Post Mortem
I began this project, sure of my historical knowledge and incredibly concerned about the technology. I thought my idea about showing the monuments and some other points of interest in DC was a good idea, and my historical explanation of planned connections among monuments or other powerful symbols in Washington, DC, such as the White House and the Capitol building, would add an extra component to my research that would make it unique. Instead of gathering sources and immediately beginning research, as I would have done with a typical research assignment, I decided to tackle the technology issue first. I wanted to use a map in order to really give people a feeling of the spatial orientation of things in Washington, DC. Although not on a strict grid like Philadelphia or many western cities, Washington is obviously a very planned city, and a map could allow people to experience certain aspects of the city before their visit.
The technology was difficult, but tools already available online to make Google Maps made the project feasible. The big problem with the Google Map Maker was that it forced me to work in the code because I could not use Dreamweaver or some other program to design a website in a more What You See Is What You Get program. The code was very, very hard. I spent hours going through the code and adding things to make the pop-ups appear formatted and make sure each point was the right size and at the right location. The incredibly annoying thing about the code was the smallest error threw off everything. An extra carrot meant that my quotations wouldn’t appear, but the code of the map would become e readable. An extra semicolon or a slight change in a number sequence resulted in points on my map disappearing. Other mistakes, I still am not sure exactly what they were, caused the map to disappear completely. They were the scary mistakes. One moment I had a map and then the next second, after typing simple historical content into a pop-up, everything was gone.
Eventually, technology and I meshed and I was able to complete the map and have all of my points with their small historical blurbs to let people know what they were looking at and where they could go to learn more. The next part then became the in depth research. I had finally made it to the easy part: history…if only that had been true. I went to the library and searched online for books on my topic. There were not only no books on Washington monuments that were connected, which I already knew didn’t exist, the amount of research on any of the monuments was negligible. I found out information about the Washington Monument by reading books on Washington and not by locating some book on monuments. American University Library had absolutely nothing to offer. George Washington University Special Collections had a number of original documents concerning the monuments, but they were hard to obtain and didn’t look like they would be much help. Stumped at the library, I decided to turn to the professors that had inspired this project. I met Professor Ed Smith, director of the American Studies department, with the hope that he could point me toward some better books. He had given a Civil War tour of Washington, DC in the fall and knew all sorts of things about the monuments, the city, and various trivial facts.
Professor Smith hit me with a bombshell. “Well,” he mused, “to tell you the truth, there really aren’t any books about what you are asking me and the other research is very hard to find. I would recommend that you look at Thomas Mahon original 1901 plan for Washington, DC and draw your conclusions from that. I also have a good friend who might be able to help, but he is very busy so only use him as a last resort.” I ended up not contacting the friend at all because of time constraints and already having been warned that he was very busy. “In terms of everything I know about the monuments,” Professor Smith continued, “I’m afraid that I know so much because I am good friends with too many people who work for the National Park Service down here and I go to a number of their functions where they discuss these little known facts as part of everyday conversation.” I was devastated. The part of the project that I had been most confident in and comfortable with blew up in my face. The lack of books on my topic I had not been too concerned about because I had these great professors to use as a resource, and I figured they could point me in to the right references. Instead, they turned out to be the only resources and most of my “research” became hearsay history.
I tried not to let the discovery of how much original research I would have to do discourage me. I returned to my Washington books and began researching the man behind the monument so that I could explain certain things about the monument. I liked the result but I had wasted too much time. I was once again in a predicament of technology against research. The due date for the website was swiftly approaching and although I had a map, I had not formatted the rest of the website. I returned to the lab to design the rest of the website, leaving the completion of the research for later. I ended up confronting a lot of little hurdles in my website design. Fortunately for me, Sarah Brockett had also used a Google Map and had a great website design, so she was able to help me with how to add tables in a way that would keep my website very ordered. Her help was invaluable. When I finally finished the website, I was ecstatic. It looked better than I had hoped, and although I wanted (needed) a lot more research, I figured I’d be working on it through the summer anyway and I could fill in the history at my own pace. At least the website itself was done. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then technology troubles struck again. Everything worked great at school. Everything appeared good from my home computer. I decided I wanted to re-center some things and perhaps change the size of the full screen map, but everything was still working properly. I even showed my parents the website, and it worked for them at home. That was a really good test since they are not the most computer literate people in the world. Then I discovered a problem. When trying to access the website from work, nothing appeared. I did not understand. Then I realized my fatal mistake. I had been using Mozilla for all of my tests. Internet Explorer somehow would not display my Google map and displayed a light blue, blank page instead. I would have to dig back into the code and see if I could fix the error. Unfortunately, I could not figure it out. After my finals, I am going to go back and recreate the page with some slight changes with the hope that IE will recognize it. All of my other pages appear with Internet Explorer, just not the main page. Time had run out on this semester though, so all I could do was hang my head and shake it slightly in disbelief. That darn “best laid plans of mice and men…” quote cycled through my brain.
In retrospect, I would change a number of things about this project but keep the main parts of it the same. Technology definitely improved this project. I learned I needed to test my website from a greater variety of computers, but I am still happy with the end result. The historical research I short-changed myself on because of my fear of disaster while dealing with the new technology, and I clearly would have benefited from a week of evenings spent at the Library of Congress. Overall, I learned an immense amount. I am confident in building websites, although now that my free trial of Dreamweaver has expired, I’ll have to buy it or always have access to a lab. The Google Map Maker was a tremendous tool that I will use again and will actively search for other similar tools that make entering data and creating a map that much easier. My project turned out not as great as I had hoped but better than I expected. I plan on continue to use the website and building more and more to clearly demonstrate how powerful the web can be as a tool of research and presentation for history professionals. I am confident that, largely thanks to the knowledge obtained through this semester in class and from experimenting online with class assignments, I will succeed.