There are numerous shifts being brought about by the development of digital tools for humanities and social science research. The facilitation of collaborations between scholars working in different locales is one of these. Digitization also makes it possible for scholars to share the basic primary sources on which their work is based. In the case of documentary materials born out of ethnographic collaboration, this can fulfill the crucial goal of making these documents, and the knowledge that they embody, more accessible to the source communities out of which they come. The shift to digital tools is also allowing scholars and others to establish virtual special-interest archives devoted to bringing together, and to interpreting, otherwise scattered-but-valuable cultural materials. While such efforts are essential to the contemporary work of museums and archives, it is being undertaken today in virtual collaborations that need not always proceed with formal institutional sponsorship.

Perhaps the best illustration of these trends for those concerned with the richness of Oklahoma’s cultural fabric is the Creek Language Archive project, a long-term effort being pursued by Margaret Mauldin and Gloria McCarty of the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Jack B. Martin of the College of William and Mary. Margaret and Gloria teach the Muskogee (Creek) language at OU. Jack is a linguist who has studied Muskogee and related languages since the 1980s. All three have collaborated intensively on the documentation, preservation, revitalization and analysis of Muskogee. Their work has included extensive use of unpublished archival materials assembled by Creek and non-Creek scholars such as Earnest Gouge, Mary Haas, and John R. Swanton.

In the Creek Language Archive, the project collaborators have made available a wealth of primary materials of great value for anyone interested in the Muskogee language, the oral traditions of the native Southeast, or early literary work in Muskogee by Creek authors. The site provides not only PDF documents, but many audio recordings related to the collections that are presented and interpreted. Of special interest are the primary text collections that the collaborators have devoted great energy to preparing for publication. For anyone aware of how much effort has gone into preparing the materials that it contains, the richness of the Creek Language Archive is truly staggering.

One use that Dan and I are making of the weblog function on the OCDI website is to highlight other online projects and sources relevant to the study of Oklahoma’s cultural diversity. To date, one of the most elaborate digital humanities projects relevant to Oklahoma cultures is the Tejas: Life and Times of the Caddo website organized by the Texas Beyond History project at the University of Texas-Austin, in collaboration with a wide range of Caddo community members and consulting scholars. The site is actually a collection of several interrelated digital exhibitions. Find it online here.

A number of important resource collections are now available through the University of Oklahoma Digital Collections initiative. Of particular relevance to the OCDI are those materials curated in the Western History Collections Library. The WHC has evolved over the past 80 years to support teaching and research through its special collections of manuscripts, recordings, photographs and other primary source data. Interview transcripts from two important oral history projects are now available as pdf file downloads. The Indian Pioneer papers includes approximately 80,000 entries from interviews conducted in the 1930′s by the WPA. The interviews cover the period of 1861-1936, and provide data relevant to studies in history, anthropology and folklore. The Doris Duke oral history collection consists of interviews conducted between 1967 and 1972 among members of Native American communities in Oklahoma. A diverse range of tribal communities, subjects and themes are addressed. I look forward to continued efforts to bring the vast resources of the Western History Collection to enhanced open access.

Those concerned with Oklahoma arts and cultures may be interested to learn of a paper in the current (2007) issue of Ethnology (45.3): “Painting Culture: Art and Ethnography at a School for Native Americans” by Lisa Neuman. Professor Neuman’s paper explores the role of cultural knowledge in the work of artists associated with the art program at Bacone College. I wish that I had had access to this useful paper when I was putting together my own recent essay exploring related themes: “Blue Eagle, Beaver and McCombs: The Place of Culture in Muscogee Painting” for the recent issue of Gilcrease Journal (15.1).

It is not [yet] an open access publication, but the venerable journal Ethnology (founded in 1962) is still in the hands of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, its long-term publisher. In an era in which many former house journals have been handed off to one of the multinational, for-profit publishing conglomerates, it is a great thing that Ethnology‘s fate is still in the hands of a community of scholars. Similarly, Gilcrease Journal, while, unfortunately, not available electronically, is still published solely by the Gilcrease Museum, which retains control of its future.

The current (November/December 2007) and previous (September/October 2007) issues of World Literature Today both include materials of possible interest to those concerned with the cultural richness and complexity of Oklahoma. While WLT is not an open access publication, several contributions from each issue are made available OA on the magazine’s website. The cover theme of the current issue is Women and War, but it also includes a “Oklahoma Centennial Tribute” section that includes interviews and creative writing by a number of relevant writers. The introduction to this section as well as the interview with, and poems by, Joy Harjo are available online.

The theme of the earlier issue was Endangered Languages. Among the contributors to this issues with Oklahoma concerns were N. Scott Momaday, Gus Palmer, Jr., and our SNOMNH collaborator Mary S. Linn. Mary’s paper surveyed the state of native languages in Oklahoma. I also contributed an article on “The Paradoxical Power of Endangerment: Traditional Native American Music and Dance in Eastern Oklahoma.” Because WLT is published as a magazine (available at newsstands now!), it works within pretty tight word length requirements. To provide readers with my sources and to flesh the story out a bit, I composed a companion bibliographic essay to go with the magazine article. The editors were kind enough to post both of these work back to back on the WLT website where they can be found here.

While it takes the whole world as its concern, it is good and appropriate that WLT (which is published by and at the University of Oklahoma) attends to matters in its own backyard.

With the coming of the Oklahoma Centennial, the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Encyclopedia of Oklahoma Culture and History went live sometime in the past 12 months. Although I contributed to it, I only found it online recently. My OCDI collaborator Dan Swan and I both authored essays for the Encyclopedia. Dan’s articles are: Traditional Arts, American Indian, Architecture, American Indian, Beadwork, American Indian, and Native American Church. My entries are: Oral Tradition, American Indian, Medicine, American Indian, Foodways, Games, American Indian, and Yuchi (Euchee).