Conference presentation
Echoes of the Centaur Tragedy: A Web-Based Oral History Project to Engage and Inform Undergraduate Nurses
Narrative, Health and Wellbeing Research Conference, 1st (Noosa, Australia, 08-Feb-2016)
Central Queensland University
2016
Abstract
The Centaur Memorial Fund for Nurses (CMFN) was established in 1948 to honour those who died on the 14th of May 1943 when the Australian Hospital Ship (AHS) Centaur, with 332 medical personnel and merchant seamen on board, was torpedoed and sunk off Southeast Queensland by a Japanese submarine. The sinking of AHS Centaur was a war crime as the hospital ship was registered with the Red Cross and the Japanese government had been notified of her status. The only nurse to survive, Sister Ellen (Nell) Savage, was awarded the George medal for her courage and heroism. The Fund itself is a living memorial to that tragedy and provides scholarships and awards to Queensland nurses in order to advance their professional development through education and research. This paper will discuss a web-enhancement project that has set out to modernise the CMFN website by including oral histories on the site to inform and engage visitors. Web based oral histories are a communication paradigm that link peoples to their culture, cultural change and history. They also cross the boundaries of linear and non-linear communication that is difficult to traverse with any other media form. However, in terms of the instantaneous nature of the Internet, many are slow-paced and often only of interest to historians and researchers. By investigating how to publish the CMFN oral histories online this project seeks to answer the question: how can oral histories be made more accessible, engaging and informative for the digital generation?
Details
- Title
- Echoes of the Centaur Tragedy: A Web-Based Oral History Project to Engage and Inform Undergraduate Nurses
- Authors
- Pamela Blake (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts, Business and Law
- Conference details
- Narrative, Health and Wellbeing Research Conference, 1st (Noosa, Australia, 08-Feb-2016)
- Publisher
- Central Queensland University
- Date published
- 2016
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Creative Industries - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99449391702621
- Output Type
- Conference presentation
Metrics
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