WRD 401: 004 “Writing Jewish Kentucky”
Dr. Fernheimer, Spring 2019
Omeka-based Digital Annotated Bibliography Assignment
Overview
As we move into the rest of the semester, you’ll be working on several tasks simultaneously to develop your archival research, interviewing, and public presentation skills. Projects 2, 3, and 4 are meant to build upon one another and prepare you to create a “digital exhibit” in our beta Jewish Kentucky Omeka site. The annotated bibliography is the first step in that process, and it is designed as a low-stakes assignment to introduce you to discovering and digitizing archival materials while also familiarizing you with the authorship of archival metadata. This assignment, the Digitized Annotated Bibliography in Omeka with Metadata is worth 10% of your overall grade for the class. (5%, 5% reflection). You will be completing it at roughly the same time you are working on Project 3: Conducting Original Oral History Interview so I’ve included both timelines below.
Timetable
Project 2 Archival Research
2/12 Assignment Prompt Distributed
2/19 Meet in King Library UK Special Collections: Introduction to Archival Research Methods
2/21 Workshop: How to Author Metadata and Create Usable Digital Documents in Omeka (meet in King Library)
3/7 Digitized Annotated Bibliography due in Omeka with Metadata due
4/9 Revised Annotated Bibliography due in Omeka with Corrected Metadata
Project 3 Conducting Original Oral History Interview
2/12 Assignment Prompt Distributed
2/26 Interviewees Selected and Contacted
3/5 Protocol Introduced, Workshop: How to Interview
3/19 Interview Protocols due to Googledocs
4/2 Oral Histories, Release forms, and Still Images due to Dr. Jan and Kopana Terry
The Basics
Omeka is a digital curation platform, and the Nunn Center is currently developing a plug-in feature for OHMS that will allow it to seamlessly integrate Omeka exhibits. For this assignment, you will “discover” and identify a minimum of five items from the UK Special Collections Archives which you will digitize and add to our class Omeka repository, Jewish Kentucky. To accomplish this task, you will create a SCRC Researcher account, activate an Omeka account (which will be created for you), find relevant archival items (they may be photographs, maps, memos, or other documents) from the Temple Adath Israel or Jewish Federation of the Bluegrass collections (or another relevant collection), and create digital documents that will be uploaded as “items” in the Jewish Kentucky Omeka repository. For each item, you will also enter the following information in Omeka:
- Title
- Creator
- Description (describe the item in more detail and explain how it is relevant to the Jewish Kentucky collection)
- Date (yyyy or “undated”)
- Format
- Source (collection name and box information)
- Language
*Note, super cool finds might be used for the in-person exhibit featured during the Kentucky Jewish History Symposium.
The Rationale
Doing original archival research can be one of the most exhilarating (and also time-consuming and frustrating!) experiences. This assignment aims to get you excited about the archive and the unique treasures that await you there. As you begin to gather materials for your poster and professional presentation, you will likely uncover other gems that pique your curiosity. The annotated Omeka bibliography assignment allows you to explore an interest or research question you have, learn by “discovery” (or digging and rummaging through the archival materials), and experience first-hand the pleasure of archival research. By digitizing the materials and annotating them in Omeka, you are also helping the JHFE Jewish Kentucky research team build the Jewish Kentucky repository by populating it with relevant, digital artifacts.
The rationale for this project is threefold. First, learning how to conduct primary, archival research is an important skill for educators looking to inspire other scholars. It is another research method for many people working in the humanities. Second, it was our goal in designing a sustainable stewardship model for oral history project design and pedagogy to provide students at all levels with the opportunity to participate in the creation and dissemination of original knowledge. Finding relevant materials in the extant Jewish Kentucky special collections will enable you to both discover and share this knowledge with a broader public. It is our hope that you will identify items that connect to the questions and issues raised by the indexed oral histories (either those you are currently indexing or those already indexed by others). Third, the digital annotated bibliography builds allows you to pursue a research “lark” while discovering and digitizing materials that will help you and your classmates created archives-rich final indexes and digital exhibit for your final project.
This project enables you to practice and acquire the requisite research and composition skills necessary to create a digitally curated exhibit in the Omeka plug-in developed for OHMS. It will also allow you to highlight the greater historical context the oral histories call attention to by putting them in conversation with contextualizing, primary materials. To that end, the digital annotated bibliography and the research you do for it will help set you on the path to thinking about what themes will anchor your final Omeka exhibit project for this class.
Since the Omeka plug-in for OHMS is in development, our experiences working with it will serve as a round of user-experience testing for this new way to enhance access to oral history. Our experiences will serve to help the programming team revise the plug-in and the way it communicates with OHMS.
Tips for Getting Started—invention
There are at least two types of invention we’ll do collaboratively. In class, we’ll do some “speedteaming” to generate research questions and themes. Here are some of the questions students generated in past semesters. After we speedteam, I’ll update the list to include our class-specific questions as well.
- What is a Taglit Israel/Birthright trip and what is its impact on young Jewish adults’ spirituality and Jewish identity?
- What is the role of Israel in Jewish Kentuckians’ identities?
- What is the role of anti-Semitism in shaping young adults’ (college and high school students?) sense of self?
- How should students (high school/college) respond to others’ anti-Semitism?
- How do they cope with these experiences?
- To what extent do those who attend Kentucky’s public schools experience anti-Semitism?
- How prevalent is the experience of anti-Semitic acts on UK’s campus?
- What role does bar/bat mitzvah play in Jewish spiritual journey/coming-of-age?
- How is conversion treated in each branch of Judaism? What is the relation between them—i.e. how does one branch treat those who converted in another branch?
- How did Hillel arrive at UK? How comfortable do Jewish students feel here? On US campuses more broadly?
- What is the relationship between anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism?
- How does college impact one’s faith journey?
- What is the relationship between memory/remembrance and identity?
- What is the relationship between family practice and ritual observance and Jewish children’s identity?
First, we’ll “speedteam” and brainstorm some themes and questions that the oral histories prompt. Once we’ve generated this list, we’ll begin to think about how we might collectively learn more by conducting research in the archives. The second thing we’ll brainstorm is where/how to look in the primary sources to gather information for the posters/annotated bibligoraphies. Some questions to get you started on this path:
- What larger historical themes does the interviewee highlight or call attention to in his/her interview?
- What story do you want the bio/poster to tell about the interviewee, and what quotes are most memorable to you even without going back and listening again?
- If you had to summarize in one sentence what the interview is about—what would that sentence be?
- How might you best represent that story visually?
- What larger historical events/themes/contexts does that story connect to?
- What questions does the interview leave you with about these historical themes, aspects of Jewish history, heritage, culture (or Kentucky history, heritage, culture)?
- What types of visuals might complement or visually express the questions/themes you generated in response to questions 1-3?
- Where might you look for additional visuals? Yearbooks? Images from events on campus? Somewhere else?
- What types of documents might be interesting or helpful? For example, for the young women who talk about Hillel, might you want to consider excerpts from memos in the Hillel files (housed in the Temple Adath Israel Collection in UK Special Collections)? For the high school student, might you want to find print copies of the Herald Leader where he published his views about contemporary anti-Semitism. Or the high school newspaper where he attends? For the UK faculty member, might you want to contextualize her role in Hillel as a faculty advisory?
*These are just a few ideas to get you started, we’ll talk more in class.
Grading Criteria
Sources are relevant to the broader Jewish Kentucky project
Sources are annotated in a way that clearly communicates this relevance
Students follow Omeka’s Dublin Core guidelines for citation/metadata