Great news! The gardening blog I run with my brother won Best Green Blog at the SA Blog Awards. Check it out at www.sprig.co.za.
ccrri Archive
We have been working with the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity for the past few months, digitizing (with the help of DISA) their archive of news-clippings, to make them available online in an easy to use and searchable database. We are happy to announce that a Beta version of the website is available at https://ccrri.ukzn.ac.za/archive. Currently there are about 200 entries in the database with the remaining (estimated at around 10,000) to be added over the next year.
Comments and suggestions on how to improve the usability of the website are welcome.
SA Blog Awards winner
We are very happy to announce that one of the blogs we run, Sprig, won an award at last weekend’s SA Blog Awards. Grant attended the awards at the One and Only hotel in Cape Town where we won the Best Green Blog for 2010. This blog uses social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, and a WordPress blog to develop a community around gardening and the environment, and actively encourages submissions and comments from this community.
Check out Sprig at www.sprig.co.za
See the full list of winners at www.sablogawards.com/2010-Winners.aspx
Online Archives
As the use of digital media to create online archival spaces increases, it is interesting to note some of the themes that are being dealt with. While an overarching theme of memory and remembering is apparent, here are a few unrelated examples that use ‘archive’ in very different ways.
Alaska’s Digital Archives presents “a wealth of historical photographs, albums, oral histories, moving images, maps, documents, physical objects, and other materials from libraries, museums and archives throughout our state.” While the archive aims to document the social history of the state of Alaska, there is also a section on “Alaskan Native History and Cultures Page“. This suggests some form of cultural recognition or restitution for the state’s original, “native” population.
The September 11 Digital Archive uses “electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath.” The archive is a collection of digital items that deal with a traumatic experience. It allows for public contributions to an ongoing archive that promotes a collective, online catharsis for those affected by the 911 bombings.
The Simpsons Archive is “the Internet’s clearing house of Simpsons guides, news, and information, voluntarily maintained by members of alt.tv.simpsons and other fans around the world.” While it may seem odd to create an archive around a television series, the Simpsons is a seminal animated sitcom that deals with American culture, society, television and many aspects of the human condition. One might suggest that contributors to the archive see it as a form of nostalgia, as they recount old episodes, characters and little know facts about a series that they could relate to growing up.