Noted digital historian Edward L. Ayers, whose The Valley of the Shadow project has been very influential, became the President of the University of Richmond last July, and now the innovative History Engine project has moved with him from the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia to Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab.

Here's an excerpt from the "What is the History Engine?" page:

The History Engine project aims to enhance historical education and research for teachers, students, and scholars alike. The Engine allows undergraduate professors to introduce a more collaborative and creative approach to history into their classrooms, while maintaining rigorous academic standards. The core of the HE project is student-written episodes—individual snippets of daily life throughout American history from the broadest national event to the simplest local occurrence. Students construct these episodes from one or more primary sources found in university and local archives, using historical context gleaned from secondary sources to round out their analysis. Students then post their entries in our cumulative database, giving their classmates and fellow participants around the country the opportunity to read and engage with their work.

Read more about it at "The Little Engine That Can."

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Digital Humanities, Web 2.0/Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.