What does it mean to compose? Most of us probably think of music, maybe classical music, when we hear the word compose. Of course, a composition is much more. Compositions involve the creative and even artistic rendering of ideas using various modes to express. We might compose in text or with paint or with sound or even with physical objects. Today, compositions are taking on a new meaning with the emergence of the new technologies. In this activity, students use a free audio software program called Audacity to compose an Historical Soundscape. A soundscape is a collection of sounds that emerge from a natural or human-made environment. For this activity, students can compose sounds to interpret an historical event, place, or people.

This project involves the digitization of a small of collection of physical resources. These resources are private in nature, but are also representative of persons, places or events that may not be directly related to a personal experience. The primary task in this work was to make digital representations of physical historical resources. As a necessary part of the project, the digital resources were presented in electronic formats. From this work, a set of guidelines for using digitizing historical resources will be developed.

The materials being digitized are artifacts and/or paper-based historical resources (e.g. photographs, letters, and records).

The digitization effort consisted of three activities, not including the presentation of the digital materials. These three digitization activities include scanning, photographing and presenting.

For more information on the project, please see The Digital History Lab