Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (review)

Launched in November 2005 shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the US Gulf Coast, the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank (HDMB) has preserved and presented digital records, including many oral histories and stories, documenting the immediate and lasting impacts of these storms. With 2015 marking the ten-year anniversary of the hurricanes, and with the recent untimely passing of Michael Mizell-Nelson, one of the project leaders from the University of New Orleans, this is an appropriate time to review and reflect on this influential online archive. In its tenth year, it is understandable that aspects of the site need updating, but the HDMB continues to accomplish its mission to preserve historical records and make first-hand accounts accessible to a wide audience.

The HDMB was organized by George Mason University’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (CHNM) and the University of New Orleans (UNO), “in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and other partners,” according to information in the “About this Project” menu tab. Other information there includes a summary of the project’s roots, design, and goals, as well as a list of the individuals from CHNM and UNO that have contributed over the course of the project. Since Mizell-Nelson’s passing, it appears that only two people are still actively involved; the HDMB had closer to ten contributors in its earlier years, likely thanks to funding received from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 2005-2008. It is worth mentioning that in 2007, the HDMB was recognized with the Award of Merit for Leadership from the American Association for State and Local History.

Some of the archive’s major components appear as content boxes under the “Home” menu tab: “Featured Image,” “Featured Stories,” “Browse,” “Map,” and “Tags.” Another content box of key importance, “Add to the Archive,” is inconspicuously nested below the “Featured Image” at the bottom of the page. Item collection is a vital part of the HDMB’s mission, so it is fortunate that there is a more prominent menu tab called “Add to Memory Bank” just below the page header. The “Collections” and “Items” menu tabs lead to the majority of the site’s content. The roughly 23,000 digital items there are impressive in scope and type, including images, photo journals, documents, videos, oral histories, blog posts, e-mails, voice mails, etc. An additional 7,739 clickable map points lead to location-specific content, allowing users to browse geographically, with some limitations. It appears that HDMB hopes this feature will enable opportunities to build community history and boost community morale as people can access materials and accounts posted by others in their neighborhood.

Fifty-three collections are listed by title with brief summaries under the “Collections” menu tab. Individual collection pages offer expanded descriptions and links to view items or subcollections of items. The content accessible through “Collections” overlaps with content under the “Items” menu tab, which has seven subcategories: “All Items,” “Images,” “Stories,” “Oral Histories,” “Video,” “Map,” and “Tags.” When initially clicking into the “Items” tab, the user is defaulted to just the 13,926 items in the “Images” subcategory and must click into the “All Items” subcategory to view and browse the larger group of 23,048. The “Video” subcategory contains only twenty items, but it seems probable that additional video content might be found in other subcategories. The “Tags” subcategory presents an untold number of tags alphabetically in a format similar to a word cloud. It is unclear how these tags or other metadata arise, whether from the content submitters, from HDMB staff, or a combination of both.

In terms of content with oral historical significance, the “Stories” subcategory includes personal reflections as well as blog posts, e-mails, poems, pod-casts, and daily logs. Many of the 8,445 “Stories” items include map points, as do items in some of the other subcategories. The “Oral Histories” subcategory contains 630 items, primarily interview transcripts and audio files accessible as embedded content...