October 24, 2012
Story submitted by: Jan Blodgett
The Davidson College Archives and Special Collections is launching a new online Community Space (sites.davidson.edu/archives/community) for crowdsourcing and community archives projects. Within the space, users will be able to help with transcriptions and identifying photographs and also upload photographs and stories. The first transcription project is the Civil War diary of William E. Ardrey, Davidson College class of 1862. Ardrey was present at Appomattox Courthouse for the surrender of the CSA troops. Following this diary, there are additional diaries in his collection and minute books of women’s organizations waiting to be transcribed. In addition, he site will have sets of photographs from the archives collection online for people to provide information about the people, places and events depicted.
For the community archives portion of the site, users will be able to share their photographs of the college and area as well as stories and memories. A special component is a mapping project “Under Lake Norman.” This project seeks to identify and provide images of buildings and farms that were flooded when the lake was created in 1963. Shared images will be part of an interactive map of the lake.
