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Enabling Access to the Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives: A Case Study in Digital Archive Design
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- Author / Creator
- Peter, Cate
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In the 1930s, over 2 300 former enslaved people were interviewed, taped, and photographed as part of the American Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). No other initiative recorded to such a great extent the voices of the formerly enslaved. Although this collection has great utility for scholarly research and public education, the current online archive from the Library of Congress is poorly designed and difficult to use. For my Master’s thesis, I have worked to conceptualize what an ethical, accessible online archive for the FWP Slave Narratives might look like. I have approached this task in three parts: a consideration, and emphatic rejection, of the principles of neutrality; extensive study of the history and complexity of the Narratives; and examination of how the affordances of digital archives could be used to make the Narratives more accessible. This work functions as a case study of the challenges in designing online archives for complicated historical documents.
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- Subjects / Keywords
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- Graduation date
- Fall 2020
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Arts
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- License
- Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.