Manufacturing Pasts: learning about industrial change in twentieth century Britain

www.le.ac.uk/library

Manufacturing Pasts: learning about industrial change in twentieth century Britain

Terese Bird, Learning Technologist/SCORE Research FellowLibrary Conference Day, 13 June 2013

Objectives

• Increase use and understanding of primary historical sources by students of modern British industrial history

• By providing teachers/lecturers with online resources which they can easily use and adapt to fit with their teaching

What we did …

• Took Leicester as an example of the changing British industrial city

• Digitised selected photographs, company records, factory plans, newspaper articles, maps, oral history interviews from University and Record Office collections and put them online

• Created learning resources based on them

• Created ‘toolkit’ on how to use the resources

Benjamin Russell, 1960s

Four themes …

• Social life of the factory

• The factory & the community

• De-industrialisation

• Conservation & urban regeneration

http://tinyurl.com/d4u3oc9

Making the history accessible

Making the history accessible - how• Created a website on top of the database

• Used social media

• Mobile devices

• iTunes U

www.le.ac.uk/manufacturingpasts

Manufacturing Pasts on iTunes U

Making the history accessible –to whom• Researchers

• Urban History students

• College students – extended project

• Local community

• Local historians

• Digital humanities scholars

Addressing needs of digital humanities researchers

Toolkit for researchers:

• Using visual sources in historical research

• Using oral testimony in historical research

• Provenance, judgment

Tools for students & teachers:

• Glossary, reference

• How to make your own

Powerful examples

• Sound clip – ‘It was silent’

• Virtual tour: Historic and Industrial Leicester