User:Rzantjer

Rebecca Zantjer is an undergraduate student at Michigan State University studying Professional Writing and in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.

MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online
MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online is a digital humanities research center located on the campus of Michigan State University (MSU). MATRIX’s mission statement declares that the center’s purpose is, “to serve as a catalyst for and incubator of the emerging fields and disciplines resulting from the integration of the humanities with information technologies .” Now in it's eighteenth year of operation, MATRIX has grown into a premier research center recognized by international digital humanities organizations. MATRIX was also recognized by the American Council of Learned Societies as a leading national research center for cyberinfrastructure in the humanities and social sciences. Currently, MATRIX is invested in a number of projects that build capacity among students and disadvantaged researchers and scholars around the world, with a particular focus on research that relates to Africa and the African diaspora.

History
MATRIX began unofficially in September 1994 when Professor Mark Kornbluh came to MSU and began to host H-Net— a series of listservs used to connect the humanities and social sciences communities —and a pioneering online book review journal entitled H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The College of Arts and Letters developed a center for that purpose and dedicated some physical space and administrative support to help complete the project. The center was named MATRIX and operated periodically to support and maintain the H-Net infrastructure.

In 1998 two developments occurred that helped to transition MATRIX from a project-by-project production model to a continuously operating research center, including the awarding of a $3.5 million Digital Libraries II grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that allowed MATRIX to develop the National Gallery of the Spoken Word and the creation of the Graduate Certificate Program in Humanities Computing in the College of Arts and Letters. This graduate certification program provided MATRIX with a source of skilled student labor which they could then use to advance planned projects.

More history needed….

KORA
Beginning in this year MATRIX began designing and developing a content management system that would adhere to industry best practices and be custom-suited to the metadata and preservation needs of the digital humanities. The result of this research and design was KORA (formerly known as Project Builder), which is described as the “open-source, database-driven, online digital repository application for complex multimedia objects (text, images, audio, video) created by MATRIX .” KORA has become known for its flexible metadata schemes, browser-based access services, and capacity to upload, process, and visualize large amounts of data. Now in its third iteration, KORA is available on an open-access basis at SourceForge.net

Landmark Projects
MATRIX has contributed significantly to the following projects:


 * 1. H-Net- MATRIX currently hosts and supports H-Net, an international consortium of scholars and teachers that pioneers the use of new communication technologies with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.


 * 2. The Quilt Index-The Quilt Index is the world’s largest online database of quilts, quilt-ephemera, and quilt-related knowledge. The Quilt Index uses MATRIX’s KORA to organize over 100,000 quilt records.


 * 3. American Black Journal- The ABJ digitizes and preserves online video recordings taken from the Detroit Black Journal, a television show that aired on Detroit Public Television from 1968-1998 and delivered news “from the Black perspective.”


 * 4. Slave Biographies- The Slave Biographies database digitizes and makes searchable over 100,000 records on individuals bought and sold in the Atlantic slave trade. These records can then be sorted into visualizations that provide researchers with information on each enslaved person’s genealogy, ethnicity, and migration journey.


 * 5. Vietnam Project Archive- The Vietnam Project Archive makes available the remnants of a government-backed, university-assisted nation-building program that took place between Michigan State University and the People’s Republic of South Vietnam in the years immediately preceding the Vietnam War.


 * 6. African Online Digital Library- The African Online Digital Library is a portal to multimedia collections about Africa. The AODL contains a number of smaller projects that digitize and contextualize primary sources about Africa and the African diaspora, including:


 * Overcoming Apartheid- Overcoming Apartheid presents first-hand accounts and primary sources of the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. This site also comes with a curriculum guide to help teachers incorporate apartheid materials and sources in their teaching.


 * Community Video Education Trust (CVET)- The CVET archive is a public video record of the height of apartheid resistance in South Africa during the late 1980s and early 1990s.


 * Africa Past & Present- Also known as Afripod, Africa Past and Present is an academic podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora.