Archive provides one-stop shop for Middle East research

Archive provides one-stop shop for Middle East research

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

A new digital archive at Rice’s Fondren Library has created a virtual time machine for visiting the Middle East between the 18th and early 20th centuries via computer.

Researchers interested in landmarks of Jerusalem can see historic black-and-white photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mosque of ’Umar.

Scholars wanting to know more about the geography and culture of Cyprus can access an interactive map to study everything from roads and rivers to topography and historical sites.

Historians researching Syria under the Ottoman rule can read explorer Gertrude Bell’s “The Desert and the Sown,” an account of her 1905 travel across the Syrian Desert.

These and many more online learning opportunities await visitors to Fondren’s Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). This pilot project provides easy access to narrative texts, maps, photos, drawings, study guides and other resources related to travel in the Middle East several centuries ago.

Paula Sanders, associate professor of history and a co-principal investigator for TIMEA, noted that between the 18th and 20th centuries, Europeans and Americans conducted archaeological expeditions, toured religious sites, explored foreign cultures and pursued geopolitical goals in the Middle East.

“A rich body of literature and images documents these travels, providing invaluable resources for scholars and students in disciplines ranging from English literature and women’s studies to classical, Middle Eastern and medieval archaeology, religion and history,” she said. “Unfortunately, these materials are scattered in libraries and private collections around the world, and conducting systematic research outside of major research libraries is laborious.”

To provide a central point of access to these collections, Sanders and colleagues at Rice developed TIMEA with a $250,000 National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. A $30,000 grant from Rice’s Computer and Information Technology Institute’s (CITI) Enriching Rice through Information Technology program supports TIMEA also.

TIMEA will make available digital versions of public-domain travel literature published in English between 1700 and 1923. Some of the narratives accessible through TIMEA are from Sanders’ personal collection of 19th century travelers’ books on Egypt. Her collection includes many hard-to-find texts, images and artifacts. For example, she has all English language editions of the Baedeker travel guides; few libraries own more than a single edition of this guide.

Work is now under way on converting analog materials such as books and postcards into digital versions. The first phase of the project focuses on Egypt and Cyprus and is expected to be completed by October 2006.

The project was initiated when Lisa Spiro, director of the Electronic Resources Center (ERC), noticed that Michael Decker, postdoctoral fellow at Rice’s Center for the Study of Cultures, often came to the center to scan travelers’ narratives that focused on the Middle East. Spiro saw the potential for more people to benefit from Decker’s digitization and applied, along with colleagues, for a CITI innovation grant to start the project that has evolved into TIMEA. Spiro is a co-principal investigator of TIMEA.

TIMEA’s travel literature is not limited to travelers’ narratives. The archive also includes successive editions of historic museum catalogs. And the more than 20 significant historic works about Egypt that Fondren Library owns are included in the archive too, said Sara Lowman, Fondren Library director.

Eva Garza, director of Fondren’s Geographic Information Systems (DIS)/Data Center, noted that TIMEA utilizes GIS resources to build interactive maps that show the topography, roads, bodies of water and many other features of a particular location. GIS allows users to visualize and analyze spatial information in a dynamic digital environment.

This combination of resources gives TIMEA a unique focus on travelers’ accounts of the Middle East that complements other Internet resources and fills a gap as well.

“We know of no other archive that replicates TIMEA’s focus,” Spiro said, explaining that some of the existing archives offer a limited set of images, lack interactive maps or concentrate on studies of the ancient Near East rather than modern accounts. Some archives offer numerous materials in microform format, but only one researcher can use them at a time and must work onsite during limited hours. TIMEA is available online 24-7.

To facilitate its use for teaching, learning and research, TIMEA is teaming up with Rice’s Connexions project, a collaborative, community-driven approach to authoring, teaching and learning that is intended to provide a free cohesive body of high-quality educational content to anyone in the world. Project staff and other experts will develop educational modules in Connexions that draw upon the TIMEA archive.

TIMEA’s educational potential is further enhanced by research guides developed by Sanders and David Getman, a graduate student in history, in Connexions. Using a virtual research project based on the book “Oriental Cairo” by Douglas Sladen, the guide walks students through the basic steps involved in conducting historical research and introduces a variety of resources available through Fondren Library, such as WebCat and WorldCat.

As more books and other materials are digitized, they will be added to TIMEA’s repertoire. Ultimately, TIMEA will have something of interest to a wide range of disciplines, including history, literature, religion, archaeology, women’s studies, geography and anthropology. TIMEA’s timeliness is evident by the increasing prominence of Middle Eastern studies at universities.

“TIMEA is a fine example of an emerging library,” said Chuck Henry, vice provost and university librarian. “New technology is being used to aggregate many different kinds of media — text, sound, maps, drawings, photos — to create resources with great historical depth and range. When combined with multidisciplinary collaborations with faculty and other experts across campus, such an endeavor enables a much richer inquiry to research and teaching.”

Geneva Henry, executive director of the Digital Library Initiative at Rice and also a co-principal investigator of TIMEA, said, “As a digital library, the TIMEA project leverages a variety of technologies to support teaching and research needs and to deliver digitized information efficiently to end users anywhere in the world.”

In addition to Sanders, Spiro, Garza and Geneva Henry, the TIMEA project staff includes Decker, now at the University of South Florida; and German Diaz, GIS support specialist for the GIS/Data Center and a co-principal investigator of TIMEA. Members of Fondren’s Technical Services and Woodson Research Center staffs also provide support for the project.

TIMEA will reside at <http://www.timea.rice.edu>, beginning in early April. Only a limited amount of material is currently available in digital form, but much more will be available over the coming months.