Information on the Blackout History Project







			James T. Sparrow Brown University The Blackout History Project
				Ice storms and resulting power failures which afflicted upstate New York in the winter of 1997/98 are a timely reminder of what Jim Sparrow explores in his web site. Sparrow investigates the Great New York Blackouts in the fall of 1965 and the summer of 1977 as "power" failures in both social and technological dimensions. Millions of people lost power during those days. This prompted dramatic community responses ranging from sponteneous neighborly cooperation to terrifying riots. The site draws to it people who experienced, or have specific knowledge about, the two major power failures. It does this by eleciting first person narratives of consumers, electric utility employees and public leaders in a combination of email and person-to-person interviews. An on-line electronic archive contains digitized historical materials relevant to the blackouts including magazine stories, scholarly articles, government reports and book-chapters. Web technology collects data and stores it electronically in a data bank; but this site also integrates a diversity of perspectives and source materials so that they challenge and transform the process of history making. This website employs a metadata design weaving together scholarly analysis, primary source material, public memory and reader response. Thus, a site-visitor's search results might contain examples from all these sorts of materials. Contact Information: Jim Sparrow Email: jts@brown.edu Tel.: (617) 734-1407 To the Top [home \| information \| communication \| production \| five projects]