The Sisters of the Infant Jesus, St. Maur, in Spain: Their Transformation and the Mission in Bembibre in the Long 1960s. A Digital History Web Resource

We created a web-based digital history resource, documenting the work of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus in Bembibre, Spain. The resource contains an interpretative historical narrative that examines the Sisters’ time in Bembibre and the development of their school, as well as a visualization of their historical context and the conceptual tools used in the research. The user can read the narrative, explore their photographs, listen to exchanges in the groups organized by the Sisters when the research began, but also learn about the larger historical framework in which they lived. The resource also invites contributions from users who lived this experience, and our intention is to help foster an online community of the Sisters’ former pupils and their descendants. The target users for this resource are researchers as well as the Sisters and former students of the school. The purpose of the work is twofold: one, to explore the new methods of conceptualizing and disseminating humanities research that are afforded by digital technology, and two, to make historical research accessible for the general public and to create a space for those who lived the experience in Bembibre and worked with the Sisters to be a part of the research. In this paper, we both describe the web resource and share its contents. The website is located at http://theirgroup.org/Bembibre.