project outline

Abstract

This project will potentially be a part or an annex of my PhD dissertation, which I will hopefully write during my participation in the PhD program of the History and Art History Department, at George Mason University. As my dissertation project will focus on the comparative analysis of two neighbor towns-Ribnita and Rezina-situated in the north-eastern corner of this map, which represent a de jure non-existent, but a de facto entity called Transnistria, my web project will entail a structure of different layers (maps, images, photos, texts), which will illustrate the evolution of these two localities during the first half of the 20th century.

The necessity of the project

In addition to the objective necessity of fulfilling certain academic requirements, the project will focus on the achievement of following goals:

1. It will serve as a platform for the cooperation involving both the scholars in the field and people in the region
2. It can be an instrument for the exploration of the online environment in different conflict-resolution strategies
3. It will serve as a valuable tool for teachers and students who want to explore the journey of "real people" through different political, social and economic contexts.
   

Main features

First of all, it will be a web based collection of different tagged items pertaining to the history of the region. Secondly, it will be possible for visitors not only to comment on each entity of the collection, but also to tag different elements inside the items. Finally, the web resource will also have a section, which will deal with my dissertation. This section will display an interface similar to a blog, with entries referring to my ideas on the dissertation and readings on this subject.

Audience

I have mentioned some thoughts on this issue, in my previous post. Since at that time, I was thinking about two projects, I might say that at this stage, the audience is a sum of the both projects' audiences. Thus, it is targeted toward scholars and local communities.

Technologies

For this undertaking I consider mainly two technologies such as: Omeka and GIS. First tool is for the management of the collection and second is mainly for the creation of complex environments from the individual items.

Interactive elements

Referring to the existence of certain Web 2.0 applications, I would say that, initially this project will rely mainly on the "Comments" feature enabling each visitor to comment on the items and on any blog post. The next step would be to develop the trust of the community and to involve it into the online mechanisms of documents collection.