A site note - and the future of Endangered Durham

Today I'm publishing my long-in-the-works post on Trinity College / East Campus; I've worked to collect the photos for it, scan newspaper accounts, research, edit, etc. gradually over a period of a two years - with a great deal more attention over the past two months. It's an interesting piece to write - as I first came to Durham in 1988 to attend Duke, it's interesting how my own perspective has changed on both Durham and Duke. Architecturally, when I came to Duke, I found West Campus a beautiful place, and East Campus a bland afterthought. Now, I find the history, the array of buildings, the evolution, and urban proximity of East Campus wonderfully appealing. West - not so much.

Given that this post has a culmination sort of feeling, I thought it was a good time to post my thoughts on the future of Endangered Durham; the use of Blogger and the blog format long ago became very clumsy for what has developed into a large historic archive. As I've mentioned to many people, the archive aspect of the site should mean an entry from 3 years ago has just as much salience as one from 3 days ago in a search engine's results. Unfortunately, it is not so. I'm disappointed to have people ask me to please write about something that I wrote about 3 years ago - only because that means that they couldn't easily find it.

I plan to work over the next few months to create the next version of Endangered Durham - ED 2.0, if you will - which I hope will develop into the kind of interface that not only reduces the frustrations with the current limitations of Blogger, but allows the content and its users to take full advantage of the technology available - from better mapping and georeferencing to user-generated content, to far more robust search capabilities and more.

My goal, in short, is to have ED 2.0 be a model for a modern historic architectural archive - one that can potentially be replicated in other endangered places. I hope to create something that can be sustained and renewed beyond my ability to do so alone. I have never sought any remuneration for my costs related to Endangered Durham and related talks, etc., but this may be a rather expensive endeavor. I don't know what it will cost, but - pending the outcome of some grants - I may be asking you in the next few months whether you are willing/able to make any financial or in-kind contribution to the web development costs for said archive. I hope to work out an arrangement soon to make said contributions tax-deductible.

Thank you, as always, for your ongoing readership - and especially for your interest in and love for the history of Durham and its landscape.

- Gary

Taking a Break

It's time for a respite for me for a few weeks, after over 3 years of mostly 5-day-a-week-Endangered Durham and ~1000 posts, I need a bit of down time before cranking up with new areas of Durham, including Trinity Park, Old North Durham, East Durham, Northgate, Hope Valley, the southern-eastern-western portions of the county, etc., etc. I know that I'll be unable to completely take a break, and thus I'm going to plan on publishing posts as the mood strikes over the remainder of November and December, and perhaps January, with regular posting to resume, at the latest, in February. I'll update the twitter feed with posts I publish during The Break. As always, I appreciate your readership, and I hope you understand my need for a short hiatus to rejuvenate, research, and do some non-historic-durham-architecture-related-things. (Rumor is that there are some of those things out there.)

Thanks

Gary