Author: maxb

For this blog post, the assignment was to play around with and figure out the mapping website and guide that was provided to us in class, as well as reflect on some of the lecturing and assignments this week. To me, this mapping website seems really easy to use and pretty self explanatory when trying to plot points on a map. I think it’s pretty cool that you can also view other points on the map other than the ones that you posted, as well as their exact points on an actual map on Pennsylvania. I also noticed that some of the metadata was plotted on the maps in places far away from West Chester which was interesting considering we found almost all of the metadata in the archives of West Chester in the early-mid 1900s. This put into perspective to me how important saving metadata is even today, because it was the reason we were able to create this map consisting of small artifacts that we have been studying. Saving and mapping metadata will help us in the future as well when we try to access artifacts from today’s world. I’m also particularly interested in the fact that we have now touched on the mapping side of digital humanities because mapping has been, is, and always will be an essential part of humanity, which means now that so will metadata. It’s cool that we get to live in the era in which mapping has become digital, and where we are able to do this from anywhere, such as the sixth floor of the library. Being able to finally see the process of collecting artifacts, from real life all the way back then, then turning it onto metadata, and then mapping it to be able to see where the actual event/function took place is a cool experience.

This week in Digital Humanities was a particularly interesting one. We spent our time in the library on the sixth floor at special collections where we learned how to photograph different items and upload them to a google drive. After this we were instructed to upload them to Omeka as metadata. This is a semi complicated process that took a while to get the hang of but was very interesting upon mastery. Labeling, titles, and processing the items to become metadata was a trial and error process as well. Having to figure out how far back some of the items originated from, as well as determining what the purpose of some of the items were was a long process that I was eager to reflect on this week. It was very interesting to see just how far back some of these items come from. My earliest item so far had been from the early 1900s, which was pretty cool to see something that originated so far back that the college had a completely different name. To reflect on how truly stunning of a find this was, I would also say that it’s truly astonishing to see something written on paper preserved this long, considering how many ways something like this could get lost. So much of our data and records are kept via computer or the internet now, so seeing and getting to interact with some of these items was a blast from the past and reminded me of when I was in elementary school only working with paper and pencil. Getting to see the history of my university and my community through documents that are perhaps 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 plus years old is something that I am lucky to be able to experience via this digital humanities class. Furthermore, being a part of the documentation process of this items for future students and scholars to discover makes me feel as though I am taking real strides to preserve the history of my university.