My Name is Tath Haver. I’m a Graduate Student at the School of Information Sciences at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Graduate Assistant working closely with the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub, and now one of the authors of the Illinois Highlights blog.
I’m working on maintaining and increasing the IDHH’s visibility, in part by authoring posts on the blog, developing new site features, and participating in broader hub outreach as ways to encourage access. I will also be assisting in assessing the metadata from our partner’s contributions and assisting in user testing.
Searching through our partner’s digital collections, I’m especially interested in the ways people have documented their civic and everyday lives in Illinois. I’m curious about how their everyday lives reflected their community at a specific point in history, and how this hyper-locality is something that can be highlighted, learned about, and celebrated throughout every part of Illinois. What was a parade in the 1920s like? How did people document their new lawnmower, corn combine, or house? How did communities make sense of changes and stories in their town and across the state?
I’m looking forward to sharing what I find with you as I continue to work through our collections and build a better picture of Illinois. If there are ever any topics you’d like to see highlighted, or if anything else seems exciting, please make full use of the comments section below.
Welcome, Tath!