiting silently all over town, Abel's hoping for another state grant to help speed the process of making it all available digitally. 

      "You need 20 pairs of eyes to sort through everything," she said. "With some more funds we could do some really exciting work." 

      --- 

      What: Launch of Digital Durham, new local history Web site, www.digitaldurham.duke.edu Where: Von Canon B, Bryan Center, West Campus, Duke University When: 5:30 p.m., Thursday Who: Duke Provost Peter Lange, Vice Provost for Library Affairs Deborah Jakubs 

      © Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is copyrighted by The Durham Herald Company and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.

       




     


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