The APH offers a structured program with several required courses that form a solid base of both professional and digital competencies. Introduction to Archives and Introduction to Public History survey theoretical and methodological trends within each profession. Both courses have now been restructured to incorporate more content relating to digitization and new media. Students in the Introduction to Archives class, for example, are required to study and report on such projects as the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/), the Archives of American Art (http://www.aaa.
si.edu/) at the Smithsonian Institution’s approach to digital collections, the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/) and the Digital Lives Research Project in the United Kingdom (http://www.bl.uk/
digital-lives/). They also receive exposure to such content management systems as the Archivists Toolkit (http://www.archiviststoolkit.org/) and Archon (http://www.archon.org/), study contemporary data structure and data content standards, consider remote reference and the use of social media in reconfiguring finding aids and gain some understanding of the ways in which archivists address born digital documentation. Students who enroll in the Introduction to Public History course systematically analyze and critique such projects as the September 11 Digital Archive (http://www.911digitalarchive.org/) and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (http://www.hurricanearchive.org/). They also learn about the ways in which historians have attempted to connect with local audiences through such collaborative ventures as the Historical Society of Philadelphia’s
3. Teaching Digital Skills in an Archives and Public History Curriculum 85 PhilaPlace (http://www.philaplace.org/) and the Maine Historical Society’s Maine Memory Network (http://www.mainememory.net/). Finally, they explore historians’ efforts to create online educational tools using primary sources for secondary schools and college courses.
Introductory courses, however, can only begin to suggest the transformative impact of digital technologies on historical practice.
They also tend to rely more on describing and critiquing projects than examining the challenges inherent in creating digital projects. It therefore seemed necessary to supplement these introductions with an additional course devoted solely to digital practice. We created a new required course, Creating Digital History (http://www.aphdigital.org/courses/
creating-digital-history/), which provides students with a basic grounding in the technological skills needed to conduct historical research and present the results of that research online. It addresses topics such as intellectual property, metadata, digitization and online exhibit curation.
Wikis, collection and exhibit management software, maps and geolocation, timelines, and blogs have been incorporated into the class.8 Creating Digital History has been taught twice now, in 2009 and 2010. In 2009 the course was team-taught by French and Wosh, and students created individual digital archives and exhibits based on their research interests.9 Though this worked well for some students, it proved a frustrating exercise for others. Some encountered a scarcity of sources, others found it impossible to negotiate complex intellectual property issues in a single semester, and many of the projects failed to take full advantage of the collaborative possibilities involving public history and digital humanities work. In 2009, students purchased their own server space to house their work, but after completing the course many did not maintain these sites.
In 2010 the course was taught by Cathy Moran Hajo, who decided to focus the class work on a single unifying theme, that of Greenwich Village
8 In the 2009 offering, students created Omeka archives and exhibits on self-selected topics and blogged about digital history (http://www.aphdigital.org/classes/
G572033F09/). Students in 2010 blogged about Greenwich Village research (http://
greenwichvillagehistory.wordpress.com/).
9 For some of the student’s Omeka installations, see Samantha Gibson, “Double Consciousness in the Early Republic: Free Blacks in Philadelphia,” http://www.
samanthagibson.net/Project/; John Bence, “Major Battles of the Mexican War,” http://
www.johndbence.org/; Juliana Monjeau, “The Kosher Meat Boycott of 1902,” http://
www.somonjeau.net/project/exhibits/show/koshermeatboycott; and Brigid Harmon,
“Affordable Eternity: The Lutheran Cemetery of Middle Village,” http://www.
brigidharmon.com/lutherancemetery/.
86 Digital Humanities Pedagogy
history.10 Instead of building fifteen or twenty individual archives, the class produced one digital archive of almost 500 items and sixteen exhibits, the Greenwich Village History Digital Archive (http://www.aphdigital.org/
GVH/), mounted on the APH server. Future classes will contribute to this archive, which will allow discussions of issues arising from maintaining a collaborative archive, insuring quality, and consistent metadata. Hajo met with and established working relationships with archivists at repositories and with local history groups, such as the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the New York Public Library Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, the Tamiment Library, the Fales Rare Book Library, and the New York University Archives. Repositories allowed students to digitize appropriate material from their collections without charge, which eliminated many of the practical difficulties in obtaining digital objects to include in the archive.
Another new required course, Approaches to Public History (http://
www.aphdigital.org/courses/approaches-to-public-history/), was created for students in the Public History concentration. Building on the Introduction to Public History course, it focuses on the methodologies that public historians use in order to communicate and to collaborate with various publics. It includes segments on educational programming, oral history, documentary film and video production, and digital history. Each of these methodologies has been transformed profoundly by digital technology and introducing these topics into the course work has enriched the student experience. Ellen Noonan, who currently teaches the class, has extensive experience with the American Social History Project (http://ashp.cuny.
edu/) and has worked on collaborative projects with the Center for History and New Media. She has incorporated several digital history units into the class and also explores such topics as electronic gaming, the Bracero Digital Archive (http://www.braceroarchive.org/) and new methods for digitizing
and indexing oral history online.
Advanced Archival Description (http://www.aphdigital.org/courses/
advanced-archival-description/), taught by Thomas Frusciano, a required course for students in the archives concentration, was reconfigured to emphasize online representations of archival materials. It now stresses metadata standards for digital objects, the rise of content management
10 Students did have the option to work on independent projects if special circumstances permitted.
3. Teaching Digital Skills in an Archives and Public History Curriculum 87 systems, institutional repositories, and the use of Web 2.0 techniques to create more collaborative interactive environments between archives and users.