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 The Delaware Industrial History Initiative (DIHI) is under way. The goal of DIHI is to document--digitally--Delawareans' experiences with industrialization and industrial decline such as changes in agriculture and aquaculture, and environmental, urbanization, and immigration patterns. 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 grant application process was opened up to librarians, historians, archivists and non-profit organizations that can best tell an industrial history story relevant to a community. Applicants were encouraged to propose digital exhibits, podcasts, and other topically relevant digital artifacts that can be accessed on the internet.
The following organizations were selected to receive DIHI funding for projects that will be up and running by March 31, 2011.
- Hagley Museum and Library, Industrial Brandywine History
- The Lewes Historical Society, Digitizing Records of the Lewes Maritime Industries
- Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village, Your Food, Our Farms
- Berkana, Center for Media and Education, Inc., Delaware's Coastal Zone Act: The Legacy of a Rebel with a Conscience
- University of Delaware Center for Historic Architecture and Design, Museum Studies Program, and Research & Data Management Services, Visual Catalog of the Waller Collection
- Milford Commission on Landmarks and Museums, Archiving Milford's Visual History
DIHI's focus is on Delaware's industrial history, across all three counties and over time; therefore, agencies statewide are engaged in these projects. Because digitization and the Internet allow for remote sharing of information, DHF hopes to connect some of Delaware's heritage agencies, who have historically been isolated (technologically, geographically and economically) from one another.
DHF will make technical support available to resolve digitization, preservation, and indexing issues so that archives will be available on the Internet. Grantees will be expected to adhere to high standards for digital archiving and are encouraged to exploit existing technologies, such as the Geographic Information System to their projects. 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).*
About Industrial History
DHF believes that industrial history makes for rich humanities reflection, noting that it is: "about who we are within the world of work, technology, and commerce, and where we want to go." Industrialization is one of the few common experiences linking together virtually every human being on the globe. We are, and have been, both producers and consumers, knitted together through broadening networks of exchange and communication.
Industries have life cycles, and each generation is impacted differently by industry. Finance and technology--and along with them workers, skills, livelihoods, resources, environmental change, waste, risk, and culture--move in complex and unpredictable ways, fickle with its favor, and have impacted and been impacted by globalization. But our most direct experience with industrial change--both growth and decline--occurs on the local level, where we share common experiences with friends and family, co-workers and neighbors.
Delawareans' experience with the chemical, finance, industrial agriculture, aquaculture and renewable energy production industries gives us a particularly interesting vantage point. The average citizen may need look no further than his neighbor to recognize the ebb, flow, and consequences of the state's industries. (Think auto workers and bankers.)
Geographically, Delaware straddles the Mason-Dixon Line, the colloquial boundary between the industrial North and agricultural South. Delaware's experience challenges this formulation by juxtaposing historical dichotomies like urban and rural, manufacturing and agriculture, free and slave labor, and modern and traditional upon which the standard narrative about modernization--featured in many student text books--depends.
About We the People
Delaware's industrial journey is not just about what industries have risen and fallen, but also about how our civic leaders have facilitated and responded to changes in our industrial landscape. Because DIHI will capture the experience of Delawareans, across the different industries of all three counties and over time, the project also dovetails with DHF's current humanities theme--civic discourse--and has enabled DHF to apply for funding through the We the People program of the National Endowment for the Humanities (a program designed to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history, culture, and democratic principles)
For more information, contact Program Officer Catherine Homsey at (302) 657-0650 ext. 14.
*For detailed information on what was required of the applicants, click on the links below.
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