Inside SEMC Winter/Spring 2022

Page 49

Mapping Textiles and Tourism in West Georgia Jamie Bynum, Graduate Research Assistant, GIS Specialist, and Researcher, University of West Georgia, Center for Public History

Digital history is a quickly growing field that is being used more and more every day. This field is one that has a multitude of applications and uses for both academia and the public, which is crucial to the field of public history. The work I have completed over the last two years has utilized digital history to bring the history of the textile industry to the public. At the time of writing this article, I am a graduate student at the University of West Georgia graduating with a Master of Arts in Public History and certificate in Museum Studies in May of 2022. Since January of 2020, I have worked as a Graduate Research Assistant for the university’s Center for Public History, directed by Dr. Ann McCleary and Keri Adams, M.A. My work has almost exclusively been for the Center’s West Georgia Textile Heritage Trail project. This project aims to bring the heritage and history of the textile industry to the public in a way that highlights tourism, local exhibits, and community. Due to my Bachelor of Arts degree holding a minor in Geographic Information Systems, I was asked to help with the creation of maps to better put forward the history of west Georgia’s textile industry. These initial maps were completed using Esri’s ArcGIS Story Maps, which uses maps to tell stories from across all fields of study. What makes this program unique is that the maps are not static but interactive and are able to attract more attention from the public. Later, I began creating maps using Esri’s ArcGIS and ArcGIS

Pro programs to create both static and animated maps for my thesis project. The textile industry in West Georgia was and continues to be a significant aspect of many communities. Many communities within our region were founded around the textile mills in the form of mill villages, which were groups of houses built specifically to house their workers. This expansive landscape of the textile industry is one that can be fully studied and appreciated with the use of maps and visual sources. Not only were textile mills located adjacent to their mill village, but also near other mills and their mill villages. The congregation of these mills and villages were the foundation of many modern communities. Our project aims to bring the history of the textile industry not only to researchers but to the descendants of those whose story is being told. The first step in completing these maps was to decide what program we were going to use and what visual aspects we wanted to include. Story Maps was the best choice as it allows the use of photographs and a layout that shows all the location points together to tell a more comprehensive story. Another potential program was Google’s Tour Creator; this program did not work as well for what we wanted to create and has since been discontinued. Picking the program also came with picking aesthetic features we wanted each map to have that would make it identifiable as belonging to our project. Due to the pandemic, we were unable to contact the company and pursue the full customization 49


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Membership Form

4min
pages 115-117

State News 100 People and Promotions

17min
pages 118-126

Important Dates 114 SEMC Job Forum 114 Get Social

1min
page 114

A Special Thanks: Endowment and Membership Contributions

57min
pages 77-113

Operationalizing a Nonprofit Strategic Plan

3min
pages 67-70

The George Washington University Graduate Certificate in Collections Management and Care: Is it Right for You?

6min
pages 71-76

With Debut of Boyd Foundation Horticultural Center Historic Columbia Realizes What Once Was Only a Pipe Dream

6min
pages 59-64

Mapping Textiles and Tourism in West Georgia

6min
pages 49-52

Celebrating Buffalo River Country

5min
pages 45-48

The Gaston County Museum Collection Move

10min
pages 53-58

Guerrilla Marketing: The MAX’s Make Your Mark Campaign

3min
pages 65-66

Craft in the Laboratory: The Science of Making Things

8min
pages 41-44

Save the Date for SEMC 2022: Northwest, Arkansas

3min
pages 19-28

Moving Musical Tradition Revealed at Florida’s Backus Museum

5min
pages 31-36

Executive Director’s Notes Zinnia Willits

2min
pages 7-10

Vice President’s Address Matt Davis

1min
pages 13-14

A Message from the Membership Team Carla Phillips

2min
pages 15-18

President’s Address Heather Marie Wells

2min
pages 11-12

Dancing through History at the Arkansas Air and Military Museum

2min
pages 29-30

The Multidimensional Creativity of Alma W. Thomas

7min
pages 37-40
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