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WSU-led cultural preservation initiative wins award

The Society of American Archivists has presented its Council Exemplary Service Award to the Sustainable Heritage Network, a project led by Washington State University for digital preservation of cultural heritage.

Kim Christen
Christen

The SHN is managed by the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) at WSU and works in partnership with the Association for Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums to complement the work of indigenous peoples globally to preserve, share and manage cultural heritage and knowledge. Kim Christen, associate professor of English and director of the Sustainable Heritage Network (SHN) and the CDSC, accepted the award at the archivist society’s annual meeting, July 26, in Portland, Oregon.

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WSU News

Electronic Literature Organization moves to WSU Vancouver

The Electronic Literature Organization, which promotes and preserves “born-digital literature,” is moving west to Washington State University Vancouver from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dene Grigar
Grigar

WSU Vancouver, where organization president Dene Grigar is a professor and director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program, will host the 20-year-old organization, which migrates around the U.S. periodically, for the next five years.

Grigar said the premise of born-digital literature is that “the computer can be used as a form of creative expression.” It’s also a genre that must be read electronically; “it’s not like Emily Dickinson on the web,” she said. As examples, she cited poet Thom Swiss’ “Shy Boy,” which features music, scheduling and text animation, and screenwriter Kate Tullinger’s interactive digital novel “Inanimate Alice,” among others.

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The Oregonian

WSU News

Kiggins presents radio-drama production of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’

If the spectacle of a rich and famous man repeatedly forcing himself upon innocent women freaks you out, stay away from the Kiggins Theatre on Thursday night. Portland radio dramatist Sam Mowry and his Willamette Radio Workshop have unleashed Martian invaders at the Kiggins during several recent Halloween seasons. But this year they’ll bring the vampire back to life instead. Or, that is, back to un-death.

“Dracula” is so effective because it invokes a sly and seductive menace that absorbs and transforms what it touches, according to John Barber, who teaches in Washington State University Vancouver’s Creative Media and Digital Culture program, and who first facilitated bringing Mowry and crew to the Kiggins years ago as part of a project called “Reimagined Radio.”

“The novel examines society’s fears of the unnatural during late 19th- and 20th-century Victorian society,” he said. “The focus of its many interpretations has come to be how abnormality can evolve from one source and infect the surrounding society with discord, misfortunes and evil. Dracula, the vampire, infects others with his evil.”

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The Columbian

Daughters of Hanford Wins History Award

The Washington State Historical Society will present the David Douglas Award to the Daughters of Hanford, an educational collaboration between Northwest News Network correspondent Anna King, freelance photographer Kai-Huei Yau, and Doug Gast, associate professor of fine arts and director of the Digital Technology and Culture (DTC) Program at WSU Tri-Cities, with assistance from DTC student interns and community members.

Doug Gast
Doug Gast

Daughters of Hanford is oral histories, portraits and personal archives of women who changed the World War II plutonium site, and women who were changed by it. It’s a series, a museum installation, and a radio documentary.

The Douglas Award honors projects, exhibits and digital presentations that inform and expand appreciation of Washington state history. The award will be conferred at a ceremony in Tacoma in September.

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Northwest News Network

Making tech connections at Vancouver’s first Digital Technology Expo

The event draws from a budding community

Dene Grigar
Dene Grigar

Helping businesses and their employees fire up their digital technology skills is the challenge that Chandra Chase, the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce’s programs and communications director, and a large contingent of local technology professionals hope to address at Vancouver’s first Digital Technology Expo on Thursday. It’s a mostly free event that showcases local resources as well as companies that are building the foundation for a growing digital technology job sector. » More …