After two straight semesters of weekly blogging, I was sure it was an ingrained habit. Guess what? Not so much. And not even a summer break to blame it on. Well, here's my effort at starting again.
This semester (Spring 2008), I have yet again engaged Professor Petrik to learn me some history. She took a group of the "History and Cartography" class and decided to do a one-off, intimate readings-style class with us. The goal was to dig deeper into the conjunction of history and cartography with a digital twist. I have continued my research into American closets for this class, building on my work from last semester. My classmates, all veterans of Professor P, have settled on some very interesting topics: Ammon Shepherd is plotting the locations of Nazi tunnels in Germany, breaking relatively new ground on an under-researched story; Don Fields is doing some amazing work with isochrones (maps showing lines of equal time), and he taught himself the heavy-duty GIS application called ArcView, no mean feat; Marty McGuirk is mapping battlefield maps across time and showing the difference between different published maps of the Battle of Monmouth (American Revolutionary War); and Karin Hill is mapping the travels of a 19th century sailor through his tattoos.
The really interesting part about this class is our experiment with self-publishing. We are skipping the peer review process (gulp!) and going straight to press with our research. We will publish our book using the online publishing facilities of Blurb. The idea is to demonstrate how easy it can be for historians who can speak "digital" to get themselves some credibility. The question, of course, is how legitimate that credibility will be. Regardless, it will be showing up on my CV under "Published Author," so that will count for something.
To further legitimze our cred, we'll be presenting the results of both our research and our experiences in self-publishing at the 2009 AHA annual conference in New York City. We're all, needless to say, very excited about the opportunity! Stay tuned – the final project for the semester is due on 7 May.
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