Project to celebrate university's past online and on Kansas Union walls

LAWRENCE -- A lively date-driven, Web-based history of the University of Kansas promises to set the standard for electronic presentation of college histories when launched this fall.

Called "This Week in KU History," the Web site will initially offer more than 125 richly illustrated original articles, 1,000 digitized primary source documents and links to 350 related Web sites.

A companion project, the KU History Galleries, will be unveiled this fall as well. It will provide a museum-like collection of display panels and exhibits about university history in the Kansas Union.

"I believe this project will demonstrate how to deliver quality public history over the Web and serve as a model for many other historical themes and subjects," said Victor Bailey, professor of history and the director of the Hall Center for the Humanities. "This Week in KU History bridges the divide between academic work that typically appeals to a limited audience and popular history that can verge on the celebratory."

A prototype of the Web site can be viewed at www.kuhistory.com. An official launch date will be announced later.

More than a year in the making, both projects are being developed under the auspices of the Kansas Union. Henry Fortunato, who is seeking a graduate degree in history at KU after a 20-year career in magazine journalism and marketing communications, is the project's director and editor-in-chief. David Mucci, director of the KU Memorial Unions, is responsible for overall supervision.

Six history graduate students and one education graduate -- John McCool, Mark Hersey, Douglas Harvey, Brian Drake, Robb Campbell, Kevin Armitage and Bill Towns -- are developing the original core content for the Web site and the descriptive panels. An advisory board led by professional historians and representatives of the Lawrence community meets regularly to review the project's progress.

"This will be the most extensive college history Web site in the country," said Fortunato, project director. "This Week in KU History will provide visitors with readable history, rigorously researched.

"Anyone interested in KU will be able to get a weekly dose of university history, plus multiple opportunities to learn more by accessing our search engine, examining our electronic archive of contemporary texts or checking out our collection of previewed Web sites that examine related topics from another perspective or in greater depth," Fortunato said. "From what we've seen thus far, no other university in the country has anything quite like it. KU will be the first."

Fortunato said the project's graduate students are well versed in scholarly methodology and skilled in writing in a popular style.

"The articles I've reviewed range from solid to great," said Ted Wilson, professor of history and a member of the project's advisory board.

This Week in KU History and the KU History Galleries are working closely with University Archives. The project's content partners include the KU Alumni Association, the Spencer Museum of Art, and the KU Natural History Museum, which will provide previously published works to add supplementary materials to the Web site and descriptive panels. The KU Student Senate and the KU/Coke Partnership are providing support for the project.

Members of the KU history project advisory board include Theodore Wilson, KU history department; Sheryl Williams, university archivist; Kathryn Nemeth Tuttle, director of freshman-sophomore advising; Robert N. Page Jr., director of multicultural affairs; Peter C. Mancall, history department, University of Southern California; Thomas Lewin, chairman, KU history department; Richard Klocke, chief exhibit designer, Spencer Museum of Art; Lindy Eakin, KU associate provost; James R. Henry, Lawrence city commissioner; Virgil Dean, editor of Kansas History, Kansas State Historical Society; and Katie Armitage, longtime local Lawrence historian and co-editor of "On the Hill."