Genocide Survivor Testimonies Enrich Learning at NSU
ANN ARBOR, MI, June 13, 2017 – Nova Southeastern University (NSU) is one of a growing number of institutions offering access to University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive® database via ProQuest.
This fully streaming primary source archive includes 55,000 testimonies from survivors of and witnesses to some of humanity’s most serious and solemn events, including the Holocaust, and the Armenian, Cambodian, and Guatemalan genocides, the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the Nanjing Massacre. The testimonies speak to the profound, far-reaching impact of genocide, as well as the political, cultural, and social context surrounding these atrocities.
“When ProQuest announced it would be distributing the Visual History Archive to colleges and universities, we were designing The Craig and Barbara Weiner Holocaust Reflection and Resource Room (HRRR), here in the Alvin Sherman Library,” said James Hutchens, M.S.L.S., NSU Interim Vice President of Information Services and University Librarian. “Telling stories of the Holocaust is extremely important to the NSU Libraries. It is clear to us that the Visual History Archive will be a great complement to the HRRR. It provides incredible opportunities for faculty, student, and community research, while reflecting on the Holocaust as well as other crimes against humanity.”
The largest digital collection of its kind in the world, Visual History Archive contains interviews conducted in 62 countries and 41 languages, providing an unedited recollection of life before, during, and after the interviewee’s experience with genocide. Using standard indexing methodology for each interview, the result is over 115,000 hours of video, fully searchable with over 64,000 index terms at the one-minute segment level. Visual History Archive also provides tools to help with the study and sharing of testimonies, including: bookmarking segments; saving and sharing projects; and the option to embed testimony durable URLs in LMS course packs.
USC Shoah Foundation and ProQuest launched an exclusive partnership in 2016 to expand, enrich, and simplify access to Visual History Archive in the academic market. This streaming version surfaces the library’s related ProQuest® content, which can encompass more than a billion searchable items spanning dissertations, news and historical newspapers, periodicals, scholarly journals, and primary source materials – a combination that improves contextual discovery while viewing the video testimonies. In addition, USC Shoah Foundation is engaged in a large project to create transcripts for all the testimonies, beginning with those in English and then adding other languages.
“Our goal is to curate and provide content that puts researchers inside the pivotal moments of history, empowering them with the tools they need to gain insights they aren’t going to find anywhere else,” said Susan Bokern, ProQuest Vice-President, Product Management. “ProQuest is honored to be entrusted with connecting students, faculty and researchers with such a unique and valuable resource as Visual History Archive.”
About Nova Southeastern University (www.nova.edu)
Located in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Nova Southeastern University (NSU) is a dynamic research institution dedicated to providing high-quality educational programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and first-professional degree levels. A private, not-for-profit institution, NSU has campuses in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Miramar, Orlando, Palm Beach, and Tampa, Florida, as well as San Juan, Puerto Rico, while maintaining a presence online globally. For more than 50 years, NSU has been awarding degrees in a wide range of fields, while fostering groundbreaking research and an impactful commitment to community. Classified as a research university with “high research activity” by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, NSU is 1 of only 50 universities nationwide to also be awarded Carnegie’s Community Engagement Classification, and is also the largest private, not-for-profit institution in the United States that meets the U.S. Department of Education’s criteria as a Hispanic-serving Institution.
About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Alexander Street™, Bowker®, Dialog®, Ex Libris® and SIPX® businesses – and notable research tools such as the RefWorks® citation and reference management platform, the Pivot® research development tool and the Ebook Central®, ebrary®, EBL™ and MyiLibrary® ebook platforms. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.