Taking Digital Public History this past semester has given me a lot of valuable knowledge and insight that I will use in my future career and the historical work that I will create. Overall, I have learned what it means to create history for the public and how this can be done in a digital format. The modules for this class allowed me to understand how to create works of public history, the importance of understanding the audience of any public history project, and how digital tools can be used to engage the general public with a historical topic.
The material covered in this class, gave me an insight into an area of history that I previously did not have experience working in. Creating works of digital public history is different than other historical works that I have previously produced for other classes. Most of the historical works I produced before taking this class, were meant to be viewed by either my fellow students or the professor teaching the class. My previous historical works were produced for an academic audience who usually had a similar amount of knowledge and experience with the topic my project was on as I did.
In taking this class and completing my digital public history project, I was for the first time producing a historical work that was meant for the general public to engage with. Developing a project that was meant for a non academic audience made me stop to consider who this project would appeal to and how could I design the project to appeal to my target audience. I found that creating personas helped me to understand who the target audience of my project was and how I could best design my project to engage with this group.
One of the major lessons I learned from developing my digital public history project over the course of the semester, is that as much as the content and design of any digital public history project is based on the interest of the project’s creator, the interests of the intended audience must also be taken into account. In certain cases, the interests of the project’s intended audience can actually have a major effect on the content of the project and can change the overall focus of the final project.
This was certainly the case with my digital public history project. The original idea and focus of my project ended up being different from the final project I produced. Originally my project was going to be titled: An Immigrant Experience: The Evolution of the Byzantine Catholic Church in the United States, and would focus on establishment and evolution of the Greek (later Byzantine) Catholic Church in the United States by the Carpatho-Rusyn people. In my original project, the focus was more on the Greek (Byzantine) Catholic Church and its development in the United States rather than the story of the Carpatho-Rusyn people.
Through the feedback I received and reviewing what would most appeal to the target audience of my project, I can to the realization that the most compelling part of my project was the immigrant story of one specific ethnic group the Carpatho-Rusyns. I changed the title of my project to: An Immigrant Experience: The Carpatho-Rusyns and their Church in the United States, to emphasize that the focus would be on the story of the immigration and Americanization of the Carpatho-Rusyn people and how this was unique from all other immigrant groups because of their Eastern Rite Greek Catholic faith. Taking the interests of my target audience into consideration helped me to create a project that has more wide ranging appeal than could be found in the original focus of my digital public history project.
