Inspired by the newly-established campus Digital Mapping Learning Community, we’ve been creating more digital map-related resources this semester. Regular Around the D readers have likely heard of Under Lake Norman, our mapping project that includes crowdsourced stories and images related to what lies beneath Lake Norman.
One of our faculty members, Dr. Anelise Hanson Shrout (who wrote a guest post for Around The D last year), has been creating mapping projects centered around Davidson, and taught DIG 360: Digital Maps, Space and Place last semester, which resulted in two student digital mapping of Davidson projects as well. Check out Dr. Shrout’s Mapping Davidson’s Past project on her website.
Last week, in preparation for the Archives & Special Collections participation in Digital Charlotte, I created a map of the Charlotte locations featured in our collections postcards. The Charlotte Postcards maps is actually my first Neatline (an Omeka plug-in) project, and was a fun way to learn more about early 20th century Charlotte history.
As we all learn new methods for digital mapping, we’ll be creating even more maps of Davidson (and the surrounding area)! Currently, College Archivist and Records Management Coordinator Jan Blodgett and Kyle Goodfellow from the Center for Civic Engagement are working on translating the freshman orientation community walk to an interactive map, making the stops along the walk and information about getting involved in the Davidson community available year-round. Current student Sarah Roberts (Class of 2015) is working on physically mapping the environment of Davidson, and I am partway through mapping Davidson’s National Register of Historic Places sites – look out for all of these projects to be linked on the Archives & Special Collections website when they’re completed!