Online History Project Keeps Memories Alive

By Michelle Nery

Exploring and Collecting History Online (ECHO) is a three-year project to record the recent history of science, technology, and medicine in the new media--the Internet. And it's the Internet's unparalleled ability to allow people across the country and the globe to connect and communicate that provides hope for capturing this important historical record before it disappears. Funded by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the ECHO project is being developed and maintained by Dan Cohen and Jim Sparrow, associate directors of the Center for History and New Media, and Roy Rosenzweig, the center's director.

"We really want to get first-hand accounts from the people who were there in the recent history of science, technology, and medicine. The people who were involved in these projects are still alive, and they may not have put down their recollections of things like the discovery of DNA or the early history of biotechnology or genetics," says Cohen.

The ECHO project also presents a significant opportunity to enlarge the relationship among historians, their subjects, and the broader audience for this history, that is, students and the general public.

"What ECHO is trying to do, and what I think is really unique about the project, is that we are trying to create new primary sources, which we do through online surveys. For instance, with the project on the Washington Metro, there is not just a presentation of the history of the Metro, which in a sense is a good standard history project, but there also is this element of 'tell your story,' which takes people to a part of the site where they can enter their recollections."

The Washington Metro: History and Memories page on the ECHO web site opens up with the question "If the Washington Metro has had an impact on your life, or influenced where you chose to live or work, please add your stories to our online survey." The page also includes an online exhibit of the planning, engineering, architecture, construction, opening, and future of the transit system. The site's many pictures include one taken on the opening day in March 1976 where 51,000 people lined up for a free five-mile ride.

Additional current projects in which you can record your memories are Claude Shannon: The Man and His Impact and Do You Remember the Moonwalk? Another feature of ECHO is the Virtual Center where more than 2,500 web sites on the history of science, technology, and medicine have been catalogued, annotated, and reviewed. "We think this is the largest collection of science and technology web sites available," says Cohen.

"We are trying to get historians to add the kind of interactivity we have on our site to their historical projects on the web. Historians are not really taught this stuff; web sites involve some level of technical savvy. We are trying to provide the know-how for historians to create a web site and surveys," says Cohen. To help with that undertaking, the web site also includes a Practical Guide, which provides assistance and consulting to those who are building history online. The guide features specifications and standards of web sites, the nuts and bolts of what it takes to build a web site, information on intellectual property rights, and guidelines for using human subjects in online research projects. Cohen adds that they also are creating web-based software that can be used instead of learning web skills through the Practical Guide.

"Traditional methods of oral history are costly," says Cohen. "ECHO provides tools that can supplement the collection of primary sources that are unparalleled in their reach because of the expanse of the Internet." The Center for History and New Media currently is exploring an alliance with the George Mason Libraries to store the project's physical records, "so that when the projects are over, we can archive them properly for people to explore one hundred years from now," Cohen says.

To learn more about the ECHO project, visit the web site at www.chnm.gmu.edu/echo.