I didn’t propose a session but did email Cathy about frustration with lack of professional development opportunities and problem of keeping up with the field. Turns out I wasn’t alone since Kirsten Delegard expressed the same frustrations (and she actually has a real life digital history project called Historyapolis). I also got a lot of good ideas from Elizabeth Belanger who incorporates digital projects into Am study courses (e.g. History Engine, dime novels, Ragged Dick walking tour). She has students engage in reflective writing as they build the project. Others have reflective posts at certain benchmarks. Pointed out that so-called digital natives are consumers not producers. Need to teach them digital literacy, reflect on why they make choices in design and content.

Anne Wisnant demonstrated her Unbuilt Blue Ridge Parkway website. Other tools that were mentioned included History Pin.

As always, I am always looking to do a withdrawal rather than an addition to the group knowledge bank. I have seen lots of examples of crowd transcription projects but would like to know more about how to design and fund such a a project. I have a group of nineteenth century police records from Minneapolis–Bertillon records–that attempt to classify and identify criminals in the city. This was a form of police identification used before fingerprinting. These could reveal so much about life in the city during the last quarter of the nineteenth century but would need to be transcribed and tagged in such a way that they could be sorted and mapped.

To sum up, I guess that I am interested in hearing more about how to approach the kind of online transcription projects being done by big institutions like the NYPL and the Smithsonian. And whether these are feasible for smaller institutions that do not have massive in house tech resources?

I’m interested in

1. Digital tools for the undergraduate public history/digital humanities classroom.  Tools that are low/no cost, don’t require tons of training and can be used in a semester long course.
2. For my own work, I’m also very interested in digital mapping tools.  I’ve done a few things with Google Earth but I’m looking to acquire more skills and get a better understanding of what is currently being done.

I am coming to the conference (and THATCamp) this year with Ryan Noble to promote the Visual History Summer Institute at Georgia Southern University. This is a free, 11-day, intensive documentary film training institute for historians. I first formally proposed doing this at THATCamp in Pensacola and found considerable interest. Ryan and I would love an opportunity to discuss the VHSI and the importance of historian/filmmaker collaborations in creating educational media.

I’d love to discuss developing digital tools and/or strategies for sharing oral histories in public dialogue programs.  I do a lot of these programs, and it’s always a challenge to select and edit the clips, transcribe them, and incorporate them into a PowerPoint presentation.  I’d love to streamline the process and improve the ease of sharing the recordings.  I’d be happy to go into more detail about the dialogue programs and my current process if you think that would be helpful.

Half the time, all the fun! THATCamp NCPH is back for the fourth year, starting off the conference with a Wednesday afternoon "unconference" that will bring together people from around the digital humanities. Not just for techno-geeks — past attendees have included people with a very wide range of skills, experiences, and interests. Participants work on projects, solve problems, and share ideas in an afternoon-long learning laboratory. 

Open to graduate students, scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, developers and programmers, administrators, funders from the nonprofit and for-profit sector, and anyone with an interest in these fields, the workshop emphasizes collegial work aimed at strengthening skills and projects directly applicable in participants' own institutions and programs.