New Approaches: Tradeswomen Archive Project (TAP)

FAIN: HD-50869-09

California State University, Dominguez Hills Foundation (Carson, CA 90747-0001)
Vivian Price (Project Director: April 2009 to January 2011)

A planning grant to create a virtual museum and augment the holdings of a physical collection with primary artifacts about women who work in non-traditional blue-collar trades.

The Tradeswomen Archives Project is engaged in applying innovative approaches for the study and collection of digital and paper humanities materials to an emerging collection of community materials. The Level I grant would give scholars involved in humanities research and archivists amassing primary sources the opportunity to explore unique ways to gather and present materials for this collection, and for use as a potential model for other collections. Most virtual sites are for communication or presentation, but few are interactive, and fewer still are actually used to gather materials and communicate with potential contributors, in addition to presenting collections using cutting edge digital technology. The project will hold a symposium to brainstorm, plan, create and evaluate a proof of concept demonstration of a novel archival site that begins to reach virtual communities of tradeswomen and researchers using various social networking and animation tools, otherwise known as Web 2.0