Mining the Archives

Contents: About Mining the Archive Project | The Assignment | Tech

About Mining the Archive Project

The historical archive is a repository of memory – shaping in profound ways what we can know about the past. But historical archives are always changing. Sometimes, changes come about as historical societies and university libraries acquire new collections, creating a deeper and richer landscape of materials for the historian to investigate. In other instances, the very format of the archive undergoes transformation, as in the case of the rise of digital collections over the past few decades.

This newfound world of digital archives presents powerful new opportunities for historical research – as anyone with an internet connection now has access to a dizzying wealth of documents – as it raises compelling questions about how we make meaning from the traces of history. Understanding the digital archive is especially crucial for grasping the history of American photography, given the rapid digitization of photographs and the capacity of such photographs to become untethered from their historical contexts.

In this project, we will explore the nature and power of the digital archive by actually creating a digital archive. We will do so by drawing upon original primary source material – both written and photographic – from U of I Special Collections. Since one of the key strengths of our Special Collections is the history of mining, we will make that history the focal point of our work.

– MATTHEW FOX-AMATO

The Assignment

History 454’s Mining the Archives project involves several components:

• Archival Research: Working with U of I Special Collections and Archives, students explore and do hands on research with primary source materials related to mining.
• Digitization: From their archival research, students select at least one photograph and one text source to digitize. Working with the Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL), they scan their selected items and prepare digital files. Browse digitized objects.
• Curation: Students explore U of I Library Digital Collections and select five additional items from existing digital collections, creating metadata for their curated records. Browse curated objects.
• Description and Metadata: Students create metadata following a collection template to describe their digitized and curated items.
• Exhibit: Once all objects and metadata are submitted, CDIL generates the final digital collection (this site!).
• Research and Reflection: Students write papers and reflections informed by their archival research.

Check the Project Overview for more information, and our Guidelines sections for details about each step of the project.

Image credit: Mountain Consolidated Mine 300 ft. level East still floor [no. 1223], Carleton Watkins