Because of my internship, at least thus far, I am more confident in working collaboratively with people who possess a wide range of skills, experience, and personalities (well, I am still a bit worried about the personality issue.) I am currently still working on the deliverables of the project that include an annotated bibliography and an arcGIS StoryMap, but in participating in the many meetings and in talking with my mentory, I have been able to witness digital public history collaboration in action. The GMU team included faculty, staff, grad students, and interns. I was amazed at the interaction amongst this diverse group. I have learned that to achieve this type of collegiality, the members have to work at it. It takes a deliberate effort to focus on the mission and maintain that focus over personalities, hierarchy, experience, etc. This is a lesson that goes beyond DPH and can be applied in any collaborative effort.

As for the DPH skills I am acquiring in this internship, I am still working on the arcGIS StoryMap and will finish that by the end of the calendar year. As mentioned in an earlier post, I found the planning and preparation for creating the site to be absolutely critical. I am now working on implementing that plan. I am brand new to StoryMaps so the learning curve is a bit steep, but I feel that such a tool will be of benefit to some of my own work as both a scholar and teacher as well as to some of my students who have expressed interest in pursuing this type of historical presentation. 

This work has also taught me to think of this project and other projects I am working on in a series of layers. The StoryMap I am working on is a top layer approach. The William Lamson Collection at Jackson State University contains hundreds of maps. I cannot create a project that has all of the maps. So with the goal of creating a project that would attract an individual’s attention, and, hopefully, entice them to go further into the collection or the subject, I can narrow down an approach and focus on just that layer. Another project could be geared towards those people who wanted to go deeper into the collection. That would be a totally different public audience and would require different goals, planning, and approach. This has made it obvious to me that one cannot just plan for a “general public” audience. Such a term becomes meaningless in planning a project. This allowed me to go back to creating personas, which we did in class. I will admit I was lost and confused when doing my first personas. Now the utility of such an exercise is clear to me, and it is a crucial part of the planning process. Hey, I can be taught!

Now back to the creation of the StoryMap. I will update this post when it is finally finished!