North Dakota History, Digital History

This is a big week for the students in my digital history practicum.  As some readers of this blog know, two University of North Dakota graduate students have been working on preparing a digital archive of our collection of M.A. theses relevant both to the history the state of North Dakota, but also the study of the discipline at the university.

So far this week, the first draft of the Omeka.net-powered web archive has role out and the first public presentation of their work will occur this afternoon at the 10th Annual University of North Dakota Graduate School Scholarly Forum.  Come by today (Wednesday March 9) and check out the poster and chat with the students from 2-4 pm in the Ballroom of the Memorial Union.

The site is both an archive and an exhibit space. Here’s a screen shot from the Omeka page:

They have also produced a poster describing the current state of the project:

They are also working on blogging, which as I have discovered does not come native to our aspiring cohort of public historians.  Check out their blog: North Dakota History Goes Digital.  Using social media is even more foreign to them, but they have a Twitter feed @nodakhistory, and they are trying!

They’ve even experimented with QR codes on their poster. It’s almost like the 21st Century.