Having been a California native, and being a Santa Clara University student i am often not amazed by my surroundings as much as i should be. As i walk around campus i see the faces of other students of different cultures and backgrounds, i see lush green vegetation all around me and on certain days i feel the cool air. California, like many of the great states in the United States, has a rich and diverse history filled with information, some of which has been lost and some that is in the process of being preserved.
With the creation of its California Legacy Project, Santa Clara University is seeking to broaden the amount of information that is preserved about California’s past, and in doing so seeks to educate those who are uninformed of California rich cultural heritage. A link to the website for the California Legacy Project can be found here, and contains a few key publications from California’s native authors. The publications that are being created by the CLP mainly tend to focus on California’s unique historical events, its environment and key experiences in the lives of its inhabitants. The CLP website also contains podcasts and excerpts from its publication on its website.
One of such podcasts by Susie Chapney Clark speaks about the Mammoth Dome also known as the Lick Observatory, located near San Jose atop Mt. Hamilton. Clark describes the telescope as monolithic and says that it was the first telescope open to the public to ever be founded in California in 1888. For more information on the Lick Observatory follow this link here
What is interesting to me about the California mission project is the idea that it uses technology to preserve human culture as opposed to the traditional forms of writing and oral cultures that we have used throughout the past. Do you think that the use of technology will preserve culture better? or do you think that we are taking a step in the wrong direction?
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