The Ohio Historical Society, in collaboration with the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at the Cleveland State University Department of History, recently launched a website, www.ohiocivilwar150.org, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. The website serves as a hub for Ohio communities to promote their commemorative events and share their knowledge of Civil War topics. We have a timeline, calendar, discussion forum, teaching resources and we are continuing to add collections items and Omeka exhibits.
One of the challenges we’ve run into is increasing public discussions and comments on our site. We also want to make the website a platform for new ideas and research by continually garnering public scholarship in the form of short essays and articles. I’m glad to see that people will be sharing ideas about working with local communities and/or students to produce digital projects.
I look forward to learning more about current digital humanities projects and discussing ways to increase participation and collaboration.
Hi Kristina,
It sounds like our ideas have similar veins of participation. On a first read, I wonder whether the outreach for adding to the website is all virtual. That is, would going to particular communities in person, particularly to folks there with interests in local history, serve as a way to get more people involved? Especially folks who may not be seasoned in submitting information online. That leverage is just one of many possibilities, but I thought about it right away. Look forward to hearing more about the project!