Here at MATRIX we are delighted to have Rebecca Tegtmeyer join us as our newly appointed (and newly named) Director of Visual Design Projects. Tegtmeyer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design and specializes in projects involving graphic design, information design, and infographic visualization (see portfolio here). She recently worked with MATRIX associates Bill Hart-Davidson and Liza Potts to create the above-pictured poster for their food-borne illness project.

Rebecca Tegtmeyer graduated from the University of Kansas with a BFA (emphasis in Visual Communications) and from North Carolina State University’s College of Design with a master’s in Graphic Design. In addition to her teaching role at Michigan State University, Rebecca is also an active member of the AIGA and has served as the Education Director for the Detroit Chapter of the AIGA over the past two years. As a tenure-system professor, Rebecca continues to do work influenced by her graduate thesis, Spatial Mapping and Navigation: Physical and Online Environments, which analyzes the interactions between online and physical environments and the use of technology in our experiences of both.

Tegtmeyer brings to MATRIX the unique skill set of being able to convey large amounts of technical information while, at the same time, incorporating a visually arresting design. Her abilities are most welcome here at MATRIX and we are excited to continue partnering with her on future projects.

MATRIX is pleased to announce that Anthea Josias will be joining us as a post-doctoral scholar / researcher. She will be splitting her time between MATRIX and the MSU Department of History where she will work to support the production of online history courses, assist the development of  a public history component within the Department of History and— more broadly —think of ways that technology can be incorporated into history pedagogy.

Anthea comes from a scholarly and professional background that suits her particularly well to face these challenges. She recently received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan School of Information where her dissertation focused on how collective memories are produced and transmitted into the public realm in post-apartheid South Africa, and how these processes contribute to ways of thinking about and practicing archives. She is particularly interested in the dynamic relationships between 1. the people whose memories are being recorded; 2. sources of memory in the form of documentary evidence or first-person accounts; 3. producers or mediators of memory; and 4. the receiving public— along with the implications of these multi-dimensional relationships for archives. During her Ph.D. studies, Anthea was also a graduate instructor for classes in Archival Appraisal, Digital Government, and Practical Engagement in Digital Preservation. Her other scholarly interests are in archives, information and cultural heritage policy, and in how digital technologies can support participatory modes of memory making and archives. She received her undergraduate and masters degrees in Library and Information Science from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

Anthea has spent a significant portion of her career in the archives and cultural heritage sector in South Africa. She has served as a Senior Project Officer for the Nelson Mandela Foundation where she contributed to setting up the foundation’s Center of Memory and Commemoration project. She has also worked as Head of Collections Management and Archives at the Robben Island Museum and the Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture in South Africa. Anthea’s relationship with Matrix and the MSU History Department began during her work in South Africa, through her participation in a series of collaborative programs that included an African Internet Connectivity Workshop held at MATRIX in 1999. In addition to MATRIX, the Department of History’s depth of experience in working with African partners in African history and culture was compelling to Anthea and will form the foundation of her work here at Michigan State University.

MATRIX is excited to partner with Anthea and leverage her talents here at Michigan State. We encourage you to browse Anthea’s CV or contact her with more questions about her work. Welcome to the team, Anthea!

We are very happy to announce that MATRIX will host Day of DH 2013.  An initiative of CenterNet, Day in the Life of the Digital Humanities (Day of DH) is an open community publication project that  brings together scholars interested in the digital humanities from around the world to document what they do on one day.  This year, Day of DH will take place on April 8th. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together a picture of the participant’s activities on the day which answers the question, “Just what do digital humanists really do?” Participants  document their day through photographs and text, all of which is published on a community online platform (which, for this year, lives at dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu). Both during and after the day, people are encouraged to read and comment on their fellow participant’s posts.  Eventually, all the data will be grouped together, undergo some light semantic editing, and released for others to study. We hope that, beyond the original online publication, the raw data will be of use to those interested in further visualization or digital community ethnographic research.

For more information on this year’s Day of Dh event, check out the introductory post at http://dayofdh2013.matrix.msu.edu/blog/2013/02/14/ready/

Matrix is pleased to announce the launch of the Belize Inspiration Center’s new website at www.belizeinspirationcenter.org/.

The Belize Inspiration Center is a non-profit organization that seeks to provide advocacy and assistance to persons (especially children) living with physical, mental, and social disabilities in Belize. These children often struggle to receive the additional attention and support they need due to the lack of awareness, lack of resources, and social stigmas associated with disabled persons in poorer communities. A 2005 situational analysis of disabled children in Belize found that these children were being tied up, regularly beaten, abused, neglected, and were not receiving the care necessary for their continued development. Compounding this problem is the lack of government funding and social services given to families of disabled persons. This has lead to almost complete dependence on non-profit services to care, advocate, and support children with disabilities in Belize.

The Inspiration Center seeks to answer this need. The Inspiration Center is a newly constructed, barrier-free facility that combines all-in-one access to medical services, physical therapy rooms, social stimulation rooms, handicap-accessible play areas, and educational centers (mostly in therapeutic art and music) to give comprehensive assistance to children living with disabilities. The Inspiration Center will also structure interactions between fully-abled and differently-abled children to teach a new generation of children about how to interact and respect children with disabilities.

MATRIX has been privileged to work with the Belize Inspiration Center by freely donating time and staff support to design, build, and host the new website. We see this work as being important to our mission of digital inclusion and accessibility. We encourage you to explore the new site to learn more about the Belize Inspiration Center and to consider partnering with them in their efforts to create a disability-friendly Belize.

In October 2012, the Michigan State University’s Archives & Historical Collections, in collaboration with MATRIX, launched a new website entitled the Civil War Archives at http://civilwar.archives.msu.edu/. This website contains an online digital archive of hand-written letters and photographs sent from and to Michigan soldiers who participated in the Civil War. This website’s goal is to educate students and citizens about the Civil War and re-humanize the individuals who fought and died during the conflict.

The Civil War Archive is built using KORA, an open-source, browser-based content management system created and produced by MATRIX that allows organizations to build digital repositories that preserve both digital objects and their related metadata. KORA has a flexible and customizable metadata scheme, which allows it to be used with any data set. KORA also contains a record associator which gives MATRIX the capability to link a digital object with it’s corresponding metadata and/or related objects (i.e. letters and photographs from the same individual). This allows for the creation of complex digital objects that tell stories and continue MATRIX’s goal of re-humanizing big data.

Beginning in the spring of 2010, researchers at Michigan State University’s Archives & Historical Collections began digitizing their collection of hand-written letters and photographs sent to and from Michigan soldiers in the Civil War. The letters are addressed to soldiers’ friends, family, and sweethearts and describe some major battles (including the Battle of Gettysburg) from the soldiers’ perspectives.

The presentation of information in this archive is unique in that it displays both the digitized copy of the letter and a typed transcript of the document side-by-side. Having both views appear simultaneously on the screen allows users to toggle seamlessly between the two documents. The collections in this archive are grouped by both donating family and Michigan regiment to allow for the quick location of interested records.

To learn more about the archive and its creation , read this article by MSU News. Similarly, if you’re interested in learning more about MATRIX’s efforts to re-humanize big data, browse a recent blog post describing a Ethan Watrall’s talk on Big Data, Small Stories: Community, Collaboration, and User Experience in the Age of Digital Cultural Heritage or read about MATRIX’s participation in the Slave Biographies and Digging into Data projects.

MATRIX is pleased to announce the launch of the Oral History in the Digital Age (OHDA) website at ohda.matrix.msu.edu. The website features numerous essays, articles, and videos about best practices in collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital oral histories.

The OHDA project represents a partnership between MATRIX, the Michigan State University Museum, the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, the American Folklore Society, and the Oral History Association. Seven interdisciplinary working groups composed of experts and practitioners from museums, libraries, and scholarly societies worked to produce recommendations around core topics including intellectual property, transcriptions, digital video, technology, scholarship, preservation, and access. Final recommendations from all groups were compiled and published on the OHDA website as a guide to conducting digital oral history.

The need for this project stems from the way in which twenty-first century, digital technologies are transforming oral history. As mobile devices, digital recorders, online repositories and the like become more prevalent, oral historians need to be educated as to  new methods available— as well as the risks and rewards of those methods. The OHDA essay collection is a valuable and timely resource and one that MATRIX is proud to be a part of. We welcome you to investigate the sources listed at ohda.matrix.msu.edu and learn more about the project at the OHDA planning site.

We are very pleased to announce that Stephen Potts will be joining MATRIX as the new Assistant Director.  With over 20 years of professional software engineering experience, Steve is an accomplished software architect and web services expert. Throughout his career, he has focused on data-rich software in order to design robust applications that provide ease of use and timely access to important data. Most recently, while at A Serious Company, Steve built and deployed serious games for government agencies. Prior to that, Steve was Lead Technical Architect and Program Manager at Microsoft, where he was responsible for leading architecture and development of Windows Error Reporting, Online Windows Logo System, Windows Update, Windows Catalog, Windows Distribution Center, and Device Web Market Analysis products.

Before working at Microsoft, Steve was Manager of Software Engineering and Senior Software Architect at NTT Verio (formerly Hiway Technologies), the world’s largest Internet telecommunications company.  At NTT Verio, he led web hosting and reseller initiatives, architected systems, and spearheaded the first initiative to provide multi-lingual access to over half a million websites. Prior to his work at NTT Verio, Steve architected and designed databases used by the FBI, CIA, and other information professionals for the leading national information repository at Choicepoint.

As Assistant Director, Steve will not only oversee all aspects of MATRIX’s programming and development infrastructure, but will also lead future development of KORA (kora.matrix.msu.edu), MATRIX’s open source digital repository platform.  Steve begins his appointment immediately.  He can be reached by email at stephen.potts@matrix.msu.edu and followed on Twitter at @SpottsMsu

A new episode of Africa Past & Present was released on June 1. This episode features Dr. Peter Limb of Michigan State University (MSU) as he discusses the life and writings of Dr. Alfred Bitini Xuma. An important figure in the history of South Africa, Xuma was the first black physician in Johannesburg and served as President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1940 to 1949.

Limb’s discussion is based on his recently published book, A. B. Xuma: Autobiography and Selected Works. By reflecting on Xuma’s autobiography, his correspondence, essays and speeches on health, politics, crime, beer, the pass laws, and the rights of African women, Limb illuminates some of the tensions and controversies Xuma faced during his career and describes his historical legacy for South Africa.

Africa Past & Present is a joint project between MATRIX and the MSU Department of History. The project works to make regular podcasts focused on issues of African history, culture, and politics. Visit their site to learn more about the project, download this podcast, and explore past episodes.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca has a long and complicated history that is recorded in an vast historical archive. These artifacts, some dating back to the late fifteenth century, chronicle Mexico’s transition from a colonial to post-colonial state. The papers detail the fairly tumultuous and complicated interactions between Spain’s governmental representatives and the sixteen indigenous people groups that comprised the state of Oaxaca. The archive is a unique one and holds vast potential for learning and scholarship.

Unfortunately, while this archive is extremely rare and contains significant historical value, it has fallen into disrepair. The majority of these documents sit in boxes, on shelves, or just in piles. They are exposed to the open air, rodents, termites, and- in the rainy season- flooding. Some papers have even been burned by government officials who were either unaware or unimpressed with the document’s contents.

That’s why MATRIX is working with Dr. Benjamin Smith from the MSU Department of History to help preserve this endangered archive. With support from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, Smith will help provide equipment and training for six Mexican archivists in the best practices for digitizing and preserving the materials in the Oaxaca collection. The result of this work will be a digital repository of the Oaxaca information in both Spanish and English, as well as a fully equipped digitization staff that can remain in Mexico to continue the work of document preservation.

This is the third Endangered Archives grant MATRIX has received. Previous awards were for similar work in Mali and the Gambia. MATRIX is thankful for the support of the British Library and hopes to partner with them in future projects focused on using digital technology to protect historical archives.

The Vietnam Project Archive- a joint collaboration between MATRIX, Michigan State University (MSU) Department of History, and MSU University Archives & Historical Collections- has received $264,998 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Vietnam Project Archive is committed to the task of digitizing and archiving documents from 1955-1962, when MSU worked with the American government in South Vietnam with the goal of producing a stable, non-Communist country in the Cold War era. Although their efforts eventually failed, the Vietnam Project Archive contains rare and valuable data about life in South Vietnam immediately prior to the Vietnam War. Materials in this archive allow students and scholars to get an insider’s view of America’s university-assisted nation-building practices.

Included in this collection are contracts between MSU and the U.S. Foreign Operations Administration, reports on the rural economy and society in South Vietnam, personal communications between MSU staff and the president of South Vietnam, and audio recordings and films, which include images of MSU staff assisting in police training, ceremonies, and inspection tours. These documents are rare and available only in this archive, making its preservation and dissemination an important and necessary project. Project partners hope that the digitizing of the Vietnam Project Archive will allow new scholarship and understanding to develop about a country’s transition from a colonial to post-colonial society, nation-building strategies, and the history of South Vietnam.