After completing my last assignment in HUM 502, I can breathe a sigh of relief at being one step closer to earning a graduate certificate in archives and special collections at USM. While the content of my final project is near and dear to my heart, there were occasions when I doubted my ability to finish the three exhibits in time. Since the final was two times as large as the midterm, I wondered how I would manage to do it all, having spent a full week collecting the content and composing the text for Widows of the War exhibit. Without the convenience of a spring break, which I had devoted to the midterm, I was worried if I could even repeat the process with the addition of two more exhibits.
Although I had intended to explore four of the Catholic Sister communities who served as Civil War nurses in my final project, I struggled with how to organize and divide the information over three separate exhibits. Ultimately, the way in which I arranged each page was determined by the types of items that I found, which ended up being 5-7 per exhibit. Because I wanted to present a balanced amount of items about the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Daughters of Charity, and the Sisters of the Holy Cross, I decided to structure the Angels of Mercy exhibit as an introduction to the Sister-Nurses. This then gave me the freedom to focus on the Mercy Sisters for my Mission of Mercy exhibit and to conclude the project by examining the role of the Sisters of Charity, Daughters of Charity, and Holy Cross Sisters with my In the Name of Charity & the Cross exhibit. In educating the public about the religious sisters, I was thankful that I could annotate photographs and prints in order to differentiate between the diverse communities and label the parts of their habits. Besides giving a voice to the Civil War contributions of these women religious, it was exciting to trace the geographic locations where they ministered through the mapping tool.
As much as I enjoyed the opportunity to create the metadata for 20 Library of Congress items of my choosing, I wish that I would have had the foresight to select images and documents that could have later been used in my final project. Even if I would have located 10 possible items and worked on finding the metadata for each record in February, it would have saved me some time and stress in the long run. As 3 of my midterm project items and 8 of my final project items are available through the Library of Congress, I could have identified the Dublin Core information sooner had I committed to a topic in advance. Therefore, one suggestion for next year’s course might be to break up the components of the final project so that students can potentially build it throughout the semester.
In addition to personalizing the metadata assignment so that it is providing part of the foundation for the final project, another idea is to utilize the blog posts as a way to encourage students to write one exhibit page a week. Not only is this recommendation beneficial for anyone who procrastinates, but it also requires students to start their research earlier and gives an instructor the chance to check on their students’ exhibit progress.
Initially, I was overwhelmed at the thought of weekly blog posts, given my obsession to find the perfect words for what I want to say, but as I look back over what I’ve published, I’m grateful that I had an academic excuse to create a blog and document my responses to course readings and assignments. Not only can I see my growth as a digital humanist through the experiences of transcribing documents, customizing code in CSS, and constructing Omeka websites, but I can also take this portfolio of work and share it with future employers. If I were not graduating from USM this spring, I would definitely consider enrolling in another DH class; however, I can also see myself applying the skills that I picked up in HUM 502 as an archivist. Ideally, I will continue my DH learning by taking advantage of workshops and on-the-job training.
