Visit Project Project Details
Shansi: Oberlin and Asia is a teaching and research digital publication that documents the activity of Oberlinians in Asia from the 1880s to the 1950s. It contains materials from the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association Records and associated personal paper collections at the Oberlin College Archives, representing only a small percentage of the total amount of materials in the College Archives that relate to the work of missionaries and Shansi Representatives in China as well as other countries. It includes biographies, an interactive timeline, a digitized film clip, and information on teaching with the collection.
Subjects or Themes
Chinese History and Society; Republic of China (1912-1949); Missionaries; Education; Agricultural Reform; Animal Husbandry; Boxer Rebellion, China, 1899-1901
Project Language(s)
English, Chinese
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Content Type
Images, Artifacts, Text, Teacher Resources, Timeline, Video
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Project team members (Oberlin College): Ann Sherif, Professor of Japanese; Bonnie Cheng, Art Department Co-Chair, Associate Professor of Art and East Asian Studies; Carl Jacobson, Director (1981-2012), Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association; Ken Grossi, College Archivist and Anne Salsich, Assistant Archivist. Student project assistants: Alyson Halpert, Class of 2013 and Amanda Tobin, Class of 2011. Other library staff members who provided vital assistance include Alan Boyd, Associate Director of Libraries; Xi Chen, East Asian and Web Development Librarian; Sarah Richardson, Digital Projects Intern; Cecilia Robinson, Electronic and Continuing Resources Assistant; and Forrest H. Rose, Oberlin Center for Technologically Enhanced Teaching.
Year(s)
2010-11
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
Oberlin College Libraries
Software Employed
Labor and Support
Project team members, which had to include faculty, submitted a proposal for grant funding in 2010. The Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association director, two faculty members, and the College archivists selected materials for inclusion and wrote sections of the interface pages. Archives staff and students digitized materials and supplied metadata for editing. The East Asian Librarian created the interface pages in HTML. The assisant archivist designed the timeline and wrote the section on the films, in addition to directing the digitization effort. An Oberlin employee in The Center for Technology Enhanced Teaching edited a digitized film for a brief clip. A library assistant prepared batch loads of images and metadata to CONTENTdm. The project was completed in 2011. The project team made a public presentation with an emphasis on the project's use for teaching and learning.
Project Cost
Partnerships, funding sources, or grant-funding acknowledgement
Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to the Five Colleges of Ohio (Next Steps in the Next Generation Library: Integrating Digital Collections into the Liberal Arts Curriculum, 2010). Partners include East Asian Studies faculty, the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association director, Oberlin College archivists and librarians, The Center for Technology Enhanced Teaching, the Archives Digital Projects Intern and two student assistants.
