We (namely, Nadia) are building our project in GitHub Pages, and have yet to publish the site so far. But here are some screenshots to show everyone of the direction we’re heading in.

Splash Page

The first page you see is a map of New York City. We will have an interactive pin for each of our locations. Locations may be a combination of actual and imagined geographical coordinates. Some of what we wish to map–in this phase and beyond–may be unmappable. For example, exact locations are no longer known, we want to be respectful and not draw unwanted attention to closed sacred spaces, or the spaces simply resist the limits imposed by a map–or some combination thereof. Hovering over a pin will show you an image and let you click through to the location’s page.

Timeline Page

We are experimenting with both horizontal and vertical timelines. The horizontal timeline will help position our research and locations within the broader context of New York City history. It will include dates and very short blurbs pertaining to infrastructural milestones (e.g., Croton Aqueduct), legislation (e.g., burial bans), epidemics (e.g., yellow fever), and times of significant population growth (e.g., key Census count years). The vertical timeline will focus on our specific locations. We envision it as a conversation between our locations/us, tied to specific years, that explores the connections we discover between them. Each of our locations will be represented by a category tag and gravatar. Clicking “Read More” from a pin in the horizontal timeline will direct the user to the full location page.

Location Page

Each location will have its own page. These pages will feature a combination of historical and present-day images (when possible), and the content will take essay form as we explore each location in depth.

About Page

Our about page will highlight key information about the project and about us, as well as ways to contact us.

Commons Companion Site

We are very intrigued by Bret’s suggestion to build a site on the Commons after our discussions last night–as a full group and in our breakout room. We are already using a Commons group as the primary means of communicating and sharing files. We (namely Bri) will start building a public-facing Commons site tied to our private group page. We envision this site as a “behind the scenes” or “making of” view of the project. We can use much of the content we’ve already blogged for class. We can also include a more in-depth analysis of our philosophical approach and fully address blockers we encounter while building the project. We will enable comments on our blog posts, and we will also provide a “What We’re Reading” type page with links to articles shared via Hypothesis to engage our audience in building a collective understanding of key articles shaping our theories. We may even enable Hypothesis across the whole site so our audience could engage with any content they find interesting or have more questions about. As such this site would fulfill much toward our pedagogical aims and also serve as a means of audience outreach beyond the limited scope of social media platforms. We will link to the Commons site from our project site About page, and our Commons site will link to the project on GitHub pages. Depending on the social media post, we can drive traffic to one or both of these sites.

Social Media Links

Here are links to three of our social media accounts. Please follow us.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mappingcemeteries/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mappingcemeteriesnyc

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mappingcemeteries?lang=en

[This entry was originally posted to DHUM 70002 Digital Humanities: Methods and Practices (Spring 2021) in Group Project Updates and tagged group project updates, mapping cemeteries on March 19, 2021 by Brianna Caszatt.]