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Project Name: Your Friend and Classmate: Following the West Point Class of June 24, 1861 Through the American Civil War

(Project title comes from George Custer’s note to William H. Harris in his photograph album)

Project Owner: Julia Wall

Project Summary

My project is going to be an interactive yearbook based on the Photograph Album we have in Special Collections, belonging to William H. Harris. Each cadet will have their own page and on that page will be basic information: their Army/Corps/Division/Brigade/Regiment/Company throughout the war and where they went, or what battles they fought, if they were wounded, if they died. After the basic information I want to look into their letters, diaries, correspondence, to see what their perspective of the war and of their life was. I do not want this to be a database of a West Point Class, I want it to be the retelling of their stories so that they might be remembered. My audience will most likely be made up of Civil War scholars and West Point enthusiasts but I want to make it accessible to the general public as well, informing them why these men are important and why we should remember them.

Deliverables

• Scans of William H. Harris’ Photograph Album
• Letters, diaries, etc. of the cadets
• Timeline JS
• Scalar or Internet Archive (for the Photograph Album)
• Picture of William Duncan Fuller
• StoryMap? (I need more than one marker at a time, so maybe another mapping app)

Timeline

Week 2

• Finish write-up of Cullum’s Register
• Start Exploring timeline apps
• Start Exploring mapping apps

Week 3

• Categorize battles and locations
• Look for letters
• Have all Army/Corps/Division/Brigade/Regiment/Company information done
• Work on timelines/maps

Week 4

• Look for letters
• Start on descriptions/bios of cadets
• Start on web design
• Work on timelines/maps

Week 5

• Finish Big Map
• Look into Internet Archive/Scalar
• Look for letters
• Write descriptions/bios of cadets
• Work on timelines/maps

Week 6

• Look for letters
• Write descriptions/bios of cadets
• Work on timelines/maps

Week 7

• Write descriptions/bios of cadets
• Finish any timelines/maps

Week 8

• Write introductory notes, dedication, etc.
• Link maps, timelines, etc.

Week 9

• Finish descriptions/bios of cadets

Week 10

• Any last minute touches
• Final Presentation

End of Life/Future Plans

If I left out any cadets, or did not finish up research on any I will continue to work on their bios/timeline/map. The project will continue to be updated with any new research found on the cadets, either by myself or readers of my project that contact me. It will be preserved on Gettysburg Sites, but other than that their biographies are typed out and saved in multiple ways online. The information will still be out there.

This past Friday, we visited the digital scholarship cohort at Lafayette College. Interacting with the students reinforced the idea of collaboration within the field of digital humanities. It was really useful to hear what technical tools they’d used, or about the methodology they used to carry out their project. I was particularly thrilled to learn that one of the students had a project that very nearly matched mine, and that we shared some of the same research limitations. Also, it was interesting compare and contrast the Lafayette student’s interests and college experiences with our own. I’m excited to remain in contact with them and expand the networks we set up.

 

Week 2 is in the books. It was a bit of an odd week logistically, bookended by Memorial Day and a field trip to Lafayette College to meet their Digital Humanities Summer Scholars. It was great to talk to fellow librarian and DH-er Sarah Morris and her group of students, do a little bit of cross-institutional networking, and think about the wider networking that goes on in DH on Twitter. It’s really important to know that we are not alone in the DH world; not only for the students who are engaged in the practice of DH, but also for those of us who are doing the teaching, the mentoring, the curricular builds, etc. Sometimes it seems like we are doing a lot of this work on our own, and it’s tempting to think we are islands on to ourselves. But, as we saw this week, we’re not, and we can learn from each other. A Lafayette student is working on a social justice project that mirrors Lauren’s project quite a bit, and also overlaps with Keira’s interests as well. Overall, a great experience! Plus, the Skillman Library is pretty neat.

This week was pretty heavy on the philosophical/project management/practical/planning aspects of DH, with workshops on project management and copyright; both are vital to the development of digital projects, even if they aren’t the most visceral things to be thinking about. However, if a project doesn’t have a strong charter, with clear deliverables and a timeline, it’s probably going to struggle when timing is the worst. And as we learned from Miriam Posner’s work this week, “Copyright kills dreams,” but by knowing a bit more about how copyright works, maybe our dreams die a little less (or we dream up something new).

But, back to the road trip. The trip out was a hodgepodge of different topics, from ranging from various school activities to religion, the sorts of things that people chat about when in a van for 2.5 hours. During the trip back to Gettysburg, our fellows asked to put on the soundtrack to Hamilton … I tend to run from ambivalent to hostile to musicals, but I had heard enough about it to be curious enough to turn over control of the speakers.

And honestly, it wasn’t that bad.

But enough about my personal issues with musical theater. What caught my attention is the repeated line, “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”, which, I think, is a way to think about the DH/DS/public humanities world. All of our fellows are doing something narrative-based, from women’s history, to social justice, to Civil War cadets. They are telling the story of various people, some living, some dead. In some cases, these stories have never been told before; other stories will be presented in a new way, visualized and contextualized for audiences to be determined. At some institutions, the DH/DS model is very data/text analysis driven; in others, there’s a lot of network/topic modeling and visualization, and in others, like Gettysburg College, we are narrative/interpretive in how we develop these digital projects (at least, so far). This comes from having an outstanding Special Collections staff who put a lot of time and effort into collecting the materials that tell the stories of people at Gettysburg College. Stories are important to us, and telling them is a vital part of the projects we are working on this summer.

So, more Hamilton-themed posts for the summer? Maybe, we’ll see how long it shows up on my jogging playlist.

–R.C.

 

 

Project Name: (Subject to Change) Remembering Women: Women’s Experience at Gettysburg College

Project Owner: Keira Koch

Project Summary

My goal is to create an interactive narrative of women’s stories and experiences at Gettysburg College during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. I plan to use the digital tool Scalar to create an interactive storybook that highlights certain women from each time period. I hope to connect the individual stories of these women to the larger experience of women attending the college. Right now I am looking at the academic and social experiences of women. I am also looking at using a mapping tool of create a map of the college during these time periods to show where women were living and eating during their enrollment at Gettysburg.

Deliverables

• Questions and ideas
• Primary Source: Scrapbooks, Letters, Course Catalogues, Maps, Pictures, the Gettysburgian, and Oral Histories found in the Special Collections
• Secondary Sources: A Salutary Influence by Charles H Glatfelter, To Waken Fond Memory by Anna Jane Moyer
• Word Press
• Gettysburg College Maps (mostly done)

Timeline

• Week 3: Finish up mapping, complete Code academy, start researching the 1950s, and look into possible scan projects
• Week4: Finish up 1950s, start researching 1940s, and continue playing with digital tools
• Week 5: Finish 1940s, start researching 1930s, and continue exploring digital tools
• Week 6: Work with digital maps and start digitizing maps
• Week 7: Start digitizing the 1950s
• Week 8: Start digitizing the 1940s
• Week 9: Start digitizing the 1930s
• Week 10: Finish up loose ends and present project

End of Life/Future Plans

• If possible, I would like to expand on my project when the Fellowship is over. I would like to expand my time frame to encompass all of Women’s history throughout Gettysburg College. If I cannot expand, I hope that my project will be set up in a way that will allow future digital scholars to reference and expand upon.

Last Thursday, I had the lovely opportunity to go on an archaeological dig with Professor Luley and a couple other students enrolled in summer field school. The dig is what I expected it to be–a lot of digging and a lot of dirt, but I had so much fun. The field staff was trying to find evidence of a Revolutionary War Prisoner of War Camp. So far, they had had no luck in finding the remains. But, with each dig there is something new to discover. At the site, I learned that there is a lot of trial and error when it comes to a dig. Every day there is a new piece of land to uncover, and the ground may or may not hold the evidence to what the diggers are looking for. If it does, great! If not, just keep digging. I will take the level of enthusiasm and adventure these people have and apply it to my digital project. I am discovering a world that is new to me. I will learn by my many trials, failures, and successes, and through it all I will keep digging and exploring.

On Friday, the Digital Summer Scholars had the pleasure of visiting other digital scholars at Lafayette College. The visit was both fun and educational. It was interesting to hear about the projects the Lafayette students were working on. One thing that surprised me was the diversity in Lafayette’s digital projects. Since all of our projects heavily revolve around history and Special Collections, I forgot that there are a number of other disciplines that use digital humanities as a way to present research. A couple projects had more of a social science feel to them and unlocked the political science and public policy view of digital humanities. One project revolved around music and creating a synthesizer interactive timeline. The diversity in these projects allowed me to really grasp the concept that digital humanities covers a wide variety of disciplines, not just history. I saw myself involuntarily collaborating and learning from these people I had known for only a couple hours through our discussions, activities, and twitter (this was the first encounter I have ever had with twitter). Overall, I learned things on this trip that I may have not encountered otherwise. I look forward to seeing these students again with their finished projects. I know they will be great!

Project Name: Taking A Stand: Student Social Justice Movements at Gettysburg College from 1980 to the Present

Project Owner : Lauren White

Project Summary

The goal for my project is to create a comprehensive and interactive timeline detailing student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College from 1980 to the present. I will use Timeline JS software and a WordPress platform to detail at least ten major instances of student activism and how each event impacted the campus and how it tied in to local and national attitudes towards social justice.  I am primarily creating this for the Gettysburg College student body; however, I would be thrilled for my audience to include faculty, staff, and students from other institutions.

Deliverables

• The oral histories, Gettysburg College factbooks, photographs, SURGE articles and Gettysburgian and Gettysburg Times articles which can be found in the College Archives or from college administration
• Stories from alumni and current students about their experiences with activism at Gettysburg
• WordPress and Timeline JS
• Zotero

Timeline

• Week 3: Finalize WordPress theme, and contact all the alumni or current students I intend to work with
• Week 4: Understand Timeline JS and any other programs that are of interest to me
• Week 5: Finalize the bulk of my research attained from special collections, my secondary sources, and the college factbooks.
• Week 6: Finalize interviews with alumni and students willing to be a part of my project, and work out any copyright issues I may encounter.
• Week 7: Have all research in a digital format.
• Weeks 8 and 9: Fill in any blanks I may have left, edit website, and prepare for my project presentation.
• Week 10: Finalize and deliver project presentation

 

• End of Life/Future Plans
  • I plan to continue work on my project after the fellowship is completed and expand the time range to include earlier dates. Additionally, it is my desire that the timeline be continually updated as student activism continues to take place at Gettysburg.

During this week we were presented with a lot of definitions of Digital Humanities, from paragraphs to a simple “TBA”. To me the definition of Digital Humanities is truly “TBA” because it is a relatively new field that combines two already established fields with different objectives and different values. We develop digital humanities as we work on our projects, finding out what works, what does not, and what limitations we find on the way.

Like any field there should be principles and values that are held by those participating. Some of the ones that we talked about were openness, collaboration, connectedness, diversity, experimentation, etc. I think one of the most important values of digital humanities is openness. Openness is important to digital humanities because it brings the openness and access of the digital world to the kind of closed off world of humanities. Most studies of humanities are done in an archive or with primary sources that are not easily accessible or understandable to the public but with the digital component it brings the study of humanities to everyone and broadens the audience of the study of humanities. The study of humanities has been around for such a long time and is considered to only be interesting and understandable to a select group of academics, digital humanities brings a more modern approach to how we see humanities. For the longest time history was done by old white men, and still is today for the most part but more and more people from diverse backgrounds are getting into areas of history that were previously dominated by said old white males. Digital humanities makes it easier to get a foot in the door for people who are not the majority in their field. Like a civilian female researching West Point cadets involvement in the American Civil War.

I could easily write a paper or form an exhibit about these cadets but through digital humanities I have a platform to share my project with literally the world. These cadets gave everything so that their country might live and prosper, they deserve to have their story told and to be known for more than just their military merits, but for who they were as people. I want to humanize these cadets and give them life again, because so often in history we are so quick to put men like Custer, Cushing, and O’Rorke on pedestals and praise them for their military merits but then forget that they were actual people with feelings, thoughts, and personality. Through their letters and through digital humanities I hope to show that they were just young men who went above and beyond the call of duty and what was expected of them, even as West Point cadets where expectations were sky high. Through digital humanities I can combine their military merits with their life experiences as people and not simply military figures. Digital humanities allows me to humanize these young men by displaying their stories in a way that is accessible and entertaining to the public today. By making my project interactive through the tools of digital humanities it makes the project more personal and able to connect with more people. I look forward to the research I will do and the part my project will play in furthering the definition of digital humanities.

The big question for week one was: What is digital humanities? The group read and discussed many definitions of “digital scholarship” or “digital humanities” and discovered that the term digital humanities does not really have an exact definition.  Digital Scholarship can be both individual and collaborative, traditional and creative. Everyone has their own definition for what digital scholarship is and how to go about producing digital scholarship. If you wanted a simple and unimaginative definition, you could take a textbook approach and say that digital humanities “is an area of research and teaching at the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities”(Yes, that is directly from Wikipedia). Alternatively, you could be creative in your definition and make it philosophical or just plain funny like some of the definitions on http://whatisdigitalhumanities.com/.

My own boring definition of digital humanities would be “the interdisciplinary approach to presenting the humanities by using digital tools,” but I also think that the definition of digital humanities depends on your own project and what you want it to achieve. It is extremely hard to define digital humanities because we cannot define its boundaries yet. Digital humanities is so interdisciplinary. It compasses a wide range of ideas, resources, and talents.

One value or definition that was tossed around in our discussions and readings that I thought was a good definition to play with was that digital humanities is collaborative. Whether you are working individually or in a group, there is always going to be some sort of collaboration–either between people, or the collaboration of digital and non-digital tools. I also agreed with the idea that the digital humanities are open. There is a level of openness between digital scholars and the public. This openness directly correlates with collaboration–you need to be open to collaborate.  Another value that was expressed was the idea of sharing. You have often heard the phrase “sharing is caring”, in the case of digital humanities I believe that sharing gets things done and accomplished. I would like to see all three of these values embodied in my own practice of digital scholarship. I believe that our group has been embodying these values since day one and will continue to collaborate, share, and be open. Although we are all working on different projects, we share our thoughts regarding our projects and digital scholarship with one another, are open to suggestions and help, and collaborate with one another, constantly asking for or giving advice.

At the end of this ten week fellowship, I will look back on this blog post. I will have some sentimental reasons for looking at this blog post, especially seeing how far we have come as a group or reflecting on the fact that I could still consider myself a First Year at Gettysburg College when I wrote this post. But, I will also look back to see if there was any growth. Have my perceptions of digital humanities changed? If so, why? Why have they not changed? What have I learned throughout the course of this fellowship? Do I have a new definition for digital humanities? _______________________________. The line will remain blank until I answer my self-assigned questions when it is week ten.

Greetings, my name is Julia Wall and I am a rising sophomore at Gettysburg College, with a major in History and hopefully double major in Political Science as well as minor in Civil War Era Studies. I was interested in the Digital Scholarship Summer Fellowship because it worked with items in Special Collections and also brought in the field of Digital Humanities which I had never heard of before this opportunity. I think that digital humanities is a great way to provide information that is more readily and easily accessible for a more modern and digital audience.

My project is based off of the photograph album of William H. Harris, a West Point cadet that graduated with the June class of 1861, in Special Collections. William H. Harris kept up with almost every classmate and where they went during the American Civil War. Which leads me to wanting to tell the stories of these cadets through a digital yearbook and collect their stories, letters, etc to contribute to a bigger picture of who they were.