A One-Stop Shop for
Middle East Research

A new digital archive at Rice’s Fondren Library has created a virtual time machine for visiting the Middle East between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Researchers interested in landmarks of Jerusalem can see historic black-and-white photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Mosque of Umar. Scholars wanting to know more about the geography and culture of Cyprus can access an interactive map to study everything from roads and rivers to topography and historical sites. Historians researching Syria under the Ottoman rule can read explorer Gertrude Bell’s The Desert and the Sown, an account of her 1905 travel across the Syrian Desert.

Fondren Library’s Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) offers access to resources related to that part of the world, including photographs, maps, text, and other materials. Leading the project are: front row, left to right, Lisa Spiro, Paula Sanders, Pamela Francis, a graduate student in English, and German Diaz, and back row, left to right, Eva Garza, Geneva Henry, David Getman, and project coordinator Marie Wise.

These and many more online learning opportunities await visitors to Fondren’s Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). The project provides easy access to narrative texts, maps, photos, drawings, study guides, and other public domain resources related to travel in the Middle East from 1700 to 1923.

Paula Sanders, associate professor of history and a co-principal investigator for TIMEA, says that between the 18th and 20th centuries, Europeans and Americans conducted archaeological expeditions, toured religious sites, explored foreign cultures, and pursued geopolitical goals in the Middle East. “A rich body of literature and images documents these travels, providing invaluable resources for scholars and students in disciplines ranging from English literature and women’s studies to classical, Middle Eastern, and medieval archaeology, religion, and history,” she says. “Unfortunately, these materials are scattered in libraries and private collections around the world, and conducting systematic research outside of major research libraries is laborious.”

The project was initiated when Lisa Spiro, director of Fondren Library’s Electronic Resources Center and a co-principal investigator of TIMEA, noticed that Michael Decker, postdoctoral fellow at Rice’s Center for the Study of Cultures, often came to the center to scan travelers’ narratives that focused on the Middle East. Spiro saw the potential for more people to benefit from Decker’s digitization. The project gained support through a $250,000 National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and a $30,000 grant from Rice’s Computer and Information Technology Institute’s Enriching Rice through Information Technology program.

Some of the narratives accessible through TIMEA are from Sanders’s personal collection of 19th-century travelers’ books on Egypt, which includes many hard-to-find texts, images, and artifacts. For example, she has all English language editions of the Baedeker travel guides; few libraries own more than a single edition of this guide. Other analog materials that will be digitized include books, photographs, and postcards. The first phase of the project, focusing on Egypt and Cyprus, is expected to be completed by October 2006.

Eva Garza, director of Fondren’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS)/Data Center, notes that TIMEA uses GIS resources to build interactive maps that show the topography, roads, bodies of water, and many other features of a particular location. GIS allows users to visualize and analyze spatial information in a dynamic digital environment.

To facilitate its use for teaching, learning, and research, TIMEA is teaming up with Rice’s Connexions project, a collaborative, community-driven approach to authoring, teaching, and learning that is intended to provide a free cohesive body of high-quality educational content to anyone in the world. Project staff and other experts will develop educational modules in Connexions that draw on the TIMEA archive.

TIMEA’s educational potential is further enhanced by research guides developed by Sanders and David Getman, a graduate student in history. Using a virtual research project based on the book Oriental Cairo by Douglas Sladen, the guide walks students through the basic steps involved in conducting historical research and introduces a variety of resources available through Fondren Library, such as WebCat and WorldCat.

As more books and other materials are digitized, they will be added to TIMEA’s repertoire. Ultimately, TIMEA will have something of interest to a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, geography, history, literature, religion, and women’s studies. TIMEA’s timeliness is evident by the increasing prominence of Middle Eastern studies at universities.

In addition to Sanders, Spiro, Garza, and Geneva Henry, executive director of the Digital Library Initiative at Rice, the TIMEA project staff includes Decker, now at the University of South Florida, and German Diaz, GIS support specialist for the GIS/Data Center and a co-principal investigator of TIMEA. Members of Fondren’s Technical Services and Woodson Research Center staffs provide support for the project.

—B. J. Almond