According to historian Joanna Guldi, the humanities has taken a geospatial turn in the past few years (Spatial Humanities). Increased availability of web-based software and GPS-enabled devices have made it easier than ever to create and online-publish interactive maps. These maps can help scholars and their audiences visualize data, which can enhance traditional scholarly research and even illuminate new questions and arguments. This is great news for aspiring public historians like myself. Digital mapping tools can help me conceptualize the importance of place in historical narratives and analysis.
With these benefits in mind, I was excited to get started on the interactive map project that was assigned in my Digital Humanities class. Choosing a topic was easy. I had already decided that my final digital project for the class would deal with the university archives’ Veterans Oral History Project. My map would draw data from one of the oral history transcripts in that project and would visualize the veteran’s movements during his time in service. This map will eventually be incorporated into the final digital project that will highlight the Veterans Oral History Project as a whole.
After looking around at the different available mapping tools, I opted for the simple, yet effective StoryMap JS through Knight Lab at Northwestern University. Since this tool does not require a great deal of technical experience, I thought it would be a good place to start for a mapping novice. True to its name, Story Map JS works well for narrative-style mapping. This was perfect for my purposes since I wanted to tell the story of a single individual’s movements during the Vietnam War. Creating a map to trace his steps could help me (and any audience) visualize the geographic scope of the conflict.
I found Story Map JS to be very easy-to-use. It did not require me to clean my data or even format it into a spreadsheet. All that was required was to create a series of slides, inserting images and textual content that corresponded with each geographic point in the story. I could upload images related to the veteran from the Duquesne Archives, or I could find suitable images from online public domain sources, such as Wikimedia Commons. I used the latter to find photographs of the different air force bases where the veteran had been stationed. Some of the photographs from the archives required some simple editing, because the files were too large. Story Map JS does not let you edit images within their platform, so I had to resize them in a separate photo editing software and then upload directly into the slide.
The oral history transcript provided the basic timeline information for the veteran’s movements. I also pulled out several brief excerpts from the transcript that related to specific places on the story-map. These firsthand-account quotes helped to enliven the descriptive text that accompanied each slide and image.
The map is not very dense—there are only ten geographic points that correspond to the places the veteran traveled during his time in service. However, it is highly transparent, since the map can be easily understood by the audience. The introductory slide states the map’s purpose right away so there is no confusion.
Another strength of the map is that it incorporates a range of sources, archival images, oral histories, textual analysis and maps, into a sleek design that gives the audience a glimpse into how an individual serviceman experienced the war. One element I did not have a time to add to the map (but may add at a later date) is audio clips from the veteran’s oral history interview. Knightlab has some audio software called Soundcite, which lets you add inline audio to text. Including audio in the map would add another dimension to the overall narrative.
One of the weaknesses of the map is that I did not include a great deal of big-picture context about the Vietnam War. The only major reference to events of the war was stating that the veteran’s commissioning into the U.S. Air Force in 1965 coincided with President Johnson’s escalation of U.S. involvement in the conflict. I did not want to make the slides too text heavy, and I also wanted to avoid overshadowing the veteran’s personal experience with too much larger context. I think the purpose of this map is not to give a history of the war but to tell the story of one serviceman’s movements during it. I may incorporate more context for the war in the final Veterans Oral History Project.
Overall, I enjoyed this first attempt at creating an interactive map. For future mapping projects I might even branch out to a more advanced tool now that I know I can handle the basics.
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