by David Pettegrew It was, strangely enough, March 11, 2020, the day everything changed, when I posted the last annual update about the work of the Digital Harrisburg Initiative. Little could I have imagined then how profoundly a pandemic would disrupt and change us over the next two and a half years. But here we … Continue reading Reenergizing the Digital Harrisburg Initiative: A 2022 Update
As the school year comes to a close, we are happy to announce that a resource we've been working on for a very long time, is finally live.
The year has finally come to a close, and I have learned a tremendous amount. When I first began this year, I was but a lowly English major searching for something to diversify my degree a little bit. I stumbled upon Digital Humanities and this led me to several new experiences involving the use of … Continue reading Closing Out an Eventful Year
Map of Harrisburg boundaries in the early 1900s showing the State Capitol grounds (green) and the Capitol Park Extension that replaced the Old Eighth Ward (dark orange) When I started taking digital history at the beginning of this semester, none of us could have predicted just how much digital learning would impact our semesters. When … Continue reading My Digital Semester
From the 1900s to 1930s, Harrisburg underwent many transformations that affected its residents. The City Beautiful Movement was sweeping across the U.S. and was helped along in Harrisburg by the old capitol burning down and a push to move the state capital back to Philadelphia (Williams, 1). The destruction of the old eighth ward and … Continue reading Mapping Harrisburg’s Population from the Old Eighth
Last Sunday my friend Andre Frueh and I jumped in the car and drove twenty minutes from Messiah to the steps of the Harrisburg Capitol. We parked on the street by a meter, where parking is free on Sunday. We may be budding historians, but that doesn't mean we aren't on a budget. Our reason … Continue reading Story Mapping Harrisburg’s Old Eighth Ward with ArcGIS
At the end of the fall semester of my sophomore year of college, I was told that through my current internship I would be able to research and write for a monument that would later be installed in the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building. Without hesitation I accepted, but as the exhibit developed it became a … Continue reading My First Job as a Digital Historian
There's a nice little public relations piece at the website of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology about HU's role in the Digital Harrisburg Initiative. The good news is that an internal grant will continue to fund the completion of digitization of 1900 and 1929 maps. Read the piece here. Here's an excerpt from the … Continue reading Harrisburg University Maps out Harrisburg’s History
It has been a long time since our last update on the work of the Digital Harrisburg Initiative, so long that visitors may have concluded this is a dead project. Our work in fact has continued on a number of fronts and has continued to expand in ways we could not have anticipated when we initiated these projects in … Continue reading Digital Harrisburg: Winter 2017 Update
A city cannot function properly without the co-operation of its populace and, even so, it requires dedicated individuals to view it with a critical eye and decide where it requires improvement. Beyond that, it requires individuals who are willing to not only see these needs, but also to act upon them. Women committed to this … Continue reading Silhouettes and Passing Time
Digital Harrisburg 