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BLACKSBURG -- A group of Virginia Tech honors students is receiving class credit -- and sometimes solace -- as they archive relics related to the April 16 shootings.

Fifteen students in Ed Fox's honors course, "A Digital Library Related to 4/16/07 at Virginia Tech," have become part of his multidisciplinary research effort funded through the National Science Foundation.

Led by Fox, the project aims to give everyone access to the digital items, such as news articles or videos, to connect people and help them understand how to cope with tragedy.

"I have some responsibility to helping contribute and help this community heal," said Fox, a computer science professor who has teamed with about 10 others from disciplines such as science, information systems and sociology to archive items and promote research into the effects of tragedies.

Students in the honors class are broken into groups. One group is archiving items, including photos and video, another is compiling a brochure outlining the events through the eyes of guest speakers who have visited their class and another is creating a virtual tour of the April 16 memorial on Tech's Drillfield. The Web site is expected to link to information about each of the victims and could partner with VT Engage, the community service project that has the community pledging to volunteer in honor of the dead.

Once items are archived online, researchers from across the world will be able to analyze the psychological and social impact of tragedy.

Some students in the class lost friends in the shootings. They see the class a way to learn more about the tragedy and to help future generations understand what happened on their campus, both the incident and the healing process.

"I gives me a newfound respect and understanding of the behind-the-scenes," said political science major Samantha Schnitzer, who was friends with Caitlin Hammaren, one of the 32 students and faculty killed in the shootings.

Schnitzer said her classmates were affected by the tragedy in some way, and this is their way of contributing to the community in the aftermath.

But that doesn't mean the class has been easy. The students' textbook is "Virginia Tech Remembers," a collection of student, faculty and staff memories from the shootings.

"I had to stop reading at one point," Schnitzer said.

Along with sometimes overwhelming text and cataloging materials that can bring painful memories, the students have heard reports on the incident and its aftermath from numerous guests. Top on the list was Tech President Charles Steger. Others included Jerzey Nowak, whose wife, Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, was killed in the shootings, VT Engage director Karen Gilbert, engineering science and mechanics department head Ishwar Puri and Texas A&M anthropologist Sylvia Grider.

In 1999, a bonfire collapsed at the Texas school, killing 12 students.

During class discussion, students have questioned the need to maintain archives, asking whether they just prolong pain.

That's the question Fox and his team hope to answer.

"There are lots of connections we see and we want to provide access for people to study that," Fox said.