There is already a session about faculty with little or no web training, but that underlies this too.  I am actually trying to build two websites:  one for the 50th Anniversary of the Desegregation of Tulane; and one for the 1811 Louisiana Slave Revolt.  The latter is in the context of a class.  Both have some progress already.  Ideally, we want a high level of academically vetted history content, scanned documents; and on both sites access to video–on the desegregation website that will be oral history interviews (or maybe edited versions thereof with subsidiary links to full interviews); while on both sites we will have event footage.  My experience in both cases so far has been, because no one has a real budget or time for much professional training, whoever volunteers with pretty good web skills does what they can.  The end results are not bad; but there has got to be way to do this smoother and with more best-practices especially for the historical material–my big concern–good ways to present things like timelines and images; and useful ways to present scanned materials, but for the visual interest of the public, and perhaps for future researchers.  Putting up designed-to-be-permanent major history websites like this should have some best-practices goals/ideas/standards, beyond ‘what we can do with our limited professional skills and financial and professional resources.

I am interested in discussing how faculty members who receive no training or support can develop sites and online archives to promote their research and create online communities. Much of my research has been invested in the recovery of forgotten or under-appreciated authors. As the President of a society devoted to research on an under-appreciated author, I am interested in creating an online archive of the author’s works as well as archival material for use by researchers, teachers, and students. I have seen a few useful models on line, which I could present. One model was created in part by Ed White at Tulane. He is not able to attend the conference, but I have discussed the project with him and can share some of his experience. His site was created with WordPress with support from the American Antiquarian Society.

I would like to know how others are supporting digital collection data growth and integrity. As a system and storage administrator, I’ve found it difficult to predict storage growth over time, especially within the confines of grant funding. I would also like to explore the pros and cons of hosted storage solutions with those who may have experiences to share.