I can’t believe this course is coming to and end. Joy and I have come a long way and I must say I could not be happier with how the site turned out! Overall, this course was quite a learning experience. I had never worked with WordPress before so it tested my patience quite a lot but I  gained a lot of new and useful skills.

There were some areas of the site that deviated from the original contract we drew up, however, none of the changes were that significant. We changed the theme to better display our information and we omitted the section on Women’s Naval Militia since I could not find enough sources to write up the section.

Throughout the course, I appreciated the feedback Joy and I received for the site from Dr. Pearson and Dr. McClurken as well as the other students in the class . It was really helpful to have this open dialogue between all the members of the course because all the comments we received bettered our site.

I appreciate the fact that the Century America course gave me the opportunity to explore the archives. I really enjoyed spending time in the Sarasota History Center during the researching stage of the course. It was fascinating to see the various materials stored at the Center as well as figuring out which materials were useful for our research. It sort of felt like a scavenger hunt. Also, getting to meet and interview Harriet Burns Stieff was an amazing opportunity. We were able to capture her story and share it with the community. Her family’s ties to the community are so prevalent that it felt like a duty to provide some form of documentation of it. Through the use of videos, I believe that I was able to do so.

I must say that the video editing process was quite a journey. As I was editing the first video on development my computer stopped working and all those edits were lost. It took me a while to get a new computer and the program set up. I had to redo the edits on the previous program but once I did so I was on track again.

Besides editing the four videos and transcribing them, I worked on the Agriculture and Woman’s Club section. From the beginning of the project, I showed interested in exploring the Woman’s Club since I had never heard about it but kept seeing the club popping up in the newspapers I was looking at. It was interesting to learn how huge of a role the members of the club played it making Sarasota the way it looks today. It was in charge of the beautification of the town. So all the beautiful vegetation lining the streets of downtown Sarasota today owe it to the club.

Overall, I could not be happier with my experience with Century America. This is such a unique course that connects students of similar interests from various liberal arts colleges across the United States together. I gained so many new skills and solidified others. Thank you all for being such engaging and helpful peers!

The website that Kana and I created went far beyond what I envisioned. I am so proud of the work Kana and I have done and feel that we truly did our best to produce an accurate, comprehensive look into Sarasota during the Great War. We managed to get to this point by sticking fairly closely to our project contract and original division of labor.

A key component of our contract was keeping the site attractive and accessible. Kana and I agree that the theme and other aesthetic elements of the website came out well. But, in order to achieve this, we did end up using a different theme than the one we originally planned to use in the contract. Besides solely visual elements, we feel that we managed to find a good balance between images and text. Most importantly, it is our opinion that we were able to write with historical integrity without sounding too academic. Thus far, these views have been supported by members of the Sarasota community who have seen the website. Our parents, friends, peers, and random members of the area have all be able to enjoy the content. Last week I called a local video store for an entirely different project and when I told the owner my name, he commented that he is a member of the Historical Society of Sarasota County and saw my website in an email sent out to Society members. A Sarasota native, he said he loved the site and showed it to all his friends.

Regarding the layout of content, there were a few deviations from the contract. Under the War Effort section, we added a subheading on “Enlisting” and removed a tab labeled “Women in the War Effort.” This change was due to a lack of information regarding a woman’s naval militia that was mentioned briefly in a single source. Instead, the role of women in the war effort was touched upon in all relevant sections and more specifically in the tab, “Woman’s Club,” under “Social Life on the Homefront.” We also removed an intended subheading on railroads under the “Wartime Economic Development” tab. This was mostly due to a lack of time; when it came down to adding the section, there was already a good amount of content under “Wartime Economic Development” and little time left to add more. The last main deviation was moving the section on disease, originally placed under “Social Life on the Homefront,” to its own tab called “Influenza.” A positive addition that was not on the contract was creating an individual page for Harriet Burns Stieff, providing a page where visitors could see all video clips of her in one place and read a bit about her and her involvement in the project.

Our division of labor turned out almost exactly how we planned in the contract. As stated previously, the section on the woman’s naval militia did not come to fruition, and thus Kana did not get a chance to write about that. Besides that, we both read over and helped edit each others’ sections. Occasionally when doing archival research we individually came across sources that were relevant to parts the other person was writing about. As such, we did not maintain a clear division of labor in the sense that nothing was done without some form of collaboration. But, generally, we stuck to our assigned tasks.

Again, we are incredibly proud of our site and grateful for the experience we have had in this class. I think I can speak for Kana as well when I say that we both learned skills that will benefit our academic careers and beyond.

Having spent the past semester reflecting on past events, it seems only fitting that we conclude our participation in the Century America Project in the same fashion.

In reflection, therefore, what must be immediately addressed is the extent to which my research-partner and I ultimately deviated from the parameters which we had set for building our website. Plans to incorporate an interactive map of our community or a timeline of important events occurring therein eventually proved to be somewhat overly-optimistic, given our joint lack of experience with digital architecture. In the case of the timeline, we did include the caveat that the timeline was only “a prospective” addition to the site.

In terms of the proposed pages which would comprise the site, our contract is largely congruent with the current state of the site, though we ultimately determined, after advisement from Dr. Pearson, to combine the proposed “Chester Ronning” page into that for the Camrose Lutheran College. Likewise, the idea of a “Daughters of Empire” page was eventually folded into the broader category of “Women’s Contributions”. Finally, the “Our Experiences” page proposed in the contract was dropped all together, as we came to feel that a page describing the process of building the website was of lesser importance and therefore an unnecessary allocation of time and energy that could be better utilized on other developing other aspects of the site.

As for how closely the content of those pages that were eventually included accords with our contract proposals, the overlap appears, in my estimation, to be fairly close for the most part. The only major exception would be that the page for “The Military Experience” currently contains little information concerning the specific units mentioned in the contract (other than a brief reference to the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry) or to recruitment drives. This particular deviation resulted from the realization that the topic of recruiting fitted better within the “Propaganda and Attitudes Towards the War” page than “The Military Experience”, which ultimately became became devoted specifically to the story of Sgt. Harry Connor as the emblematic Camrose soldier.

Concerning the experience of participating in this project, in brief, I’d happily do it all over again if the opportunity presented itself. The topic of study is both fascinating and important to understand in light of how so much of what we take for granted in modern social and geopolitical arrangements proceeds directly from the Great War and its aftermath. Additionally, the digital and archival course-work, while perhaps somewhat intimidating for the neophyte, was both extremely useful experience as a scholar and also a lot of fun. Finally, it must be said that the teleconference aspect of the course was excellent. Drs. Pearson and McClurken, ably assisted by Leah Tams, married academic professionalism with humor in a highly-effective manner, and in terms of the websites that the students eventually produced, I think that the results speak for themselves.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Drs. Ellen Pearson and Jeff McClurken, Leah Tams, my research partner, Summer Roasting and our fellow student-participants in this program for an immeasurably enriching experience.

~James Hudec

The Century America COPLAC project has provided me with a better appreciation of digital history. Previously, I had regarded digitalization as an easy skill. Grandparents and even elementary age children are able to create Facebook profiles and Word Press Blogs with apparent ease. However, I was unaware of the complicated processes associated with website design and writing. As a history major, I felt unprepared to create HTML and CSS coding for vital components of the digital project. I invested many hours searching through coding books to obtain the correct locations of periods and quotations marks so essential to web design. These unexpected difficulties created obstacles toward the completion of our project contract. My partner and I adjusted our goals to reflect these challenges. However, confronting these difficulties I became a better historian. I learned how to conduct community research and efficiently organize my time. More importantly, I gained an understanding of the skills required to present history to wider audience.

Community research was essential to our project’s success. Through interviews and meetings, my partner and I were able to discovery important sources which altered the course of our research. My project partner, Laura Galbraith, and I first encountered John W. Zimmerman and Kim Ward as they were completing the Call Field Aviation Base mural at the Wichita Falls Municipal Airport. Zimmerman and Ward provided insight on important subjects and gave us contact information regarding how to obtain research. Such information included the contact details of Lita Watson who is the head archivist of the Wichita County Archives. Ward used photographs from the Wichita County Archives to reconstruct the base’s layout which was essential to her mural’s perspective. Laura and I were able to use Ward’s outline to gain a better impression of the base which helped in our own search of Call Field photographs. Ms. Watson of the county archives also contributed toward our search by allowing me to explore unhindered through the vast archive. Often, I would invest my Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons examining records and inquiring with archivists about additional sources of research. Such discussion reviled that the complete collection of the Wichita Daily Times was located at the Wichita Falls Public Library. The Wichita Daily Times was the daily news publication of Wichita Falls during The Great War. This source was essential toward interpreting our project’s topics such as Call Field, The Spanish Flu, the Oil Boom, and the Women’s war contributions. Through an online Facebook Group dedicated to Wichita Falls history, I encountered city cartographer, Paul Bata who reconstructed a map of the Call Field Base. He used old photographs, property records, and satellite imagery to overlay the 1918 aviation field map on the current topography. Bata’s unique map connects Wichita Falls to the past. Although this research was vital to our project, the methods to obtain these records were time consuming. Future students of Century America should be advised that community and field research efforts require greater time commitments rather than secondary source research on databases.

Regarding our project contract, adjustments were needed to accommodate the various research challenges I encountered. Arguably, despite these changes, I upheld my commitments listed in the contact. I was initially responsible for the creation of the Call Field Page, Oil Boom Page, Bibliography Page, the Timeline, and half of the Women’s Page.  According to the contract, the Call Field Page was intended to include a detailed list of all service members that perished while training and include the schematics of Call Field Base’s construction. As I was conducting my community research, I overheard concerns that the list of men who perished was also under dispute. However, having compared the memorial stone at the Wichita Falls Municipal Airport with the records within the Call Field Engineer and Call Field Stabilizer, I feel confident that the memorial stone accurately represents those who died while training. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the original blue prints of the aviation field. In addition, I did not include a memorial listing of all fallen airmen and I omitted the timeline. Debatably, the interactive carousals of the Call Field publication are more useful to student researchers and are more fascinating to local Call Field enthusiasts. Although these carousals do not display the graphics or dates in a linear fashion, viewers are able to see the memorial listings in the original publications. The time required to upload all six carousals made it impossible to construct the timeline. The Oil Page and Bibliography Page were completed with few deviations from the project contract. Since Laura omitted the Genealogy page, I was unable to summarize the individual entrepreneurial families’ successes which in part defined the North Texas Oil Boom. Instead, I focused my discussion on the development of North Texas oil businesses and Call Field. Laura was also unable write the section regarding the Spanish Flu. Therefore, I undertook the Spanish Flu research and arguably satisfied all related conditions according to the contract.

Laura Galbraith’s adjusted contributions included the Women’s Role, the Timeline, uploading the map, and writing half of the home page. She primarily focused on the technological aspects including setting the color scheme, selecting the background image, and setting up the pages. Laura sufficiently described Women’s Roles during The Great War. This section does not deviate from the contract.

Overall, I believe that Laura and I are pleased with the website despite the few deviations from our contract. Unfortunately, we were unable to invest the necessary time to integrate our YouTube videos on an interactive map. These videos may possibly become components on the timeline depending on Laura’s availability. Our project’s accomplishments represent the community’s involvement. Many of the sources that were vital toward our analysis were given and used with permission by various people and entities across North Texas. This process of digitization has helped Laura and I become better historians.