MATRIX

The Center for Humane Arts, Letters & Social Sciences Online
http://matrix.msu.edu – matrix@msu.edu

A pioneering research center at Michigan State University, MATRIX is devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. MATRIX strives to use Internet technologies to improve education and increase the democratic flow of information throughout the world. By merging research in new computing technologies with research in the humanities, MATRIX develops online educational and academic resources, provides training in computing and Internet-enhanced pedagogy, and creates forums for the exchange of ideas and expertise in the humanities and in new education technologies.

MATRIX is one of  the larger humanities technology centers in the country, with continuing funding from MSU and grant projects from IMLS, NSF, NEH, the U.S. Department of Education, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. During the past four years, one of MATRIX’s core activities has been to create a digital repository application that meets standards for best practices of the digital library community and the needs of cultural institutions and humanities scholars. MATRIX has worked with numerous museums, cultural organizations, and humanities scholars to develop and improve this resource, KORA, in order to create multimedia repositories with unique and highly flexible interfaces.

Currently, our work is focusing on the development of social networking and web 2.0 applications for museums and cultural organizations.

KORA
www.matrix.msu.edu/kora
MATRIX has developed an open source tool for creating online
digital repositories. KORA – a database driven application – allows institutions to ingest, manage, and deliver digital objects and their corresponding metadata.

Connex
connex.matrix.msu.edu
Connex is an online, social networking application that allows users to gather, discuss, and publish resources that are important to community groups and cultural organizations.

Overcoming Apartheid
www.overcomingapartheid.msu.edu
An educational resource with video and audio interviews, photos, maps, historical documents, narrative units, and student activities.

Studs Terkel
www.studsterkel.org
Studs Terkel’s multifaceted life has produced an equally rich and varied legacy of research materials. Conversations with America is a collection of the interviews Terkel conducted for his books.

H-Net
www.h-net.org
An international consortium of scholars and teachers with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

The Quilt Index
www.quiltindex.org
A national online archive of quilt resources with thousands of quilts from
partnering museums and library quilt collections.

The Flint Sit-Down Strike
www.historicalvoices.org/flint
A Historical Voices gallery designed to provide an audio and historical introduction to the 1936-7 sit-down strike in Flint.