Interpreting Place: Interpreting Place: Curating Cities in the Digital Curating Cities in the Digital

AgeAge

Mark Tebeau, Ph.D.Department of HistoryCleveland State UniversityCenter for Public History + Digital Humanities

Curating the City• City as Living Museum

• Cleveland Cultural Gardens• Cleveland Regional Oral History

Collection• Walking Tours & Community

Conversations & Radio• Euclid Corridor History Kiosks

– Digital history on the Street• Cleveland Memory• Cleveland Digital Commons• Teaching & Learning Cleveland

– Community-based exhibits & Posters• Ohio Civil War 150th Centennial• Re-Imagining Cleveland• Curating Cleveland• Cleveland Historical

Place Matters• What is Place

– Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities• What is place?

– Landscape & Human Stories– Lived by People– Layered Meaning

• How is it made?– Landscape & Narrative– History: social, cultural, politics & economy– Interpretive Layers– By collaborative conversation—process

• Can it become vehicle for public history/teacher training?

• Can it be made in conjunction with the community?• More recently, can place be represented digitally?

Theorizing Digital• Physicality of space & place• Interpretation (vs. description)• Interactivity (vs. didacticism)• Technology: craft, technique, tinkering• Project architecture as knowledge

infrastructure– CMS & Platform: Open Source– Design shapes expression of content

• Disciplinary Best Practices Matter

Digital Practice• Curating the city– interpretive and collaborative

• Community-based partnerships• Commitment-based partnerships• Students, teachers, cultural

organizations, and non-governmental organizations

• Best practices

• PROCESS based

• Challenges Emerged– How to sustain training?– How to do oral history well?– How to collaborate effectively?– How to share findings?

• Success– ideastream and “Accents”– www.culturalgardens.org– Vehicle for teaching – Iterative model– Federation Blog Space

Case StudyCultural Gardens

Case Studies:Cleveland Oral HistoryEuclid Corridor Kiosks•Collecting Oral History w/Students

•Cultural Gardens•Tremont Oral History (Walking Tour)•Slavic Village (Church Talks)•Shaker Heights (Community Publication)•NPS (Community Programming)

•Collect with Community Partners•Community-based Process

•CSU—Intellectual Leadership•CSU—Facilitation, Processing, and Archiving•CSU—Interviewing•Partner—Identify Interviews•Partner—Interviewing, Facilitation, and Processing

•Programmatic Goals & Outcomes•Collaborative Programming

Case Study:Teaching & Learning Cleveland• Omeka Archive for History Teaching• Public History Training: Exhibit Building• Community Building: Exhibits/Posters• Lessons– Sandbox– Process Oriented– Community wants Interpretation– Sustainability– Human Connections Critical– Training (hist. thinking difficult)– OK to FAIL– Collect Analytics– Building iteratively

• Oral history & Photography• Digital Community• Gives voice and vibrancy to

physical endeavors• Digital narrative critical …• But …• Face-to-face interaction

critical in rebuilding cities

Case Study: Re-Imagining Cleveland

Case Study: Mobile • Stories—interpretive and experiential narratives• Geo-located • Layered and Multimedia: text, image, sound,

video• Standards-based database (Omeka--Library &

W3)• Social media (Facebook & Twitter); v2• iPhone & Android v2; Tablets v3• QR/NFC v. 2.5• Tours (V1, mods w/V2 & V3)

– Meta interpretive– Thematic, tours as learning– Enhance human-led tours

• Games & badges – Site-based scavenger hunts– Tour badges– Neighborhood badges

Site Architecture

•Content•Creativity

•Community•Collaboration

•Cloud•Architecture as collaboration

Case Study: Technology & Best Practice• Not just geo-location

• Layered and Multimedia: text, image, sound, video– Oral History– iMovies

• Collaborative Content Creation (Teachers, Students, Community)

• Standards-based database (Omeka--Library & W3)• Extensible, sharable, iterative, future-oriented

• Social media (Facebook & Twitter); v2• Web presence & Multi-platform• Engage the landscape

Case Study: Interpretation

• Not just geo-location• Layered and Multimedia: text, image, sound, video• Collaborative Content Creation (Teachers, Students,

Community)• Engage the landscape• Tours (V1, mods w/V2 & V3)

– Meta interpretive– As playlists– Thematic, tours as learning– Enhance human-led tours– QR/NFC v. 2.5

Case Study: Interactivity

•Games & badges •scavenger hunts•QR/NFC functionality•Tour badges•Neighborhood badges•Content-creator badges

•Tour Creation•Tour Playlists

Connecting People & Place• Technology only a tool• Best practice builds documentary legacies• Process & Collaboration Build Place– Remade iteratively over time…

• Information architecture should be a best practice

• Physicality—Mobile Matters• Interpretation• Interactivity

The End

•Mobile Historical•Extensible across country•Available for you

•Partner badges and/or unique identities•Open-Source•Hosted

•CHNM collaboration, as part of Omeka ecosystem

Where Next?

Mobile Teaching & Learning• Students develop stories/sites• Students collect oral histories• Students create and organize tours• Students learn digital platforms and humanities• Applicable to graduate students, undergrads, K-12 teachers, K-12 students,

and community members• Community also able to create content, making CSU agent for history learning• Model of engaged learning• Provides model for teaching/learning in digital age• Significant community benefit• Establishes a model digital community• Scalable and extensible to any landscape or learning environment using

geocoding, QR codes, and/or OAI standards• In digital humanities such publishing/research platforms represent scholarship• Re-imagines public history, digital storytelling, community role in history, and

historical research

Digital Humanities Scholarship• Curating the City• Re-imagines public history, digital storytelling, community

role in history, and historical research • As a new mode and model for exhibition publishing• Developing new forms of storytelling• Tours represent a new conception of knowledge• Establishes Cleveland as a model digital history

community• Scalable and extensible to any landscape or learning

environment using geocoding, QR codes, and/or OAI standards

• New tool for community development and community building

• New tool for social science research• Network analysis

Research: Open Source Revolution• Open-source replacing proprietary

model in public and private sector• Open-source represents efficiencies • Open-source empowers individuals

and communities• Open-source builds relationships

Engaged Learning• Developed by CSU students (hist. dept. undergrads & grads)• Used by students (Local History, Public History, Urban History)• Used by the community (Clev. Heights, Shaker, Gordon Square,

Lakewood, Ohio City/West Side Market, scholarly research on Sacred Landmarks)

• Teaching tool (CSU w/ESCCC, approx. 40 regional teachers)• Carries CSU brand (could carry more prominently …)• Cleveland as a Digital History Museum

• Potential– Connect regional cultural infrastructure

• Imagine Cleveland Historical/Omeka as open-source backbone for cultural interpretation in OneCleveland Network

– Common teaching tool– Community development tool– Social science research – Interpret Ohio– Digital Public History publishing platform, used globally

Research: Omeka Infrastructure• What is Omeka?

– Content management– Standards-based Archive– Publishing– Standards based

• Why Omeka? http://www.foundhistory.org/2010/09/01/omeka-and-its-peers/

• Corporation for Digital Scholarship– http://www.digitalscholar.org/

• Omeka.net– http://www.omeka.net/

Developing Mobile Historical