South Shore 'Digital' Memory Project Open House May 6
May, 1999

An open house and reception May 6 at the Flippin High School Media Center will bring together longtime residents with teenagers from Flippin High School and sponsors of the new South Shore Memory Project, a digital history library.

Flippin Middle School and High School students in the gifted and talented program of Dianne Wade are working on the project -- building a Web site for the South Shore Memory Project -- as are 10th and 12th grade English students of Sandie Melton and Flippin Public School Library Media Specialist Petra Pershall. The English students interviewed older relatives, such as grandparents, or family acquaintances about earlier days in the area around Flippin. They are working under the direction of Allen C. Benson, director of the Norma E. Wood Library at Arkansas State University Mountain Home.

Speakers for the program will be Allen C. Benson of ASU Mountain Home, project director; Dr. Ed Coulter, chancellor of ASU Mountain Home; Dr. Steven Sanders, South Shore Foundation Board Chairman; Dr. John Carey, Flippin High School principal; Dianne Wade, gifted and talented instructor; and a student, Brad Williams.

South Shore Memory Project is a pilot program using leading edge technology to create an all-digital local history library, including sound. A copy of photographs, personal stories in the teller's own words, letters, family histories and other historical records will be accessed through computers with an Internet connection. Then, a permanent copy will all be preserved on CD-ROM at ASU Mountain Home. Access to the digital library will be assured at a central, public location.

Proposed by ASU Mountain Home and initially funded with a $25,000 grant from the South Shore Foundation, the project began this school year.

Petra Pershall, Flippin High School library media specialist, recently announced that the Arkansas Department of Education has granted $95,000 to the Flippin School to build a multi-media lab at the Flippin school. Pershall, who will direct the effort, said the grant will continue the South Shore Memory Project. This funding came from the department's Technology Literacy Challenge Fund.

Benson said the South Shore Memory Project will develop so that the public can record family history with digitizing equipment such as a digital camera, scanner for existing photographs and letters, and computers. The histories, when uploaded, can then be copied to CD-RW (readable/writeable compact disks) for the family to keep, and ASUMH will place the materials in central archives and store them forever.

The South Shore Memory Project will be one of the few digital libraries of local history in the nation. ASUMH's Benson has said the project has the potential to serve as a model for hundreds of archives, museums and university special collections in the future.

To learn more about the project, visit www.ozarkhistory.com where a lilting Ozarks instrumental song greets the visitor.