As Reading Week is now over, I was able to cross a few (not all) things off my To-Do list.
Most importantly, I had the opportunity to explore what I might want to pursue as my independent project for my Digital Public History class. Consulting The Beard of Knowledge (a nickname I stole from Pawn Stars and gave to my father), I found out that my uncle had a collection of their Great Uncle’s (my Great-Great Uncle) letters from the First World War. I am now hoping to use Omeka to create a small, online exhibit of their content and his life.
The story of a British immigrant just before the war, whose life was interrupted by a European matter that drew him (but not for some reason his two brothers) at first into the Medical Corps and then overseas with the 3rd Division. Stanley Harpham did not immediately go to France with his unit, for some lucky reason, but eventually rejoined them to see the war's conclusion. Then, a sick soldier, Stan was surprisingly soon back to England (my uncle has speculated it may have been the flu). He had employment waiting for him back in Toronto and would continue to devote much of his personal time to the service as Ontario President and later Dominion President of the Canadian Corps Association and a Director of the Warriors’ Day Council of the Canadian National Exhibition.
I decided to begin by playing around with Omeka to see what kind of exhibition I could create. I’m really not fond of resources that force you to pick a URL right off the bat without the option to change it later. I was feeling a tad overwhelmed that Omeka wanted me to be creative in this very moment so I opted to create a test exhibit just to see how it worked.
I was a little skeptical at first when I realized that the item and the collection entries look identical. I entered my first item – Stan’s attestation papers – and was able to fill out a good majority of the fields the record offered. I then went to make a collection thinking I might be able to group all of his military records together, but the collection record brought up identical fields as were present for the item record and thus, I became a little confused as to what information I should be putting in the fields.
I am going to continue exploring all the different functions Omeka has to offer. I’m really excited to see how this project will come together! My uncle’s collection is a real treasure trove of information and I am sure that one of the hardest parts of this project will be selecting what to include (and having to digitize a lot of it). My uncle has done a fair bit of digitization of pictures and transcribing some of Stan’s letters, but I think there is still a substantial portion of the collection that awaits digitization. Digitization happens to be one of my passions so I am really eager to get started on this!
