Katherine Jewell Launches Crowdsourced History Project, “Mapping the Boston Marathon 2013”
In the words of Kate Jewell, BU PhD recipient and faculty at Fitchburg State:
“I started the Crowdsourced History project as a way to process what I experienced at the marathon bombing, when my son and I were 200 feet from the second bomb (on the same side of Boylston St.) From this personal motivation, I decided to crowdsource oral histories using a geographic interface, as this was something I was familiar with from my research in the political activism of industrialists. I have mapped political contributions from organizations, and so I had some knowledge of the mapping tools out there. I launched the project six months after the bombing, and it was featured in the Worcester Telegram and Runner’s World, and I began receiving contributions.
After the press coverage, I was contacted by Ryan Cordell and the people at Northeastern who had also recently launched the Our Marathon project to collect stories, images, social media, and other materials from the bombing and the manhunt, and I’ve since tied my mapping project in with theirs, which is collecting data into an Omeka database. It is a “born digital” archive, and I presented my project and, in coordination, the Our Marathon project, at THATCamp Florida. ”
Link to “Mapping the Boston Marathon 2013”: http://crowdsourcedhistory.wordpress.com/