Author: Katie

I feel good about my items in Omeka. I finally got them all done and posted on the website. I had a very busy week, so I was worried I was not going to be able to finish my items in time. Last night I made changes to the existing one’s and added the ones I did not post yet. The subjects for my items are not great, that was one of the things I changed but I think they could be better. I am not sure if I completely understand the mapping. I have a token for the Delaware River Bridge Line, and I do not know where to map that, if I should. I did not map it because I could not find a specific Delaware River Bridge. Another one I am unsure about is the Yellowstone Park Company. I have not done much research for this, but I am not sure if it would be mapped at Yellowstone national park. I am not even sure what it exactly is. One that I did have to do research on was an advertisement for Forest Lawn Memorial Park. I was unsure if it was still a park. After looking it up on google, I found that it is a park in California. There seemed to be more than one location, but I mapped it at what seemed to be the main location in Glendale. One that I am sure I cannot map is a ticket for an impounded vehicle. There is no address on the ticket. It does say “Bureau of Police Philadelphia”, but I thought that that was too general, and I needed more information to be able to map it. Another one I am sure I cannot map is a nametag for Joyce Murrow. All that is written on it is her name and where she is from.

I feel better than I did for my last blog post. I missed the week 2 one so this is my second and I feel much better about this class than I did week 1. I feel very confident in my Omeka page. I understand a lot more of what I am supposed to be doing. I have a large booklet that I am supposed to add which is taking a lot of time, but I am getting through it, and I think by next class I will have it completely uploaded. I have more things that I have not even looked at in her scrapbook, but I look forward to looking more into it. I have yet to upload anything to the google drive, but I will. This class seems like it will be a lot of fun and I look forward to learning so much more about digital humanities. I think that taking this course will help me better understand aspects of my major. My major is history and I think this class will be useful for what I want to do in the future. My dream job is to work at a museum so I think this is giving me new tools that I would not get in History classes to further my knowledge. I think that in a museum this could be something that we do so I think it will be good to take this to my job. I am still not sure if I completely understand all the concepts and words, like metadata. I know it has been explained but I am still not sure exactly what it means. Also, I feel better about asking questions in this class. I was nervous to ask for help at the beginning, but I am feeling better about it.

I left class on Monday feeling a little confused about what I would be doing over in this course, but the next two classes helped to clear up some of my confusion. I am still a little confused. I thought this was more of a history class because I think my advisor told me to take it. But I am excited to learn about this topic. I think it will be good for me to have this knowledge under my belt because in history we may be doing similar things. In class we discussed the different definitions of Digital Humanities, and I learned that there is not one definition for Digital Humanities. Everyone who is an expert on the subject had a different definition. I relate this to history, which is my major, because I think if you asked every history major at this school for a definition of history you would get a different answer. The same would happen if you asked all the professors at this school or the most highly respected history scholars. Depending on their specific interest or expertise they might give a different response. Also, depending on their level of education there might be a difference in response. This is the same for Digital Humanities. As we saw on the website, people who are experts in the field gave varying responses as to the definition of Digital Humanities. Some of the responses were short and to the point and some were long and more drawn out. Being drawn out is not always bad as they gave a more detailed definition and left less room for gray area. The short and to the point did not necessarily always leave gray area though. It is just different ways to express themselves. This is also how some definitions can differ. Some people are blunter and some like to make sure their audience knows what they are trying to say.