[the digital past]

Tankers in Burrard Inlet, Vancouver

Some ways I use the internet

I use digital tools to create historical narratives.

I utilize the web to explain concepts in history with tools: text, images, graphs, maps, and multimedia.

In my personal life, I use Facebook, Twitter, and flickr. Facebook is mostly a venue for communicating with family members. Twitter was a professional social media tool for me. It was a useful source for day-to-day information about what people were reading in the digital humanities field and where current information could be found. Unfortunately,  a mysterious cyberspace gremlin deleted my account–or at least my ability to access it–and wiped out my list of those I follow and who follow me. I haven’t rebuilt my Twitter presence.

My flickr account has two purposes. First, I photograph places. I love buildings and architectural details. Second, I use it as a research archive. I download materials I need for my dissertation, for example, and include all citation information I am likely to need.  I upload digitized materials I have photographed in archives and libraries. Not all of the latter materials are public because I do not own them and copyright issues are difficult.

Background

I began to explore the use of the internet to work in history when I worked as a public historian at Arlington National Cemetery. I worked as the Curator of Exhibits at the Women’s Memorial that stands at the entrance to the cemetery. Using skills and techniques I learned in the graduate history program at George Mason University, I created a website and online exhibits for the organization and several short films that enabled the Memorial to add multimedia presentations to their short-term exhibits.