Journals
Here are some of my journal entries from different times throughout the year. They reflect on the key moments in my project.
Getting Started October 7, 2016
"Topic selection has been a long road for me. When I started the year, I was pretty sure I wanted to do a research project on Mansfield history. The problem I had with that was that there really was not a benefit to the community from my project and I did not have any final product in mind. . . . As I talked to the historical society more often, I found out that they have many projects that they wanted to be done, but couldn’t either because they did not have the time or the technical expertise to do them. They wanted someone to build them a website so I added that to my project. They wanted to be able to digitize the primary source documents and pictures that they had in their collection so I decided to try to find a way to display the collection on the website."
"Fieldwork was relatively simple. I bought several books on Mansfield history all published by the Mansfield Historical Society. I also started visiting the Mansfield Historical Society’s headquarters at the Jennie Copeland House every Monday night. They have an abundance of records so I began studying those. The first time I visited, I was given a tour by Kevin McNatt and told about all the history behind the house. He also showed me many of the primary source documents and resources that were contained in the house." |
Fieldwork: First 8 Hours - January 4, 2017
"My two majors project in this have been creating the website, digitizing the photographs, and creating the calendar for “Today in Mansfield’s History”. While the first two goals have gone quite well, I think the third one has been a little bit pushed aside temporarily. I’m sure once the website is finished, I will have the time and energy to dedicate to the calendar, but until now it is taking the backburner. I have events for between 50 to 100 dates which is great."
Fieldwork Part 2- Hours 10-20 and beyond
"On a wider scale of reflection, while I originally wanted to work to study local history, my work has deviated from this in a very positive way. While I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about the town’s history, I have also gotten the chance to work on the social media and websites of two great organizations in the town. I have gotten the chance of being a social media consultant and doing assistant level work as well. I was able to find out that I am relatively skilled at this work and I like doing it. While I may not decide to take this on as a larger field of work, I am now considering doing this kind of work throughout college as an internship. Additionally, these skills can help me to better work as a community organizer and has led me to be better able to run the many clubs I run within the school."