Musselman Library Hosts Digital Scholarship Presentations
Students present digital scholarship at Musselman Library (Photo provided)
By Katie Oglesby, Assistant News Editor
On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Musselman Library’s Browsing Room hosted the six digital presentations by seven Gettysburg College students. Four students were introduced as Digital Scholarship Summer Fellows who created these presentations as projects over the previous summers. Others presented on behalf of a class they took, in this case, ENG 200 “Writing Across Media” and HIST 301 “Introduction to Public History.”
Hoang Anh Just ‘21, a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow, presented his project entitled “Augment Your Past.” Just catalogued the history of Gettysburg College in photographs, creating both a website and an Android application to be used as a historical resource.
“I wanted to show the history of our college to the students,” he said, explaining that he hoped he could make it fun and engaging.
Just used augmented reality to display this history by creating an application on the phone that would allow the user to point their phone at a building on campus and incite the app to pull up old photographs and a summary of its history. So far, Just has compiled this information on Schmucker Hall, McKnight Hall, Pennsylvania Hall, and Glatfelter Hall.
Emma Lewis ‘20, also a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow, presented an evolution of Gettysburg College. She explained that when she was looking through the Special Collections on the fourth floor of the Musselman Library, she became interested in the recorded oral histories students had received from alumni who had attended college in the first half of the 20th century.
Lewis compiled this oral history into many pathways on her website, such as one that databases the many important women who have come through the college.
She remarked on how much she learned by doing this project and how much the college has evolved over time. She adapted the title of her project, “I Can Hardly Believe the Change,” from a quote from one of the oral histories.
“I could hardly believe the changes when I looked back,” Lewis said, remarking on how much the college has progressed in the last century.
Other presenters included Emma Poff ‘22 on “Redefining Populism Beyond the West,” Emmarie Toppan ‘20 on “Visual Novels as Storytelling,” Emily Kane ‘21 on “Mapping Pollution in the Chesapeake Bay” for her English course, and Garrett Kost ‘21 and Simon Velez ‘20, who both presented on “Shaping Perceptions of War: Propaganda Posters WWII” for their history course.
The presentations spilled out of the Browsing Room, engaging students, faculty, and library staff in the innovative work of these students. With their websites displayed on screens, the presenters were able to show visitors the details of their websites while they gave their spiels. This made for an interactive and engaging experience for both the presenters and the guests.
The students expressed how much these projects taught them and that they wished to share that knowledge with others through their digital presentations.
