DHM 280

In week 5 of DHM, we discussed how maps are an extremely valuable tool for digital humanists to use in order to visualize the physical and digital content we are given. In week 6, we began to put the items we were documenting in Omeka onto maps of our own to see where the owners of the scrapbooks have gone during certain periods of their lives. I found this particularly interesting because before doing this we were just looking at random items that have been scrapbooked. Now, we able to see when and where these people found these items and what they may have been up to. For example, on one of my pages of the scrapbook, Beryl Foster pasted a program from the National Championship Motorcycle Races at Atlantic City Speedway. This showed me that Beryl went to Atlantic City for a visit to the Speedway to watch professional motorcycle racing. I thought that this was cool because it had to with something outside of the West Chester campus. I believe that this is just the surface of our capabilities with the digital humanities.

In class this week, we took a look at an excel sheet of items and began mapping them on Omeka in an attempt to find unique patterns. The goal was the use maps in order to showcase relationships between multiple items. For example, I chose the schedule of WCU’s football team back from the 1940’s and attempted to compare their travel locations to their current 2024 season schedule. I want to use the maps to track the distance travelled and hopefully see if they tell us anything about the relationships regarding, travel, the size of the college sports, scene, etc. This is a cool chapter as we are taking what was a pretty introductory part of adding artifacts to Omeka and now attempting to utilize them into real studies.

This week I received my Omeka feedback. I needed a lot more cleaning up on my posts than I thought I would. While doing an Omeka post a struggle for me was thinking of a subject heading that was short and simple but also descriptive enough for what the post was about. I was told that mine were too long on Omeka and was given tips on how to make them shorter but good description for what it was. Another thing that needed fixing on mine was making my titles descriptive in a way that describes what my item is for example one of my items was a football shaped program or promotional hand out, but I just described it as an item. This week we also began to get into groups and find Omeka items to map. My group and I struggled at first finding the information and how to get it but eventually figured it out. The one that me and my group began mapping was a wedding announcement that was in an article that took place at advent church. We began doing our research too fond the exact place and address where this took place and where these people are from. This item was actually an Omeka item that was posted by me, so I suggested that we map this one. Overall, this week we mainly focused on mapping, I find it super interesting because I have never done anything like this in any other class before and I feel like I am learning so much.

This week we learned about we talked about the difference in close reading and distant reading. Close reading is when you unpack the meaning of the text by taking and close look at a small

I am feeling okay about my project. I missed Wednesday’s class because I had a meeting for the study abroad program for the summer, so I am feeling a little confused about what I was supposed to do on Friday. I did not do anything for it because of that. I should have gone to class because a number of people showed up to the meeting late and my professor did not seem to care. For the mapping, my map is okay. I could work on it more though because I did not do it correctly the first time, so I had to replot all of my points, but I did not get a chance to delete the original points. I have a lot of work to do in my other classes so I am hoping the new unit will not be too stressful or take up too much time. I am thinking of doing the Digital Humanities minor, but I will need to talk to my advisor about it. Originally, I was going to have an Italian minor, but after speaking with Professor Famiglietti I think the Digital Humanities minor might be better for my career. I know there might be a course offered in the summer for the minor but since I will be in Italy for half the summer, I am not sure if I can do it. I also need a job for the summer, and I do not know where I will get one because not many employers are willing to hire for just half the summer and chances, I get one at school are unlikely. Even if I do get one at school, I need a place to stay as my apartment lease is up in June. I was just going to take the Italian minor because I needed more credits and that would fulfill it, but this might make more sense. I still need to schedule an appointment with my advisor.

This week, we learned a lot more about mapping the items on Omeka. It’s really cool to see how all of the scrapbook items can be categorized and filtered when utilizing the map with certain location points. We spent the last class trying to find items that have similarities and what would be good to locate on the map. For example, I used the neatline feature to name the category of findings, which is “Western United States Tourist Locations.” The item was a map of the Utah/Nevada border with different places in each state. Some of these places included restaurants and scenic areas. When doing this though it was really time consuming and a bit difficult to directly find the exact locations on a broad map. One point on the item was the Salt Flats Speedway. I used Google Maps to help me find an approximate location and found that it is located in Wendover, Utah, right near the Nevada line. In finding that, I was able to find the location on Omeka, but I really had to search for it and used some landmarks around it to help me. Doing this helped narrow the search and gave me a smaller area to map out. I think what made it really difficult at first was how detailed and intricate the map on Omeka is. I had to zoom in and out of this portion of the map to find the exact location because it isn’t a large city or well-known place, not to mention that the state line is huge for Nevada and Utah. I think it’ll be easier to map more of the places next week in class because I now have an idea of where to look on the map and have learned how to use landmarks to find those specific locations.

This week in class we played around with correcting and really specifying our Omeka items in terms of mapping items and mapping items with multiple locations. The corrections were all very constructive criticism and helped me really specify and make my items very neatly entered and to fit the guidelines to an appropriate standard. Mapping, and making a neat line to this extreme is another way to really lazar focus and put the exact finishing touches on our entered items. I was running into a little bit of trouble because in class today we also talked about marriages and marriage invitations, a third of my items are invitations and have multiple locations. Like did Morrow go to all these locations and the ceremonies and the receptions? They have the location of the ceremony and the reception on the invitation and then we are at the crossroads again of which to map it to. So, on top of the stadiums, I also have the multiple locations on the invitation to map and hopefully the neat line can get me started with that. I just started getting into mapping the schedules, but I missed class on Wednesday and a little lost on how to map something on the neatline. I’m not sure the appropriate ways to fill out all the categories correctly and efficiently. Like the titling and mapping and description I can do and figure out I’m just not totally clear on the correct selections for the drop-down menus. I don’t want to do it incorrectly and mess something up because I know that these items and information about these items need to be clear and specific.