the class I was teaching is a 500 level class on uh War documentaries we spent
the entire semester looking at various documentary representations of various
military conflicts the library space was pretty crucial in the sense that it
offered not only a place to do the project but a place to kind of figure
out what the project was going to be I want to do a collaborative multimedia
project I am going to be like you creating the project and learning how to
do it and we are going to come up with the idea together we are going to you
know fumble through it together we're going to learn the technology together
we're going to shape it and we're all going to be doing the same thing each of
us in the class took a war in which Americans had been involved a conflict
um sometimes they were Undeclared we had to collect some DVDs we had to get
archival materials so the way the project was structured we had three
layered tracks we had um image we had sound and then we had text and so it was
a three screen installation everybody working on essentially three separate
films one that shows representations of death one that shows representations of
Technology uh and one that shows text to kind of Orient the viewer putting those
three separate films together to have a simultaneous experience this project
really uh opened my eyes to all the possibilities especially in Hunt Library
not just for research in the traditional sense but for the places that research
can go in the future took the standard toolbox and it just kind of you know
kicked it to a whole other level gave me a lot of appreciation for the Hands-On
aspect of teaching you begin to understand a little bit more about what
goes behind the making of meaning through media without that group of
people from all over the parts of the University uh this project probably
wouldn't have come together and I think that collaboration between students and
Librarians and faculty will Define the 21st century academic experience people
were going to see it outside of the class that it was for more than a grade
things that might have once been tucked away in essays and journals can now get
out much more easily and become Sparks for discussion just think about the
potential for this as the kind of project that can really give meaning to
a 21st century library and to a 21st century classroom this is the next
experience for
sure