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Corporate Social Responsibility
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9.26.2007 - 01:06pm ET
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IBM and Smithsonian Open the National Museum of African American History and Culture -- Virtually
Museum Visitors Will Play Pivotal Role in Building Online Memory Book
(CSRwire) ARMONK, NY and WASHINGTON, DC - September 26, 2007 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) and
the Smithsonian Institution today announced the virtual opening of the National Museum of African
American History and Culture, the Smithsonian's 19th and newest museum.
This online presence marks the first time a major museum has opened its
doors on the Web prior to the construction of its building.
While the physical museum will be built on the National Mall in Washington
in 2015, it is opening online now to serve as a place of collaboration
among scholars and the general public.
"The Smithsonian is honored to work with IBM to create this virtual
platform for the National Museum of African American History and Culture,"
said Lonnie G. Bunch, founding director of the museum. "This initiative
allows us to share the rich culture, to preserve the important history and
to make the African American past available to millions globally. Because
of this partnership we can build a new community of supporters and enrich
the educational resources of children in America and around the world."
A key Web site feature is The Memory Book which allows site visitors to
upload their memories in the form of a story, an image or an audio
recording. An online map, which can be navigated, shows how these diverse
memories are linked to each other and to content created by the museum to
spotlight people, places, issues and moments in African American
history.
These memories will become part of the museum's first oral history
collection and give site visitors an opportunity to participate in the
museum's development.
Because the site, built using social networking technologies known as Web.
2.0, allows visitors to contribute content, it becomes a vibrant community
of users who can help both define the African American experience, as well
as promote an understanding of what it means to be an American.
"We're pleased to provide our expertise and leading-edge technologies to
enable this museum to come to life," said Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer of IBM and a member of NMAAHC's Advisory
Council. "IBM's partnership with the National Museum of African American
History and Culture will help create a new type of facility -- one that is
not only being built for visitors, but being created by visitors.
Technology is allowing people to be this important museum's first
curators."
The power of the Memory Book is demonstrated by initial contributions from
people from all walks of life. Among them:
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown who
recalls his childhood, his education and the civil rights era through
an audio recording and photographs
Dr. Michael Lomax,
president of the United Negro College Fund, recounts his childhood in Los
Angeles and his parent's decision to move the family to Tuskegee, Alabama
for six months during the civil rights movement, and;
Dr. William Anderson,
an osteopathic surgeon and leader of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia,
uses a book excerpt to tell of his work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and Rev. Ralph Abernathy.
Jackson B remembers
rolling Easter eggs at the National Zoo in Washington in the 1930s.
Kelvin B. Fowler tells
how his great-great grandfather escaped slavery by hitching a boat ride
with a group of fisherman and sailing to freedom in Virginia.
The navigational map is created by the people who submit content and
create their own "tags" or keywords, meaning people posting their stories
can help create links to other events or stories. As museum-goers search
through historical events or memories, the navigational map will redraw
itself to focus on related associations. This is a powerful tool that
helps participants visually understand the interconnectedness of events
and people in history. Museum staff will review entries prior to external
posting to assure the appropriateness of content.
The NMAAHC is the first museum website to partake fully of the Web 2.0
social computing revolution. The site is based on cutting-edge, open
source programming frameworks such as Ruby on Rails for collaborative
website development. It employs concepts such as tags, or keywords,
created by the users to help organize the content. As a result, the Museum
on the Web is an example of the bottoms-up web, meaning it's both a product
of a site visitor's participation, and an enabler of creating a community
for them. The site runs on IBM System X web and database servers.
The website will also feature detail on the museum's current and future
programming. Key programs include:
"Save Our
African American Treasures," a program to foster understanding about
discovery and preservation of African American material history. The
national collections initiative features workshops designed to help people
identify and preserve objects of historical and cultural significance such
as photographs, diaries, legal documents and household items.
"Let Your Motto
Be Resistance: African American Portraits," the museum's inaugural
exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Smithsonian's National
Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography in New York.
This collection of 100 photographs traces 150 years of American history
through the lives of well-known abolitionists, athletes, artists,
scientists and scholars and shows how they used their work to put up
"resistance" to negative attitudes about race and class. The exhibition
will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington from
October 19, 2007 to March 2, 2008.
The African
American Legacy Recordings, a series of compact disc recordings
showcasing the work of a variety of artists and scholars including W.E.B.
DuBois, singer-activist Paul Robeson; poets Nikki Giovanni and Sterling
Brown; and actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture was created by
an Act of Congress in 2003. Its collections and educational programming
will cover topics as varied as slavery, post-Civil War Reconstruction, the
Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights movement. In addition to staging a
national tour of its inaugural exhibition, the museum is scheduling
programming in five target cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York
and Washington, D.C.
For more information, visit www.nmaahc.si.edu. For more
information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com
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