After working on my co-op with American School of the Deaf (ASD) during recent summer with researches and cataloging their archive. I realized that American School for the Deaf has tremendous collections related to deaf studies, its history of first deaf institution, their founding fathers and e.t.c. of historical artifact but they didn't have a proper digital archive to share with their community. Right there was a breaking point for me because after taking up Museum studies course with digital age, these historical artifacts and informations should be shared with public via online. The concept of developing proper digital archive doesn't only apply to ASD but hopefully applies to other libraries with deaf studies collection / archive.
I already knew as a fact that American School of the Deaf is in the process of building their connection with Connecticut Digital Archive under University of Connecticut library. I'm uncertain about Gallaudet University with their digital archive since there is insufficient information about their historical artifacts online. For my senior thesis project, I will need to do more research and do some interviews with curators / directors about their digital archives and their ownership rights with their archive artifacts. Hopefully, we could discuss about opportunity of develop and improvise their digital archive from there.
Your topic is very interesting, and definitely worth pursuing. When you say you need to do interviews with curators/directors do you mean with curators/directors at Galladuet University?
ReplyDeleteSusana, this is such an important topic for the Deaf Community, as well as a great way to engage hearing society with information about Deaf Culture. It is such a shame we all missed out on the opportunity to learn about your work during the internship, but I look forward to seeing how your project develops over the semester.
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