Researching Community Life on the Internet: The Colonial Albany Website and its Cast of Historical Characters

Date: Thursday, March 23, 2006 - 4:00 to 5:30 PM
Location: Capital Region BOCES, School Support Services
900 Watervliet Shaker Road, Albany
Stefan Bielinski, Director, NYS Museum Colonial Albany Social History Project

Almost 16,000 different men, women, and children lived in the city of Albany, New York before the Industrial Revolution. For more than twenty years, the New York State Museum's Colonial Albany Social History Project has sponsored research that places each of those historical characters at the center of a comprehensive sweep of manuscripts, records, graphic materials and environmental resources. It has created a new set of historical resources on the people of colonial Albany and their world. An exploration of the diverse elements of early American community life, based on the people, places, and things that make up a community's character and identity, is now at our fingertips. This massive and accessible web exposition reaches thousands of people every day and has many classroom applications.

This workshop will demonstrate how teachers can utilize the website to consider the human and environmental elements of community life, access the research base, and connect this community to society at large and over time. It will also demonstrate how to select key features of the website to create new avenues for student and teacher inquiry.

Stefan Bielinski is the founder and director of the Colonial Albany Social History Project. For more than thirty years, he has presented the story of people in communities in publications, exhibits, in the classroom, and finally on the Internet. He is the principal author of the People of Colonial Albany Live Here website at nysm.nysed.gov/albany/, to which he adds new material virtually every day!