Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center facts for kids
The Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center is an online collection of information about the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. This school was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and was open from 1879 to 1918. The digital center is like a huge online library. It collects many different types of materials from the school's past.
The project is run by Dickinson College in Carlisle. They work with many experts and Native American cultural advisors. The main goal is to bring together all the scattered information about the school into one easy-to-find place. This helps people learn about the school's history, including the challenges and important stories of the Native American students who went there.
What is the Digital Center's Goal?
The main goal of this project is to create a complete online archive that everyone can search and use. It includes official school papers, but also photos and stories from private collections. In the future, people will even be able to share their own materials to be added to the archive.
Here are some of the key things the project aims to do:
- Collect and digitize (turn into digital files) old documents and photos from places like the National Archives and Records Administration and Dickinson College.
- Make all these digital materials easy to find on a special website.
- Create courses where students can help with the digitization and research.
- Build a huge searchable database with information like student names, dates, and tribal groups.
- Design ways for users to search the database and find specific information. They can also share the full database for deeper study.
- Allow people to add their own photos, documents, or spoken stories (oral histories) to the collection.
- Create learning materials, like lesson plans, using the digital content.
- Support new books and articles based on the information in the center.
What Can You Find in the Digital Center?
The digital center has many different kinds of materials about the school. It includes official papers about students and teachers, and lots of images. You can also find copies of school newspapers and magazines. There are lists of students, including who arrived, who left, and who participated in different events.
As of April 2017, the archive contained:
- Over 8,000 student files and information cards. These have been digitized, and are still being added to the website.
- Over 900 images from student files, school publications, and private collections.
- Over 200 publications from the school itself, like the newspapers The Red Man and The Indian Helper. More of these are being added.
- Over 70 lists and rosters that show student records, arrivals, departures, and other basic information. More of these are being added.
- Over 150 documents about how the school was run, including student travel, supplies, and sports. More of these are being added.
Besides these historical materials, the project also offers nine ready-made lesson plans about the Carlisle Indian School. These are for students in middle school, high school, and college. The project also provides links to many other helpful resources for learning more.
Using the Materials
The materials in the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center are protected by a special license called the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means you can generally use and share the materials for non-commercial (not for profit) purposes, as long as you give credit to the center.
