Projects
A Note about MATRIX’s Approach to Developing & Designing Internet Projects: MATRIX uses its unique position in the communications revolution to pioneer ideas and innovations, as the heirs of the Internet develop into the 21st century. While we have a cautious view of the value of the communications revolution for teaching, we support experimentation and innovation in the classroom. In addition to developing a wide range of teaching tools, we are focusing at the present on two main challenges: the digitation of sound files so that they can best be utilized by teachers, students, and researchers, and the development of large-scale integrated research tools that can be developed by widely disparate repositories and freely accessed worldwide.
African Activist Archive
MATRIX and the MSU African Studies Center have launched the redesigned and expanded African Activist Archive website. The more than 1300 photographs, posters, historical documents, political buttons, T-shirts, and streaming audio and video are a strong beginning at documenting the U.S. movement supporting freedom and justice in Africa, especially Southern Africa. The project is preserving records and memories of activism on Africa during the past 50 years and welcomes people with materials and personal remembrances to add them to the online archive.
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.
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.
African Media Program
The African Media Program (AMP) offers an online, comprehensive database of films, videos, and other audio-visual materials concerning Africa as well as education services about African media. The AMP is a project of from Michigan State University’s African Studies Center, a Title VI National Resource Center in African Languages and Area Studies.
African On-Line 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.
American Black Journal
American Black Journal , originally titled Colored People’s Time , went on the air in 1968 as a televised public forum for black citizens during a historic moment of racial turmoil across the nation. This website is part of a long term collaboration between Detroit Public Television and Michigan State University to preserve and present the crucial and historic materials of the American Black Journal television program.
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.
Black Churches in Detroit
The Detroit Black Churches website is a student-based research project lead by faculty members from the MSU Department of History and students from the MSU Honors College. The digital archive will include photographs, audio, video, and documents that exemplifies African-American religious life in Detroit.
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.”
Celebrity Lecture Series
The Celebrity Lecture Series was established at Michigan State University by the College of Arts and Letters under the leadership of Dean John W. Eadie and the Dean’s Community Council in 1988. At its tenth anniversary in 1998 and in honor of his stewardship of the arts and humanities, the series was renamed in honor of Dean Eadie. The popularity of this series attracted students, faculty, and members of the community, and featured some of the most illustrious scholars, critics, novelists, poets, and creative artists of our time.
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.
Civics Online
This educational web site is a collaborative, online project providing a rich array of primary sources, professional development tools, and interactive activities to help in the teaching of civics and was created in collaboration with Matrix, MSU’s <edtech.connect>, and many Michigan K-12 teachers.
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.
Community Video Education Trust: Documentary Footage of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in South Africa
This digital archive of unique, publicly accessible videos was taken in South Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Footage available on the CVET website documents anti-apartheid demonstrations, speeches, mass funerals, celebrations, and interviews with activists. The videos capture the activism of trade unions, students and political organizations, including the activities of the United Democratic Front. Watch the promo video.
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.
Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance
The Disaster Mitigation Planning Assistance Website is a joint project of Michigan State University Libraries, the Great Lakes Culture Program and the California Preservation Program. Part of disaster planning is knowing whom to call for help and where to obtain services and supplies.
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.
Earliest Voices
A Historical Voices gallery designed a multimedia to present some of the most significant voices captured during the first fifty years of sound recording, 1877-1927.
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.
Explore PA History
Gateway to Pennsylvania, Past and Present. Come explore, visit and teach a rich heritage of the people and events that strengthened America and brought new ideas to light.
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.
Food, Farming and Community
The Voices Project at Michigan State University Museum presents resources to build greater understanding about farmers, farming and food. These issues and relationships affect everyone, everyday. Our health and the environment are at stake. From the beginning, this project was imagined as a way to make the voices of farmers come alive and by doing this to stimulate discussion about the economic and ecological sustainability issues contemporary agriculture faces. . . . issues that affect children, families, farmers, our communities, and the land around us.
Global Literary & Cultural Studies (GLCS)
This organization fosters interdepartmental research collaborations that focus on literature, film, and other forms of cultural production in light of the critical approaches that have emerged out of the literary disciplines. Through the analysis of literary and cultural texts, regardless of medium (print, digital, film, etc.), GLCS seeks to integrate historical knowledge and current questions, global perspectives and local concerns, established scholarship and timely experimentation.
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).
Greater Mexico Podcast
Each podcast includes interviews with men and women involved in political trends, cultural events and social movements before turning to an historical expert who seeks to place these events in a historical context.
Historical Voices
This project is part of the Digital Library Initiative II funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Historical Voices is one of the first fully functional, multi-media, interoperable digital libraries available online.
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.
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 Online Reviews
Matrix hosts H-Net Reviews that is one of the largest online scholarly review resources in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Internet and Women’s Democratic Organizing
This project sought to facilitate women’s social and political activism and regional networking through Internet technologies during two three-week workshops took place in May 2000 and 2001 with participants attending from the West African countries of Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, and Mali; the project is supported by Michigan State University and the US Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs with funds from the Education for Development and Democracy Initiative (EDDI). IWDO is part of the African Internet Collaborations initiative undertaken by MATRIX and the African Studies Center.
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.
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.
Knight Center for Environmental Journalism
The Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University’s School of Journalism trains student and professional journalists to cover the environment.The program offers numerous classes and professional workshops for the study and practice of environmental journalism.
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 Alliance for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage
The Michigan Alliance for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage is a statewide 501(c)(3) organization composed of libraries, archives, museums, historical societies and preservation networks that was founded in October 1988 with the support of the Michigan Humanities Council. The purpose is to promote the protection and preservation of Michigan’s cultural and humanities resources for the enjoyment, education and benefit of present and future generations.
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 Counseling Center
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 Faculty of Computing and Information
MSU’s Faculty and computing Information website serves as a portal to a wide variety of innovative teaching, research, and outreach, all emanating from the common epicenter of computing and information.
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 Museum Studies
Grounded in theory, reflection, and responsible practice and with an emphasis on interdisciplinary knowledge, cutting-edge technology, global issues, community engagement, and informal learning, the MSU Museum Studies Program prepares undergraduates and graduates for innovative careers in museums and interpretive centers of learning.
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.
The Mystery of Lamqua: Medical Portraiture in China, 1836-1855
Matrix designed and implemented the site using repos and a new gallery design. “The Mysteries of Lam Qua” is primarily a digital gallery of oil paintings by the nineteenth-century Cantonese artist known as Lam Qua. The heart of the gallery consists of images of Chinese patients of a leading medical missionary Reverend Dr. Peter Parker, an American Presbyterian minister and physician who, in 1835, opened a hospital in Canton and soon acquired such a reputation as a surgeon that brought him thousands of cases.
National Gallery of the Spoken Word
An ongoing 5 year project that is creating a significant, fully searchable online database of spoken word collections spanning the 20th century-the first large-scale repository of its kind. NGSW provides storage for these digital holdings and public exhibit “space” for the most evocative collections. A Library Initiative II funded by the National Science Foundation.
Oral History Association
The Oral History Association seeks to bring together all persons interested in oral history as a way of collecting and interpreting human memories to foster knowledge and human dignity. With an international membership, the OHA serves a broad and diverse audience. Local historians, librarians and archivists, students, journalists, teachers, and academic scholars from many fields have found that the OHA provides both professional guidance and a collegial environment for sharing research.
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.
Overcoming Apartheid
South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy presents first-hand accounts of this important political movement. Interviews with South African activists, raw video footage documenting mass resistance and police repression, historical documents, rare photographs, and original narratives tell this remarkable story.
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.
Planning and Zoning Center
The Planning & Zoning Center at MSU (PZC) is a multi-disciplinary team of professionals devoted to research, education, and consultation on best practices for community planning and development control. It works both independently and in cooperation with many other groups both on and off campus to build a sustainable Michigan.
Quantitative Biology and Modeling
The initiative focuses on developing innovative quantitative experimental and modeling approaches to understand structure/function relationships in biological molecules, evolutionary processes, and biological networks of molecules and populations.
Quilt Index
The Quilt Index (www.quiltindex.org) 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.
Quilt Treasures
Quilt Treasures is a multimedia project of The Alliance for American Quilts and Michigan State University developed through its research centers at the Michigan State University Museum and MATRIX. The project developed “web portraits”, built from video-taped oral history and supporting archival materials, to document the lives, work, and influence of leaders of the American quilt revival of the 1960’s and 1970’s.
School of Labor and Industrial Relations
Our driving purpose is to help improve employer-employee relationships and workplace systems, ones that optimize both the opportunities for organizations to achieve competitive advantage and the opportunities for employees to enjoy rewarding work lives and family lives.
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.
Society for German Renaissance and Baroque Literature (SGRABL)
The Society for German Renaissance and Baroque Literature serves scholars and teachers by providing a forum for discussion, exchange, presentation of research (and teaching initiatives) for mostly college and university professors in North America.
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.
Spartan Consulting
Spartan Consulting is two things: a student consulting organization and a fee-based consulting firm. As a student organization, Spartan Consulting is dedicated to helping members prepare for their careers by learning about consulting as a profession, and by gaining skills and experiences that will be valuable in their job searches and beyond. As a fee-based consulting firm, Spartan Consulting is dedicated to providing quality solutions at a competitive price to clients by drawing on membership’s wide array of experience, knowledge and skills.
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.
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.
Teachart.msu.edu
The project involves several short term residencies, by Hispanic artists, working in the media of theater, music painting, photography, and poetry, in its pilot form, as its focal point. Artists will interact with students and provide workshops for them and for teachers (K-12). The workshops will demonstrate how to use Creative activity and creative works in conjunction with other curricular activity. Web resources and software that can be used for creative projects will be introduced to teachers (and media specialists), and used to extend the interaction between the artists and the teachers and students, as well as between students in two schools.
Visitor Studies Association Archive
This archive holds the publications of the Visitor Studies Association. The archive contains the entire run of Visitor Studies: Theory, Research, and Practice (Proceedings of the 1988-1996 Visitor Studies Association Conference), Visitor Behavior (1986-1997), and Visitor Studies Today (1998-2006). The archive also contains conference abstracts from the annual Visitor Studies Association Conference (1998 to the present), and C.G. Screven’s Visitor Studies Bibliography and Abstracts (4th Ed., 1999).
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.
