About Us
Who are we?
We are a group of graduate students enrolled in the History Graduate program at California State University San Marcos. The WWII History Harvest is an assignment for History 502: History and Applied Media Technology, a required course for the Master of Arts degree in History.
For more information about our project and program contact Professor Jill Watts at jwatts@csusm.edu.
Why are we pursuing this project?
Preserving the past in a digital format provides us with multiple benefits. It allows the community to connect with the past in an accessible format. These artifacts are easily shared through our digital archive. We also wish to gain experience working with primary sources first hand, as well as providing a coherent and engaging way for people to interact with the past. The variety of artifacts provided by our volunteers brings a broad sample of people’s remembrance of the past.
What is our approach?
We began the History Harvest by archiving items collected and contributed by members of the History 502 class and the Digital History Lab Assistants. Our goal is to collect items that have been saved by families and individuals, digitize them, and display them on this website. We return the original items to the contributors and we retain the digital image.
The next step in our History Harvest is to put out a call within the campus community, primarily focusing on the History Department, for contributions to our archive. Because of the strong ties that the San Diego area maintains to the U.S. military, we discovered that the area contains a vast wealth of resources on WWII. However given our time constraints, as we begin this project, our focus will be limited. We still believe that the selection we are using is representative of the community due to our varying backgrounds and ties to World War II. The variety of artifacts provided by our contributors brings a broad sample of people’s remembrance of the past.
Where did we get the idea?
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineered the approach a few years ago by inviting the community to contribute to the understanding of the past through a collection of personal artifacts and using a website to display them for public viewing. Their website can be accessed at http://historyharvest.unl.edu.
History Harvest Researchers
Kevin Boyce
Teri DelCamp
Max Gantman
Katie Gressitt-Diaz
Vance Osterhout
Cheryl Thomas
Anthony Snellings
Chelsea Snover
Kevin Stahl
Digital History Lab Assistants/Researchers
Stephanie Brimson
Amanda Sauer
Contributors (A special thanks to those below)
Patty Canas and Eric Simon
Frank Durbino
Professor Ann Elwood
Neal Garrison
Kit-Bacon Gressitt
Cindy Johnson
Alexander Leithoff, Richard Leithoff, and Nicholas Leithoff
Major Mark Murphy
Professor Alyssa Sepinwall and Mr. Irving Rosenberg
Kathleen O'Connell Reese
Faculty Lead
Professor Jill Watts
For information about the Department of History at California State University San Marcos please contact us at history@csusm.edu.