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Project Details

This website uses a children’s book to stimulate interest in the deep history of California’s Channel Islands. It provides manuscripts, periodical accounts, photographs, sound recordings, maps, engravings, and the voices of expert researchers to help readers learn about the actual people, places, events, and natural and cultural history that inspired the writing of this award-winning novel.

Subjects or Themes

Native American history, Russian colonization of North America, North American fur trade, California history, maritime history, natural history, national parks

Project Language(s)

English

Time Period

Geographic Location

Project Categories

Content Type

Multi-media interactive teacher and student resources, images, artifacts, sound

Target Audience(s)

Creators

Channel Islands National Park, University of South Carolina, Center for Children’s Books

Year(s)

Launched in 2017

Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location

National Park Service

Software Employed

  • The digital archive was developed using the Django web framework with a MySQL database back-end. To transform the documents from their TEI encoded state into a human readable webpage XSLT was used. The links generated through the XSLT transformation enable users to view documents in tandem with contextualizing maps and annotations. The georeferencing software MapTiler was used to add digital copies of historic maps of the California region to a Google Maps base engine.

Labor and Support

Project was researched and developed over the period of about seven years by paid staff and volunteers at Channel Islands National Park and the University of South Carolina who worked on it as time permitted.

Project Cost

Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement

National Park Service; University of South Carolina; University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, School of Information Sciences, Center for Children’s Books; Western National Parks Association; Eastern National Parks Association; Daughters of the American Revolution; American Library Association; Student Conservation Association; Southern California Research Learning Center