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.
