Everyday Life in Middletown

Everyday Life in Middletown (EDLM) is an ongoing collaboration between Ball State and citizens of Muncie, Indiana, to record, represent, and discuss everyday life in our city. Volunteers keep detailed diaries of their daily activities, which become part of our online archive. These diaries reveal countless details of everyday life that would otherwise go unrecorded. To date, the EDLM team has assembled more than 200 day diaries and other contributions. The project’s aim is twofold: to document these experiences for present and future scholars interested in the everyday, and to create a digital commons where people can build community around the topic of the everyday and where participants, scholars, and other users can each take a hand in shaping its agenda and character.

EDLM’s digital character creates opportunities for documenting and exploring everyday life experiences that a paper-and-print archive cannot.It’s online platform facilitates collaboration and dialogue, enables multimedia submissions, and provides tools for surveying and analyzing participant’s contributions. These features empower users, allowing them to chart their own course through the material and share their insights.

Pat Collier (English) directs the project with support from the DSL and the Center for Middletown Studies.