What Anne said

My half-formed idea is very similar to Anne Whisnant’s (not surprising, as we’re working on similar road-related projects!).  I’d love to find a way to create a good, clear online map of the whole 140-mile length of Route 2 in Massachusetts, with the potential for adding either a layer or layers for historic maps or just snippets from those.  I’m trying to develop a methodology for studying a highway ethnographically (trickier than it sounds) and would like to have this online venue as a kind of “place” that people can go to spark memories and stories of their own as part of my interviewing process, with materials from those interviews and archival research eventually feeding back into the map.  I have no idea how to accomplish this!  I’ve been thinking of using Prezi as a starting-place, since that will give me a basis for making discrete presentations from this data as I’m building it (and since I really like Prezi).  But I’m not sure how to integrate that with a basic (and loooong) map.  Looking forward to exploring this and other ideas with you all next week!

Getting to know you!

NCPH THATCampers: Please note the participants tab at the upper right of the page–this is a great way to get to know one another a bit before next Wednesday. If you haven’t already done so, please update your profile information when you log in to the site.

To add your picture, it’s necessary to sign up for gravatar.com and upload a picture, which will link to this site via the email address associated with your THATCamp participation. (By the way, “gravatar” creates a Globally Recognized Avatar that’s useful for other online activities).

 

Website Interfaces with ContentDM

We are working on creating a digital collection of art and material culture images related to Tennessee during the Civil War–housed in ContentDM, the collection will be used on a website organized by theme.   The developers are working on the best way to make these two things work together and considering using WordPress or  other existing website template.  We want to make sure that users can go from website into ContentDM database to browse it as any researcher would want to do. Would be interested to discuss ideas around working with digital humanities content library-type collections to make them user-friendly and interactive on the front end through a website interface.

 

 

Susan W. Knowles, PhD Candidate in Public History, Middle Tennessee State University

iPhone app

HI all,

I’m also interested in learning about how to create an iPhone app. Next year, my graduate students will be creating one for 17 historic sites and museums related to War of 1812, as part of the 4 years of commemoration of the 200th anniversary.

Mad skills?

Does anyone want to do a quick training session/features tour at our THATCamp? Omeka? Wikis? Podcasts? I could use some advice on downloading and using Ubuntu alongside Windows. For more ideas, see thatcamp.org/help/teach/.

 

Breaking With Tradition

I work for a state-run grant fund in Colorado.  We fund development of a lot of traditional interpretive materials such as signs, brochures, and booklets.  Lately we have seen increasing numbers of funding requests for interpretive projects utilizing newer technology.  I’m hoping that through all of your projects and experience I can learn more about what is new, what has been working well, and what has not worked so well.  I would also appreciate information on start-up, implementation, and even marketing strategies.  Looking forward to meeting you all and hearing about your exciting work.

Creating a flexible geospatial interface for Blue Ridge Parkway project

Hi everyone,

In 2009, a team of us at UNC-Chapel Hill got a grant to develop “Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway in North  Carolina,” an extensive web archive that will bring together primary source materials and interpretive essays related to the  history of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We are to launch the site this summer.

One of the features of the database that underlies our site is that, as nearly as possible, everything presented is geo-tagged, or given a location in space as well as time.  Additionally, many of the materials we have are actually historical maps, which are being “geo-referenced” (overlaid on a present landscape).

In my dreams, I had also hoped that we’d be able to develop a dynamic main interface for the site that would be map-based.  Although we *are* going to have a map-based browse feature that will allow content to be discovered based on the location it pertains to, the geospatial dimension of our project is going to be more limited than I had hoped, due to limited funding and programming capacities at present.  Yet, I have envisioned in my own mind how my *ideal* would look.  The ideal would combine a current map of the Blue Ridge Parkway with some dynamic features that would communicate a few basic tidbits about the Parkway’s past, including pace of construction, that would be relevant to the materials being presented.

I’d like to put my ideal out there for folks to look at and help me imagine how and whether it might eventually be done.  I have ventured some in the past into the use of Google’s various tools and think they offer a lot of promise here, but don’t know enough really to propose specifically what we might do — or how.

I’m uploading an image (PDF, linked below) of my hand-drawn mockup as a basis for discussion. Look forward to meeting everyone!

20100921WhisnantMockup

Anne Whisnant

 

 

Please submit your ideas for THATCamp NCPH!

As of today, 12 of 45 participants have posted ideas for THATCamp NCPH. We’ve got some good momentum going . . . let’s keep it up! We need to hear something from all of you to make this event a success. Take a peek at the existing posts and then log in and post your own.

To create a post, complete the following steps:

1. log into the site with your username and password.  The login link is listed on the lower right of the screen in the META section, which is below the twitter feed.

2. once logged in, click on the Posts link on the left side of the screen

3. select the Add New button to create a new post

4. give your post a title (related to your interests) as well as a detailed description of your topic in the text box

5. make sure to select the \”Topics\” box in the categories menu on the right side of the screen.  This will allow users to see only the topics others post when they select the topics link on the website.

6. after you finish your post and select the topics box, preview your post and, once satisfied, select the publish button.  This will make your post live for others to see.  Posts appear on the homepage of THATCamp NCPH 2011.

 

 

new answers to old questions

I have initiated a project called ‘War in Parliament’, which entails a study of the impact of the Second World War in post-war political debates and decision-making in the Netherlands.References to the Second World War shaped political debate for many decades. However, we have no systematic knowledge of why, how often, when, by whom or from which political party, and in which context, these references were made. Nor do we know the meanings politicians ascribed to the war years, the lessons the war was supposed to teach, and how all of this influenced political decision-making. Answering these questions will help us better understand the complex legacies of the Second Wold War. With tools developed in the e-sciences we are able to research large corpora and language resources (in this case de Handelingen der Staten-Generaal (Dutch Hansard)) by creating an advanced search engine for this dataset with an intuitive and  powerful query language. However, as a historian and thus used to historical handwork, I am still curious and eager to learn more about the still uncertain path digital humanities provides.

Hinke Piersma

Online Presentation of the Built Environment

I’m working on developing an online presentation/website/etc. on the history of the buildings and landscape of a military installation in Richmond, VA. I have a lot of flexibility with the project and am looking for the best way to present the information. I am looking for a straightforward, flexible platform that will allow me to use text, photos, and scanned documents/maps to document the history of the installation in an interesting and effective way. I’m particularly interested in Omeka and how that might work for this project.

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