The Delaware Industrial History Initiative (DIHI) is under way. The goal of DIHI is to document--digitally--Delawareans' experiences with industrialization and industrial decline. DHF has made grants available for such digitization projects, supported in part by the "We the People" program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The following project was granted funding by DHF in 2010:

Grantee and Project Name:

• University of Delaware Center for Historic Architecture and Design, Museum Studies Program, and Research & Data Management Services, Visual Catalog of the Waller Collection

Purpose:

The University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD), the Museum Studies Program and its Research Data Management Services will work together to digitize approximately 3,000 images owned by the Laurel Historical Society. The end product, the "Visual Catalog of the Waller Collection," will serve as both a digital exhibit and research database. The Waller collection provides an unprecedented glimpse of rural industry, architecture and the material culture of everyday life from the late 19th and early 20th Centuries; converting it to a digital format will make it available to scholars and students around the world. The University will then re-house the negatives and prints in formats that will preserve the media and construct a platform for a visual data catalog that can be used in future projects. The Waller Photographic Collection is comprised of approximately 5,000 photographic negatives, dating from 1897 through the mid-20th Century, which are the work of a father-son photographic team in southwestern Sussex County.

Technological Elements:

• Digital exhibit at Laurel HIstorical Society
• Research database at University of Delaware
• Platform for a visual data catalog

Target Population:

• Scholars and students around the world
• All DIHI projects, ideally, will be integrated in school and university curricula (not only as a source for teachers, but also as the product of student assignments, e.g., oral histories)
  
  

For more information on the Delaware Industrial History Initiative, click here or contact Program Officer Catherine Homsey at (302) 657-0650 ext. 14.