Abstract
This digital thesis seeks to evaluate the impact of the digitization of analog record archives in environmental justice activities for the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune Community. The details of the Camp Lejeune contaminated drinking water issue are firmly rooted in the analog era of record keeping and were all but forgotten by the affected community when the base was listed as a National Priority site in 1989. However, government public health activities at the Agency of Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in the late 1990s and early 2000s resulted in the digitization of records from the military and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency onto CD-ROM discs and made available to the community and public. The conversion of the data from an analog paper format, restricted to onsite archives, into a digital medium provided the community an opportunity to independently assess the historical facts free from government interpretation and challenge the official Marine Corps narrative. My role as the community's informal public historian allowed for the organization and utilization of these historical documents to create a community-based narrative using digital timelines. This work led to several congressional investigations into the drinking water contamination which were ultimately instrumental in the passage of legislative relief for the service personnel and their families who were exposed to the contaminated drinking water aboard the base.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2021
Semester
Spring
Advisor
French, Scot
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
College
College of Arts and Humanities
Department
History
Degree Program
History
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0008514; DP0024190
URL
https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0024190
Language
English
Release Date
May 2021
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
STARS Citation
Partain, Michael, "Camp Lejeune Digital Community Archive Project: An Analysis of Digital Public History Efforts to Achieve Social Justice for the Camp Lejeune Drinking Water Contamination 1999-2017" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023. 543.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/543