Africa Past & Present Africa Past & Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The show highlights interesting and significant people, ideas, and discussions in African Studies from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Their mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and key debates for Africans at home and abroad.

African e-Journals Project The African e-Journals Project makes journals published in Africa and about Africa more available to scholars worldwide.

African Online Digital Library MATRIX, working in cooperation with the African Studies Center at MSU and in partnership with premiere research institutions in Africa is pioneering a fully accessible online digital repository that is adopting the emerging best practices of the American digital library community and apply them in an African context.

Alliance for American Quilts The Alliance for American Quilts (AAQ) is a nonprofit 501c3 organization established in 1993 whose mission is to document, preserve, and share our American quilt heritage by collecting the rich stories that historic and contemporary quilts, and their makers, tell about our nation’s diverse peoples and their communities.

American Voices An Historical Voices gallery The recorded voices of prominent Americans from every area of culture: politics, science, business, and the arts – spanning the entire sound recording era. This site will be useful for bringing the immediacy of the spoken voice to any course on American culture and history.

Carriers of Culture Through a festival, exhibition, and other related activities, Carriers of Culture: Living Native Basket Traditions will examine the ways in which Native baskets — and their makers — are literally and symbolically “carriers of culture.”

Center for Gender in Global Context The Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen), in International Studies and Programs (ISP), draws together the strengths of the program in Women, Gender, and Social Justice (WGSJ) in the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) and the College of Social Science (SSC) and the Women and International Development Program (WID) in ISP.

Community Connex Community Connex is an online, social networking tool that allows users to gather, discuss, and publish resources that are important to communities and groups. What sets Community Connex apart from other portal systems is the ability for users to define the issues that are important to them through the language and resources that speak to their specific community and needs.

Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages The Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages at Michigan State University focuses on three areas: linguistics, cultural studies, and language acquisition and teaching, and is dedicated to quality teaching, research and outreach.

Diversity & tolerance in the Islam of West Africa Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa will make accessible a wide array of currently unavailable materials from and about the countries of Senegal and Ghana, their Muslim communities, and the relations of those communities with the practitioners of other faiths.

Educonsult: [Re]envisioning the Classroom in the Digital Age A site dedicated to exploring the best practices in humanities computing pedagogy and helping scholars more easily and efficiently integrate information technologies into the classroom.

Exploring Africa This site is a collaborative endeavor with MSU’s Office of International Studies and Programs (ISP), the African Studies Center and Matrix and with invaluable input from external educational consultants and teachers from throughout Michigan and the United States.

Great Lakes Culture Program The Center will expand the understanding of the history, people, traditions and customs of the Great Lakes region and is one of 16 regional centers across the country to receive partial funding by the Initiative for Regional Humanities Centers, a new program developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

H-Net E-mail List Preservation MATRIX received funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for this two-year project to advance the state of e-mail preservation by assessing and improving upon the digital preservation practices for the H-Net e-mail lists.

H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online Matrix hosts H-Net; An international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net creates and coordinates over 100 Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Interactive Archaeological Management System (iAKS) iAKS – or the Interactive Archaeological Knowledge System – is a web and client based application that helps archaeologists collect, archive and analyze data faster and easier. It’s portable, cross platform and completely customizable to the needs of individual users and projects. iAKS data is stored in an open, XML format which can be shared and accessed across networks for comparison and further analysis from other researchers.

Latin American School and Educational Resources A web site for middle and high school teachers and students who are learning about Latin America in social sciences and humanities classes; the site was designed by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University and MATRIX.

Michigan Writers Network Funded by a grant from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and sponsored by MATRIX, this endeavor is part of a larger initiative to support literature and creative writing within the state.

MSU Department of History The History Department is the primary unit at Michigan State University with responsibility for instruction, research, and public service in the matters of historical knowledge. The specific mission of the History Department at Michigan State University is to provide an environment conducive to the teaching and learning of history, the pursuit of historical research and the application of the fruits of that research in the public domain.

MSU History Department Online Courses The History Department of Michigan State University is offering online courses for both summer 2008 sessions. You can take certain 100, 200, and 300 level courses online from anywhere in the world and make progress on your degree.

MSU Sports History The Sports History website celebrates the uniquely rich history of Spartan athletics, from the early competitions in 1880s student-run field days and the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association, to the rise of Michigan State University as a football national powerhouse in the mid-Twentieth century, the Big Ten era and the ultimate consolidation of MSU athletics as a world class program.

Oral History Tutorial A set of comprehensive tutorials for doing modern oral history in the digital era. The site includes detailed, interactive tutorials in audio technology, video technology, metadata, and online presentation/delivery.

Partnership for Food Industry Development F&V The Partnerships for Food Industry Development—Fruits and Vegetables (PFID-F&V) project collaborates with public and private partners to increase the competitiveness of small and medium scale producers in local, regional, and international markets.

Pluralism and Adaptation in the Islamic Practice of Senegal and Ghana Four multimedia galleries that demonstrate how innovative Africans have been in the history of Islam and Islamic practice and how they continue to live and experience Islam. Through maps, images, multi-lingual audio, video, and textual materials, these galleries shed light on ways diverse Muslim communities in West Africa cooperate with one another and with followers of other faith and indigenous traditions.

Quilt Index The Quilt Index is a digital repository project of Michigan State University (MATRIX and MSU Museum) and The Alliance for American Quilts. Thousands of quilts contributed by many different organizations can be viewed, searched and sorted through this central resource. Each contributor manages its content online through password-protected webpages. This exemplary project has been implemented primarily through funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Upcoming developments include ephemeral materials, new tools for analyzing quilts online, and community generated social networking features.

Quilters' S.O.S.- Save Our Stories Q.S.O.S. is a grassroots oral history project of The Alliance for American Quilts. MATRIX hosts the repository architecture and website which features the stories and culture of today’s quilt makers. The site features hundreds of interview transcriptions with photographs of quiltmakers, plus a downloadable how-to manual. Original interview tapes are archived at the Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

Seventeen Moments in Soviet History This site was developed in collaboration with MATRIX, and has been funded by a generous educational development grant from the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). The project has been directed and created by James von Geldern (Macalester College) and Lewis Siegelbaum (Michigan State University), and the principal designer of the site is Krzystof Karski.

Sound Matters One of the most important determiners of the success of any oral history project is the quality of the audio record ultimately produced. Making a high-quality recording requires two things: (1) recording methods that are sound and sensitive to the situation at hand; and (2) equipment that is adequate for the task. This site offers guidelines regarding both of these factors.

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America An Historical Voices gallery is dedicated to making the works of Studs Terkel accessible to diverse set of users: researchers, students, teachers, and the general public.

The Flint Sit-Down Strike An Historical Voices gallery designed to provide an audio and historical introduction to the sit-down strike for those students or members of the general public who are unaware of the history of this momentous event in American history.

The John Snow Archive and Research Companion This Web site contains an archive of searchable texts of Snow’s published writings—most appearing in medical journals—and recorded presentations and comments at medical society meetings between 1838 and his death in 1858. The archive will also include selections from writings by some of Snow’s contemporaries, whether supporters, skeptics, or outright antagonists.

The Spoken Word: New Resources to Transform Teaching and Learning Michigan State University, in collaboration with Northwestern University and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and Glasgow Caledonian University, in collaboration with the BBC – Information & Archives, will develop and implement this vision. Starting with a rich collection of digitized audio resources, associated texts and images and a set of integrated online annotation tools, this work will promote the usability and integration of digital spoken word repositories to improve undergraduate teaching. The project will test whether and with what effect the integration of digital audio resources into university courses achieves four major project outcomes: (1) improving student learning and retention, (2) developing aural literacy in our students, (3) augmenting student competence to write on –and for — the Internet, and, (4) enhancing digital libraries through a focus on learning.

Women in Science This project will provide full text access to the written works of European women scientists prior to 1800 beginning with the works of the marquise Du Châtelet.