| This dissertation explores how Louisiana French cultural resources, specifically historic documents, oral history recordings, and photographs of colonial artifacts, might be rendered more digitally accessible for the purpose of preserving and promoting Louisiana's unique French language and heritage. Methods of action research design guided this study's investigation. First, I examined the needs of French speakers living in and around the city of Lafayette, Louisiana. Then, after reviewing several projects using information communication technologies, in particular projects from the fields of cultural computing and digital humanities, I conceptualized distinct Internet applications for French-speaking Louisianans and for people interested in Louisiana's French language, history, and culture. Three fictional, yet feasible narrative scenarios serve to illustrate how my envisioned Internet applications might function. Specifically, I propose how Louisiana French resources could be enhanced through technologies including (1) metadata encoding, (2) database interoperability, (3) social networking, (4) serious games, (5) voice-recognition applications, and (6) enhanced digital video subtitles. This dissertation also (1) looks at copyright issues concerning objects of cultural heritage and (2) discusses trends of cultural institutions---museums, archives, and libraries---that are currently adopting policies, which encourage the public to freely access, reuse, and redistribute text and image copies of certain institutional holdings. This dissertation concludes by recommending collaborative efforts between Louisiana public libraries, Louisiana universities, and the Digital Public Library of America, a national initiative seeking to digitize, preserve, organize, and present cultural heritage resources online to the public. |
