I had the pleasure of being interviewed by the fine folks at the Library of Congess regarding the view that Professor Evans and I created for her project, SWAG Diplomacy using their platform, Viewshare! You can read the entire interview here but I wanted to provide a piece. Enjoy!
Stephanie reached out to me, a graduate fellow at Emory’s Digital Scholarship Commons, to help make a map for her amazing project charting the world travels of famous African Americans as described in their autobiographies. Initially, she’d found some mapping software that wasn’t the right fit. I suggested Google Maps, which was closer to what she needed, but users could not map multiple points at the same location. For example, Paris, France, was a popular destination for many African Americans but you could only see one point on the map at a time and couldn’t tell there were 29 other people under a data point of Billie Holiday in Paris. When I saw the Viewshare workshop advertised, I thought it would be a right fit and it was! I was able to take my Excel file and create a view during the workshop that allowed you to see and search by “Traveler” and “Country.” It was exactly what we were looking for!