The Center for Public History and Digital Humanities is a

digital humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...

center in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, based in the Department of History at Cleveland State University.

History

Although some projects and collaborations date back to 2000, the Center was formally founded in 2008 by Dr. Mark Tebeau and Dr. Mark Souther as a vehicle for undertaking public history and

digital history Digital history is the use of digital media to further historical analysis, presentation, and research. It is a branch of the digital humanities and an extension of quantitative history, cliometrics, and computing. Digital history is commonly d ...

initiatives across numerous grants, under the Teaching American History (TAH) program, funded by the

US Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...

. The Center's primary focuses have been on developing the Curatescape mobile-based

framework, curating the

metropolitan area with the Cleveland Historical mobile app, and collecting oral history interviews that document the development of the region through personal, historical, institutional, and geographically based narratives. In addition to numerous historical, educational and professional development web resources, the Center's first large-scale project was the Euclid Corridor History Project. In 2013, Mark Souther became Director of the Center after Mark Tebeau left to become Director of Public History at Arizona State University.

Euclid Corridor History Project

In 2005, the Greater Cleveland RTA began building a bus rapid transit line along Euclid Avenue from

Public Square A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true geometric square, used for community gatherings. ...

University Circle University Circle is a district in the neighborhood of University on the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio. One of America's densest concentrations of cultural attractions and performing arts venues, it includes such world-class institutions as the C ...

and then to East Cleveland. Included in the project was funding for the integration of several

public art Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...

components.Integrated Art Installed Along Corridor.
''RTA Euclid Corridor Silverline project page'' Retrieved on April 6, 2009. In addition to art installations and other aesthetic improvements, more than a dozen interactive

touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...

kiosks Historically, a kiosk () was a small garden pavilion open on some or all sides common in Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward. Today, several examples of this type of kiosk still exist in an ...

were placed along the corridor. Each Euclid Corridor Virtual History Kiosk includes transit timetables and RTA news, as well as audiovisual exhibits focusing on the history of Euclid Avenue and the city of Cleveland.Euclid Corridor Oral History Project.
''Cleveland State University'' Retrieved on April 6, 2009. More than 60 historical sites, themes, and people are represented on the kiosks, which utilize oral history audio, historic and contemporary images, and brief historical essays to curate the city's history.Euclid Corridor Transportation Project (Virtual History Kiosk).
''RTA'' Retrieved on November 3, 2013. The kiosks were created by the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities and were designed by Epstein Design Partners in

Shaker Heights, Ohio Shaker Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2020 Census, the city population was 29,439. Shaker Heights is an inner-ring streetcar suburb of Cleveland, abutting the eastern edge of the city's limits. In July 1911, a ...

. The Euclid Corridor History Project won the 2011 Public History Award from the Ohio Academy of History.Public History Award, Ohio Academy of History
'Public History Award, Ohio Academy of History'' Retrieved on November 3, 2013.

Cleveland Historical and Curatescape

In 2010, the Center released Cleveland Historical, a website and mobile application for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

and Android devices. Cleveland Historical garnered one of two Honorable Mentions for the 2011 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History.Outstanding Public History Project Award, National Council on Public History
''Outstanding Public History Project Award, National Council on Public History'' Retrieved November 3, 2013. Cleveland Historical is the first implementation of a larger mobile platform called Curatescape. Previously known as Mobile Historical, Curatescape is a location-based

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a phone, tablet, or watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop applications which are designed to run on d ...

designed to "curate your landscape" through the use of geo-located interpretive texts, archival film and images, oral history (and other) audio, and short documentary videos. Curatescape's development was funded by Cleveland State University and the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

(NEH) in 2011. As of October 2020, more than 30 universities, museums, preservation organizations, historical societies, and humanities councils deployed Curatescape apps. Additional projects run on the open-source web-only Curatescape framework.Curatescape, A web and mobile app framework for curating the landscape
'Curatescape website'' Retrieved May 10, 2016. The Curatescape framework is built on

Omeka Omeka (also known as Omeka Classic) is a free, open-source content management system for online digital collections. As a web application, it allows users to publish and exhibit cultural heritage objects, and extend its functionality with the ...

, an open source archival Content Management System developed by the

Center for History and New Media Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virgin ...

at George Mason University.Update: Cleveland Historical to Mobile Historical
'Update: Cleveland Historical to Mobile Historical '' Retrieved August 2, 2011. In 2014, Center director Mark Souther and Cleveland State University colleague Meshack Owino obtained a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant for "Curating Kisumu: Adapting Mobile Humanities Interpretation in East Africa," an eighteen-month project that investigated optimizing Curatescape in the developing world. As part of this grant, the Center partnered with the

Maseno University Maseno University is a public university based in the Maseno district of the city of Kisumu, Kenya, situated along the Equator. It was fully fledged as a university in 2001, after being a constituent college of Moi University for a decade. It is o ...

Department of History and Archaeology in

Kisumu Kisumu ( ) is the third-largest city in Kenya after the capital, Nairobi, and the coastal city of Mombasa (census 2019). It is the third-largest city after Kampala and Mwanza in the Lake Victoria Basin. Apart from being an important polit ...

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi ...

. The initial project website, called MaCleKi, launched in September 2015, and the project white paper followed the close of the grant. The project continued under an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant awarded in 2017, which resulted in the release of Curatescape for

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

and additional content on MaCleKi.

PlacePress

In 2020, the Center began developing PlacePress, a WordPress plugin for publishing location-based tours and stories with a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. The plugin features custom post types for locations and tours, a global map block, and maximum flexibility for administrative users. It is slated for completion in 2021.

Oral history

To date, the Center has collected more than 1,160 oral history interviews, including Northeast Ohioans who range in notoriety from regular citizens to renowned artists, architects, and political figures. Over one-third of the collection comprises interviews conducted by community partners, including K-12 teachers. The remainder were conducted by Cleveland State University students, often in concert with community collaborations. Particular strengths within the collection include architecture, consumerism, environment, gardens, industry, leisure, music, neighborhoods, parks, politics, race and ethnicity, religion, social activism, suburbs, and urban planning. These interviews are made available online with a Creative Commons license from the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection.Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection
''Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection'' Retrieved May 2, 2014. In 2016, the Center developed an Omeka-based "discovery" site for the collection, Cleveland Voices.

References

External links

Center for Public History and Digital Humanities

Department of History at Cleveland State University

Cleveland Historical

Curatescape

PlacePress

Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection

Cleveland Voices
{{DEFAULTSORT:Center For Public History And Digital Humanities Digital Humanities Centers Cleveland State University History organizations based in the United States 2008 establishments in Ohio