Mapping Recent History
Posted to Digital Humanities: Theory & Practice on 11 April 2006, 2:15 PM EDT
As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So at the Center for History and New Media, we're currently feeling extremely flattered that our initiatives in collecting and presenting recent history—the Echo Project (covering the history of science, technology, and industry), the September 11 Digital Archive, and the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank—are being imitated by people using a wave of new websites that help them locate recollections, images, and other digital objects on a map. Here's an example from the mapping site Platial:
And similar map from our 9/11 project:
Of course, we're delighted to have imitators (and indeed, in turn we have imitated others), since we are trying to disseminate as widely as possible methods for saving the digital record of the present for future generations. It's great to see new sites like Platial, CommunityWalk, and Wayfaring providing easy-to-use, collaborative maps that scattered groups of people can use to store photos, memories, and other artifacts.
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