Faculty Publications
Migration And Inclusive Transnational Heritage: Digital Innovation And The New Roots Latino Oral History Initiative
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Internet-based digital technologies, Latin America, Migration, Omeka, U.S. South
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Oral History Review
Volume
46
Issue
2
First Page
277
Last Page
299
Abstract
Digital, Internet-based technologies present oral historians with opportunities to build an "inclusive transnational heritage" that enables users, especially migrants, to get a better understanding of countries to which they plan to immigrate or of the developments and changes in the countries from which they emigrated to document their experiences moving to and settling in new destinations. In this article, we offer new insight into the kinds of oral history practices that can advance a paradigm of this inclusive transnational heritage with migrant populations. We describe new tools and strategies designed to facilitate global access to oral histories and engage migrants and other public audiences in heritage initiatives. This recent project of the New Roots/Nuevas Raíces Oral History Initiative at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill created an Internet-based digital information system and bilingual website by innovating with the open-source software Omeka. We describe the process of designing this system collaboratively with migrant narrators, Latin American scholars, and K-12 teachers and describe the technical aspects of tools we developed to map migrant journeys, sync data from institutional archival systems, and facilitate the online presentation of content in two languages. We consider the ethical and methodological challenges of engaging with internationally mobile populations who settle in new regions where they face linguistic, socioeconomic, and legal challenges that hinder access to educational and governmental resources.
Department
Rod Library
Original Publication Date
8-1-2019
DOI of published version
10.1093/ohr/ohz011
Repository
UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa
Language
en
Recommended Citation
Gill, Hannah; Vos, Jaycie; Villa-Torres, Laura; and Ramirez, Maria Silvia, "Migration And Inclusive Transnational Heritage: Digital Innovation And The New Roots Latino Oral History Initiative" (2019). Faculty Publications. 484.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/facpub/484