Facebook Shuts Down School Historical Profiles Project

(EndPlay Staff Reports) - There won't be any raising the dead on Facebook.

Media outlets report that a university's project of creating profiles for two deceased alumni as a learning engagement tool has been shut down by Facebook.

Mashable stated that Facebook disabled the accounts of Joe McDonald and his girlfriend Leola Lewis, who attended the University of Nevada, Reno, before getting married in 1915. The accounts allegedly violated the social network's terms of service, according to a message university librarian Donnelyn Curtis said she got when she tried to log on.

She told Mashable that she was displeased about not getting a warning.

"I think that would have been polite," she said.

A university press release stated that McDonald and Lewis met at the university in 1911 when they studied together in the basement library. McDonald went on to become president of Reno Newspapers, Inc., and married Lewis.

The university's special collections and university archives department had researched their lives and enlisted the help of the McDonald family, who provided photos and manuscripts. Curtis, who serves as director of the special collections, and her staff used what they found to create Facebook pages featuring the couple's lives and personalities.

"We're just trying to help history come alive a little bit for students," Curtis told the Chronicle of Higher Education .

"It's awakening to learn about my grandparents' years as students at the university and how their experiences shaped them as a couple," Margaret McDonald, one of the couple's granddaughters, stated in the university press release.

The profiles had actually been set up more than two years ago, Mashable reported. Curtis began increasing status updates recently, which drew more attention from the public and the media. The couple's connections went from more than 100 each to more than 1,000.

There were plans to expand into other time periods using other alumni and experts complimented it for helping to bring history alive to today's digital generation.

The catch was that Facebook does not allow anyone to provide false information or create an account for anyone but themselves without the person's permission. McDonald died in 1971.

Curtis told Mashable that she's trying to get her information back from Facebook and pursue the project through another route.