The work on this site was originally presented online via Omeka, an open source platform that allows researchers to organize digital resources and present them in multiple formats—stories, exhibits, maps, timelines, etc. The maps that appear in our pages initially went live via the Neatline plugin (which produced pretty, though sometimes unwieldy maps) or through embedded maps built on Google’s Fusion Tables (which produced more utilitarian maps with greater flexibility).
Three things happened in late 2019/early 2020: (1) Google ended Fusion Tables, (2) my university stopped supporting Omeka, and (3) the COVID era began. Together, these changes hit the CSVHP site hard, necessitating a thorough re-working of content. We shifted to WordPress and started using the Maps Marker plugin to help visualize some of the stories with geographic data. Susquehanna recently changed WordPress hosts, and the shift did away with our access to Maps Marker. Luckily, we’ve saved all mapped data in CSV files since 2018.
Having settled into WordPress after a few years, this is a good opportunity to review the research areas and tidy up a few messes. The site now features embedded maps built in Google’s My Maps (these are basic, get-the-job-done maps that work well on screens big and small). Work this summer will correct style and format issues in several of the areas. And we’ll start exploring new avenues of local history soon.