The Preservation of a Campus: a Cooperative Grant Project with a Digital Product

Abstract

In the summer of 2006, the University of Kansas was awarded a $130,000 grant from the Getty Foundation. The grant is part of the Foundation's campus heritage initiative to help colleges and universities plan for the preservation of their significant historic buildings, sites and landscapes.

Three units of the University, Design and Construction Management, Scholarly Digital Initiatives, and the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, will be working together for the first time to create an innovative and dynamic web-based resource as part of this preservation initiative

The outcome will be a multi-tiered web presentation of the KU campus' historic context during three periods of significant development, featuring photographic images, campus maps, and landscape and architectural drawings and renderings. Important university documents will also contribute to the historical and enduring value of the final product. The presentation will include a general overview and listing of improvements for five historically registered facilities and four to six additional contributing facilities.

The technological approach to creating the presentation consists of an XML document framework with links into a repository of images and into the University’s institutional repository of scholarly information, KU Scholarworks, as well as links to external sources of historical information about the campus. Creating a preservable web resource with perpetual access is another important goal of the project.

Two presenters, the Director of Academic Enterprise Systems and the University Archivist, will discuss methods of collaboration, project management, creating the content, and leveraging technology in creative new ways. Luna Insight, XTF and XML text, DSpace, and Basecamp for project management are technologies in use for sharing image files and documents among both on-site and off-site project partners and for building the web presentation.