SCOPE AND GENRE
The WFC HISTORY website will contain the history of Winchester and Frederick County, Virginia. Winchester and Frederick County are between the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley. The region is rich in history. Settlers in the eighteenth century were primarily German and Scotch-Irish who migrated south from Pennsylvania. George Washington made his headquarters in Winchester during the French and Indian War. Confederate General Stonewall Jackson and Union General Philip Sheridan had headquarters in Winchester during the Civil War.
WFC HISTORY will initially focus on twentieth century history of Winchester and Frederick County. This project will have the advantage of compiling recent material for the historical record. At present, there is no comprehensive publication about the twentieth century in the Winchester and Frederick County area. The website will include articles, photographs, interviews and oral histories. The site will include an overview of the history of prior years. In a subsequent phase, the site will be expanded to include prior centuries.
WFC HISTORY will combine several genres. The site will include an electronic archive of images, recordings, and text and OCR versions of source documents photographs, and films. The site will include both interviews and transcripts. The site will be a resource for future students and historians. Very little historical material in the Winchester area has been digitized. Digitization will serve as a backup for historic materials besides providing wide and immediate accessibility.
The website will contain electronic essays about the history of the area. The initial essays will be informative. Later essays will be more analytical and interpretive and articles will examine the changes in terms of political, economic, social and cultural issues and trends. Articles will be developed in such a way that they can be used to explore the history either by looking at the chronological stream of events or reviewing the past in terms of themes, trends, and subject areas. In order to have multiple pathways to the articles, source documents may be broken into sections so the parts can be accessed for a variety of retrievals. It is expected there will be significant amount of hyperlinking of the articles as well as to related visual and audio material.
Several components of this website are intended to gain public interest and support. There will be sections for teachers, students, genealogy buffs, a local historic events calendar, information about historic sites and a memory section where individuals can record recollections. There will be links to other sites including relevant state historical resources.
The primary audiences for WFC HISTORY are those interested in the history of Winchester and Frederick County. The main users of the site are expected to be past, present and future residents of the region, their families and descendants and those planning to visit the area. There is already a great deal of interest in history in the Winchester and Frederick County area and an active Historical Society. The core of Winchester is a Historic District and the area has several properties listed on the National Trust.
WFC HISTORY will be a model for technical development of generic software to support local history. The website will be developed in such a way that it can serve as a model for large and small community websites. The strategy for development will keep in mind the need for flexibility and modularity so that features can be selectively adapted to a range of needs, budgets and resources. The largest variables for implementation are the material that is already available, the material that needs to be prepared, the amount of material that needs to be digitized and the requirements for hardware and functionality. For implementation possibilities to be variable, there will be a significant planning and analysis period.
