By Nicole Findlay
The richest and most common source of historical knowledge is frequently the one most overlooked. Each of us is a living, breathing repository of memories and stories that define not only our personal histories, but our sense of place.
Shawn Graham, assistant professor of digital humanities in Carleton University’s Department of History, is looking for residents of the Pontiac, PQ region, to share their memories and stories of their local heritage.
“How do you define ‘sense of place’? What makes a place special? What stories, buildings, places, people, define it?” Graham asks. “Heritage Crowd is a project to allow ordinary people, rather than government, consultants or academics, to define the cultural heritage of their place.”
Using open-source software, Graham and two undergraduate students, Nadine Feuerherm and Guy Massie have developed an on-line repository, Heritage Crowd, for the collection of these stories. They will then examine the resulting “crowd-sourced” knowledge and create exhibits that tell the stories of the region and its places.
Although the data collected will be stored electronically, individual contributors are encouraged to submit their histories through a variety of media, including twitter, email or the web.
“We’re particularly interested in providing ways for people who don’t have good internet access to contribute, using cell-phone text messages or voicemail,” explained Graham.
The project also provides an opportunity for the undergraduate students to develop their research, web publishing and programming skills, while performing a community service.
“We’ll show what it’s possible to do on low budget, and ideally become a hub for local culture heritage knowledge,” said Graham. He also hopes to deploy the Heritage Crowd concept to other parts of the world that are culturally-rich but digitally-underserved.
To participate in the HeritageCrowd project visithttp://heritagecrowd.org or text 613-627-4019