Northeastern University creates digital archive for marathon bombings
Boston.com - 05/24/2013
Researchers at Northeastern University are compiling a digital archive devoted to the Boston Marathon bombings, the university announced today in a statement.
The “Our Marathon” project is sponsored by Northeastern’s NULab for Texts, Maps, and
Networks, and will include photos, videos, and social media related to the attacks. The team will hold a series of public outreach events this summer to collect materials. The researchers are also exploring partnerships with government officials, media organizations, and other universities to expand the archive.
Featured items include a tweet by the Boston Police Department announcing that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been captured, and a screenshot of a Facebook messageabout how the city had gone into lockdown.
“This archive is really a way to help with healing process and preserve these memories for the historical record,” Ryan Cordell, an assistant professor of English and Our Marathon’s project manager said in the statement. “We want to capture as many materials as we can that help tell the stories—not just the what happened, but how people experienced what happened.”