April
4 , 2003
Interactive
Campus ‘Time Machine’ Under Construction
| 
Robert
Schwartz |
If you’ve ever
wanted to see Mount Holyoke’s historic campus through the
eyes of the past, you’ll soon have that chance. A Web site
being developed by Robert Schwartz, professor of history, will
offer an interactive atlas of the campus from its origins to the
present. The project is being funded through a generous grant
from President Joanne V. Creighton. “Memorable Landscapes:
An Electronic Historical Atlas of the Mount Holyoke College Campus”—a
Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL) project—will invite
the MHC community to step back in time.
Have a fondness for Prospect Hill? With a few mouse clicks you’ll
connect to architects’ evolving plans for the hill, as well
as links to historical information and archival photos. Click
on the maypole icon at the hill’s summit and you’ll
see the 1904 May Day celebration. You can then link to other photos
and alumnae reminiscences of May Day. Once the atlas goes live,
you’ll be able to explore all corners of the campus through
maps, photos, and memories.
While histories of
college campuses have been compiled since at least the 1930s,
Schwartz’s atlas is groundbreaking because it will use state-of-the-art
geographic information systems (GIS) technology to visualize,
interpret, and connect maps, pictures, and texts. Equally innovative
is that the atlas will document the memories and activities attached
to MHC’s landscape and buildings. “I don’t know
of any projects under way to create an atlas that also collect
the memory of places,” says Schwartz. Schwartz’s goal
also is to recover and preserve electronically landscapes and
structures that have been displaced and modified. “Historians
are always in the business of getting back what’s gone.
That’s one impetus for this project. Another is my concern
about some recent campus changes. Instead of being a griper, I’m
trying to educate myself—and others,” he says. “Conservation
isn’t drawing a line in the sand and saying, ‘No more
change.’ We’re always going to have to be changing
the campus. But I think, for example, that the design and moral
aim of Frederick Law Olmsted’s original landscaping plan
for Prospect Hill deserve to be retrieved and understood, along
with the succession of landscapes and architectures that have
formed and re-formed the campus. The atlas will not only recover
some of the varied and shifting ideas that have shaped the campus
but also will help us better serve as good stewards of this historic
campus.”
Since President Creighton approved the project in February, Schwartz
has been consulting with Jill Crook Trebbe ’90, an archivist
at the Frederick Law Olmsted Historical Site in Brookline, Massachusetts.
And this fall, students will help produce the atlas in Schwartz’s
new course, Mapping the Memorable: A Cultural and Environmental
History of the Mount Holyoke College Campus. Students interested
in taking the 200-level class can obtain course information and
application forms at www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist283
or in the history department office, 309 Skinner Hall.
Though Schwartz hopes applicants have completed at least one college-level
history course, what he seeks most is a commitment to collaborative
learning. “The students selected for the class will work
in teams to take content from the atlas’s database—images,
text, streaming video of alumnae interviews—and create Web
pages that link to the atlas’s cartographic component,”
he explains. “Students don’t need any experience in
building Web pages. What I’m seeking is a genuine interest
in the project and a willingness to work collaboratively in groups.
In addition, I’d love a diverse group of students. All majors
are welcome—I’m particularly keen on having some environmental
studies students involved.”
Another collaborative
dimension of the project involves the College archives, the CEL,
LITS, and the Alumnae Association. The computer cartography will
be done in the GeoProcessing Laboratory (GPL) with the assistance
of Tom Millette, associate professor of geography and director
of the CEL, and Chris Hayward, the GPL’s director. Peter
Carini, director of archives and special collections, is a key
part of the team, and Schwartz is also being assisted by Aime
DeGrenier, LITS instructional technology consultant, reference
librarian Bryan Goodwin, and representatives from the Alumnae
Association. “Creating the atlas will definitely be a collaborative
effort across campus,” says Schwartz.
That aspect, Schwartz hopes, will continue. His original vision
for the atlas was to create something “dynamic where new
components could be built and historical layers could be added.”
Bringing a fully functioning atlas to life by January 2004 is,
in his mind, only phase one. “It will be rich, but it’s
meant to be enhanced and built further, perhaps by other faculty
members in their classes. There’s really no end to this
project’s development.”
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