Exploring social change, promoting social justice
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
Sitting in the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg this afternoon, I was glad to find myself with a little time to reflect on this past semester in Digital History. It was strange to realize how much we had accomplished in terms of reading, learning techniques, and project research. Project 1 seemed to fly by as … Continue reading Looking Backward and Looking Forward
During our last few Digital History class periods, we've gained an introduction to GIS (geographic information system). I'm familiar with the basics of GIS from my internship this summer. I worked for the Bureau for Historic Preservation, in the CRGIS (sculptural resources geographic information system) Office, but I really only used a program call GeoMedia. I am not overly familiar with ArcGIS, … Continue reading Have a Spatial Day
As the days are getting colder, our research is getting warmer. At the moment our Digital History course at Messiah College is waist deep in our third project for the semester. Over the past few class periods we have been learning a lot about the inner workings of ArcGIS, a digital mapping technology. We take … Continue reading Mapping the African American Reformers of Harrisburg
The Digital Harrisburg working group is pleased to announce a beta version of an interactive map of Harrisburg in 1900/1901 hosted at ArcGIS Online. This map and the data it contains was developed as a collaboration between faculty and students at Messiah College and Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. The Historical Society of Dauphin … Continue reading Explore Harrisburg in 1900: An Interactive Map of Buildings and Population
It’s been an eventful month for our work on the Digital Harrisburg Initiative. About time to round up some of the latest updates: 1. Presentations Since our last update, faculty and students from Messiah College, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, and Harrisburg Area Community College presented on research related to Harrisburg’s City Beautiful movement. … Continue reading The Harrisburg City Beautiful Project: A Mid-December Update
Joseph Thomas and his wife Marian lived in the 8th Ward of Harrisburg at the time of the 1900 census. Their home (see cyan dot on map below) was smack dab in the middle of where the current Capitol Fountain exists today. Joseph was an undertaker and he and his wife had two boarders, a … Continue reading Beneath the Capitol Fountain
