This week during Digital Humanities we had finished with our scrapbooking in the special collections room at the library. We met back in class on Monday and learned about maps and how we can use them. I believe we are trying to get more practice with techniques and tools that we collected from doing metadata on our Omeka collection. Basically, we are trying to find out what would it look like if we used our images and texts from Omeka and placed them directly on a map and how is would be done? Over the week, I learned there are many different ways we could use our metadata on maps. For instance, creating a map by timeline could be very efficient. If everything is in chronological order, it will be easier to find information because it is so organized. We also learned that a timeline organizes a single dimension, so starting with the earliest occasion or date and ending with the last is the easiest option. One thing to notice is when the person you are researching encountered all of these artifacts. Another tool you could use is transportation artifacts. For example, bus and train tickets, other forms of transportation that students engage with. We could combine the idea of chronological order and transportation routes/patterns to see if they line up with any new information or centers around anything specific. On Wednesday, we were given a google checklist to fill out. We were instructed to input our information from Omeka that we did on scrapbooking and see if we were able to pinpoint a location for the images or texts we chose. This was a cool activity to do to get us to become familiar with mapping and how it can correlate with metadata. Professor Famiglietti also gave us links to powerpoints that give a more in depth look at how beneficial mapping can be and how we can use maps for our metadata on Omeka. I am excited to see what we can learn moving forward in class and see how we can really use our metadata and place it on a map.
