Throughout this fall semester I have expanded my experience as a historian; however, particularly my experiences with the field of digital history. The digital history course exposed me to a great number of tools, such as website and blog creation programs like Omeka and WordPress. Both of these tools have allowed me to not only … Continue reading Reflecting on Digital History 2022
By Derek M. Murphy Greetings! Photo by author Prior to the Digital History course with Dr. David Pettegrew, I had little knowledge of the digital humanities, especially pertaining to history. My main exposure to digital history was through another course at Messiah University, Public History. In this class we discussed some of the ways history, … Continue reading Encountering History in the Digital Age
The first thing that strikes you about Sankofa Theatre Company's latest production is its music. The play opens with an old-fashioned piano riff as we look at a picture of a Harrisburg building from the early 1900s. As the image shifts to an image of the same building in the present day, the soundtrack fades … Continue reading “Voices of the Eighth” is Historical Theater at Its Finest
Unbelievably, it seems to be the end of the 2019 fall semester. September seems to have turned into December at a whirlwind pace. As the year comes to a close, I'd like to take a moment and reflect on my time on the Digital Harrisburg working group. The first thing that I quickly realized was … Continue reading Reflecting on a Semester Spent With Digital Harrisburg
Ever since I could remember, I’ve always been a history buff. Something about telling people’s stories and learning more about the human experience has kept me fascinated for years. As I’ve gotten older, the sheer complexity of human history and what we as a society stand to learn from it continues to astound me. There … Continue reading Rediscovering the Digital Side of History
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
As this semester progresses, I realize more and more how similar Digital History is to Historical Archaeology. Where one researcher is brushing dust off artifacts, another is pouring through archives and databases for their very own dusty material. The more time you spend digging around, the more information you can gather and the more you … Continue reading Digital Archaeology
A week ago, at the Dauphin County Historical Society, I found my project of interest to be but a small fish in a big sea. Our Digital History class took a trip to these archives to conduct research for our third project where we will be creating biographies for important figures in the improvement campaign. … Continue reading For Richer and Poorer
As I stood at Desk #1 in the Pennsylvania State Archives, tears welled up in my eyes. Maybe it was the fact that we had the privilege of blowing early 20th century dust off Harrisburg tax records or the fact that this same dust was deeply stuck in my eye; either way it was a … Continue reading Whether ’tis Nobler…
On the morning of September 24th, our Digital History class took a field-trip to the State Archives, located in central Harrisburg. I had the opportunity to complete research in the archives during my internship this summer, but only worked with the microfilm collection, so it was a really neat experience to actually handle original documents … Continue reading What’s Black and White and Read All Over?
Digital Harrisburg 