Digital Veterans Studies Projects

in Research and Teaching

Dr. Amanda French

July 28, 2016

NEH Summer Institute, American Veterans in Society

Access this document at http://j.mp/2016-neh-veterans-digital

Who am I?

What is your favorite digital Veterans’ Studies website, tool, or research database?

Some sample digital projects related to Veterans Studies

Four free, easy digital tools

Project planning exercise

Who am I?

I am Dr. Amanda French. I have a Ph.D. in English and am an “expert” in Digital Humanities, which is the practice of building or using digital tools to study art, literature, history, philosophy, and language. See more at http://amandafrench.net. (Note that I have a lesson plan for Omeka and a lesson plan for Scalar on my website.)

What is your favorite digital Veterans’ Studies website, tool, or research database?

Amanda

Google Books, especially this page from the book by Annette Tapert, Lines of Battle: Letters from American Servicemen, 1941-1945 (Crown/Archetype 2012). This page is about my great-grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert H. Blackwell, and reprints a letter he wrote to my great-grandmother, Eloise: https://books.google.com/books?id=MTBxK5Ba2CMC&lpg=PT8&dq=herbert%20blackwell%20pearl%20harbor&pg=PT22#v=onepage&q=herbert%20blackwell%20pearl%20harbor&f=false
My own blog post and various websites about the famous WWI Canadian poem “In Flanders Fields” http://amandafrench.net/2009/11/11/for-veterans-day-on-john-mccraes-in-flanders-fields/

Tara

Weebly - http://weebly.com - simple website creator
LC Prints and Photographs - http://www.loc.gov/pictures/
National Library of Medicine - https://www.nlm.nih.gov/

Howard

JSTOR - http://jstor.org - secondary sources, mainly journal articles, usually subscribed to by libraries

Susan

Texas Tech Vietnam Center and Archive - http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/
WayMarker Maps - ???

Norma

The William Blake Archive - http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/

Hilary

BBC History Animated map of the Western Front - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/launch_ani_western_front.shtml

Jim C

Veterans Administration, VetPop - http://www.va.gov/vetdata/veteran_population.asp - data about veterans
PadLet - http://padlet.com - collaborative tool for sharing resources, useful in teaching, has a mobile version

Eric

Podcasts, for instance “Backstory with the American History Guys” with Ed Ayers - http://backstoryradio.org/

Jim D

Basecamp - http://basecamp.com - project management tool
Slack - http://slack.com - project team communication tool, has mobile and desktop versions

Heidi

Podcast, Dan Carlin, Hardcore History - http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
Podcast, Dan Carlin, Common Sense - http://www.dancarlin.com/common-sense-home-landing-page/
Homer Multitext project - http://www.homermultitext.org/ - online version of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey
Needs a good infographic maker!

African-American Newspapers - http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/african-american-newspapers/
Podcast with stories about different types of Americans - StoryCorps Military Voices? - https://storycorps.org/military-voices/

Also PadLet - http://padlet.com - collaborative resource sharing
Socrative - http://www.socrative.com/ - classroom engagement app for dekstop and mobile
SmartHistory - http://smarthistory.org - online Art History educational resouces

Alexis

Blog, “Time Now: The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in Art, Film, and Literature” (Acolytes of War) - https://acolytesofwar.com/
Blog, New York Times “At War: Notes from the Front Lines” - http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/
Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project - http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/WVHP/
Google Ngram viewer - https://books.google.com/ngrams - allows searching millions of books for how often particular words and phrases appear in them over time
Timeline.js - https://timeline.knightlab.com/ - free and easy timeline maker

Dave

Digitized collections at the Library of Congress Veterans’ History project - https://www.loc.gov/vets/
National Archives digitized collections - http://archives.gov
Library of Congress digitized collections - http://loc.gov

Sarah

Scripto - http://scripto.org - works with Omeka, WordPress, and Drupal: allows “student-sourced” transcription of text images, great for historical records

Elena

Mallet - http://mallet.cs.umass.edu/ - tool for topic modeling and other text analyses
Gephi - https://gephi.org/ - network visualization software
QuantumGIS - http://www.qgis.org/en/site/ - allows digital creation and publishing of geospatial information
Presidential libraries’ digitized sources - https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/research/
Digital (and print!) Sanborn maps - http://sanborn.umi.com/ & http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/sanborn_union_list - detailed historical fire maps dating back to the 19th century

Matt

StarFish Early Alert - http://www.starfishsolutions.com/home/starfish-enterprise-success-platform/starfish-early-alert/ - student success tracking software
WC Online - https://mywconline.com/ - Writing Center management tool

Meredith

Densho Archive - http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx - site about the Japanese American experience with interviews, photos, and newspapers
Zotero - http://zotero.org - excellent bibliographic software that allows easy bibliography creation, collaboration, and publishing

Louis

ICPSR - https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/landing.jsp - portal for social science data of all kinds
Dropbox - http://getdropbox.com - generic online file storage

Other

Ancestry - http://ancestry.com - service for geneaologists that includes birth, death, and census records as well as military service records -- some libraries pay for access to the service and offer it to their patrons, so you need not subscribe yourself
PBS website, especially for oral histories - http://pbs.org
PBS American Experience, Vietnam - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietnam/
Skip Gates’ “Finding Your Roots” site - http://www.pbs.org/weta/finding-your-roots/
SocialExplorer database - http://www.socialexplorer.com/ -- might be available through your library; provides aggregate census data and much more, and also has interactive display tools such as annotation and visualization
Atlantic D-Day Historical Photos - http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/06/scenes-from-d-day-then-and-now/100752/ - Online interactive article / exhibit with photos from D-Day compared to contemporary photos
CurateScape - http://curatescape.org/ - “Curatescape provides content creators the ability to curate outdoor landscapes or indoor museum settings, publishing to mobile devices and the web.”

Some sample digital projects related to Veterans Studies

Discovering Anzacs - http://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au/ - beautifully designed multi-functional site built by Australia’s National Archives with service records and stories of WWI soldiers from Australia and New Zealand
Papers of the War Department - http://wardepartmentpapers.org/
National Archives and Records Administration -

Francine Shapiro Library - https://emdria.omeka.net/ - searchable online database of over 8,000 articles and readings about EMDR trauma treatment
Graffiti Soldier - http://adammeyer1.omeka.net/ - class project about a single Civil War soldier
American Women Warriors’ Road Back Home - http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/crowley/veterans-stories
Veterans’ Institute 2015 - https://veteransinsociety.wordpress.com/veterans-in-society-vis-2015/ - shows what can be done with a site on wordpress.com
NEH Funded Projects query form - https://securegrants.neh.gov/publicquery/main.aspx - allows you to search all projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities

HistoryPin site and mobile app - http://historypin.com - allows you to see historic photos near you and take contemporary versions of them to be overlaid over the historic one
Clio site and mobile app - https://www.theclio.com/web/ - points out places of historic interest near you and gives short accounts of their history

Four free, easy digital tools

WordPress - see http://wordpress.com and http://wordpress.org
Omeka - see http://omeka.net and http://omeka.org
Scalar - see http://scalar.usc.edu
MapWarper - see http://mapwarper.net

Project planning exercise

Think of a digital tool, website, or research database that you wish existed.
Take that website or tool you wish existed, and answer the following questions:

What other tools, sites, databases, or other projects can you find that are *almost* like the one you wish existed? Create a list of 1-3 of them.
Who could you email or call to ask for help realizing your project? Make a list of people to contact.
Are there existing articles or blog posts about creating those model projects? Do some research and create a bibliography of about 10 sources you might read.
What kind of skills would you need to learn or hire in order to realize this project? Ask your contacts and mine your reading to come up with a guess.
How much money would it take to realize this project? Ask your contacts and mine your reading to come up with a guess, then sketch out a rough budget.
How long would it take to realize this project? Ask your contacts and mine your reading to come up with a guess, then sketch out a rough timeline of project phases.

Creative Commons License

Digital Veterans Studies Projects in Research and Teaching by Amanda French is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.