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My Name is Pastor Michelle Thomas and I have 10 jobs (literally). I am a local Pastor, Historian, Entrepreneur, Loudoun County Heritage Commissioner, President of the NAACP Loudoun Branch, Elected Official (Loudoun County Soil and Water Director) and the president of the Loudoun Freedom Center (a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to protecting, preserving and promoting African American History in Loudoun County). I'm looking forward to learning new tools and methodologies to bring the LFC museum artifact collections, primary source documents, storying telling, Afro-terpreting, Historic Sites & Trails Tours and Unique African American Research Methodology online into the digital and virtual universe. I'm excited to learn, while engaging in this new virtual frontier.

Thursday, June 21, 2018

The World At My Finger Tips: Digital Material

Digital Material is a 21st century researcher or historian best friend. But having digital material readily available at your finger tip isn't magic, it requires work. Some digitization projects are more difficult than others but its all manual up loading. Is digitization necessary? Yes for several reasons:
1.  Preservation - you can preserve your material in any format longer when digitized.
2. Accessibility - Sharing and duplication of the material is made easier.

Want to get started saving your important history today, here are a simple list of the 5 hardware tools you'll need to start digitizing your material.
  • PC (mac or windows)
  • Tablet
  • Smartphone
  • Digital Camera
  • Scanner
All of the hardware tools come fully equipped with imaging software or an app, depending on the device you choose. Here are a few suggestions of popular editing software that you can use to enhance your newly digitized materials.
  • Image Editor - Adobe Photoshop
  • Audio and Video Editor - imovie

Reference Material - Need a boost to help you get going? Here's a great website that will help you create and produce digital content across multiple platforms. Click here and start your digitization journey now. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1386/jmpr.3.3.155?journalCode=rjmp20#preview

My Project: is to digitize and make available the primary source document from the former Belmont Plantation. Here are some example of primary source documents that I have digitized from the Belmont Plantation.

Belmont Slave Cemetery Field Markers

Ludwell Lee Slave List





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1 comment:

  1. Professor Charles EvansJune 21, 2018 at 9:53 AM

    "you can preserve your material in any format longer when digitized." This is very true, but the caveat is that you don't want to lose the digital material either. There are all kinds of ways that digital material can disappear, just like a physical object.
    So, with your project, how exactly do you intend to publish your digital materials?

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