It has been a bit since I had the privilege of writing about my projects on the Digital Harrisburg platform, and I am delighted to be back! This fall, I entered my final undergraduate semester and my last few months at Messiah University. Instead of being sad about the impending end, I have juggled as many projects as possible to make these final moments full of fun, collaborative opportunities.
This semester, I started as a “Chester Fellow” (named after Thomas Morris Chester) and have been working with my colleague Alex Shehigian on the new Curatescape site, “Harrisburg Historical.” My work involves creating short videos to complement the written pieces for the website. So far, I have worked on a video that features Lincoln Cemetery.
One thing I have found out is that people love short videos. They like seeing the things we are talking about in an article. By adding these short elements throughout the story map, I think it will take Harrisburg Historical to a new level of interactive engagement.
Alongside these short videos for our story map, I am creating a digital archive of all our past videos, audio, photos, and final projects within the Digital Humanities Projects world. The archive is set up in digital file folders. There are main collection folders and subfolders of specific projects or media file categories. Inside each main folder, I include a specific finding aid to help researchers reduce their finding time. The finding aids are set up so that you can command F word search for your specific topic, and if we have what you are looking for, the document will help you identify where to look immediately. The purpose of cataloging all of our videos in a digital archive is to help future student researchers continue the work I started, especially for Harrisburg Historical. By creating a digital catalog, it will help student and community researchers who are interested in our digital collections access, credit, and use our collection.
This archival project includes oral histories and videos of some of our past and present community partners like the Dauphin County Library System, the Pennsylvania Past Players, the Commonwealth Monument Project, as well as Lenwood Sloan, Yvette Davis, Albert Sarvis, John Melham, Becky Ault, and more. Oral history videos were captured by students throughout the semester and add depth and a personal touch to the stories students author on Harrisburg Historical. This archiving project also helps to provide a video editor like me with more content to edit into a minute video for the Harrisburg Historical Site. I hope that there will be more editors after me, as well as more digital archivists, to make sure we never lose the video content that we have produced thus far.
If you are interested in the work I am doing now, my past work, or my following projects, make sure to check my website and YouTube page for the final documentary. Also, don’t forget to follow Harrisburg Historical, as it’s being built into a premier web location for place-based stories about Harrisburg history.
Keli Ganey is a Senior History major at Messiah University with a concentration in Public History and minor in Digital Public Humanities. She holds the position of student assistant to the Dean of the School of Arts Culture and Society as well as Humanities scholarship program leadership council co-chair, President of the Messiah History Club, Public Historian for Emmy Nominated Yellow Breeches Television and serves on the editorial staff. Keli also is a Chester Way Fellow under Dr David Pettegrew for her final semester. You can see her many works in various forms on her personal website.
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