“Development and Use of Multimedia Archives and
Databases for Humanities Education”
John
Paul
Ashenfelter
Teaching + Technology Initiative University of
Virginia
jpa5n@virginia.edu
Images, in the form of slides and other media formats, are a staple of many types
of humanities courses. The advent of the World Wide Web and other new computer
technologies is slowly transforming how these courses can be developed and
delivered, particularly at the university level. This poster and demonstration
outlines the various types of technologies that can be used to develop
multimedia archives for educational purposes as well as a number of specific
project examples in anthropology, religious studies, and art history.
The advantages of using some sort of multimedia archive for a humanities course
are those of convenience, access, management. Course development is also changed
significantly by using multimedia archives. Images from multiple collections
(especially personal ones) are more readily available and accessible
conveniently from the instructor's desktop. Keyword searching also greatly
improves the ease of finding appropriate material, especially in large
collections. The cost of developing a media archive is not insignificant
however.
The University of Virginia Teaching+Technology Initiative, New Media Center,
Digital Media Center, and Instructional Technology Group have all been
collaborating on these sorts of projects for a number of years. These project
span the gamut from history of photography to French culture, to the circus but
the basic development process of each is similar.
The technologies and standards involved in building these projects will be
presented, including web database technology, scanning and digitization
procedures, image projection techniques, metadata markup, and cross-project
integration.