Visit Project
Project Details
Georgia Journeys: Legacies of World War II is a free-choice digital exploration that traces stories of World War II veterans, home front workers, and Holocaust survivors across space and time. All the individuals featured on the site have a strong connection to the state of Georgia, home of the Museum of History and Holocaust Education (MHHE) at Kennesaw State University (KSU). The content of the site is based primarily on oral history and other first-hand testimony.
Subjects or Themes
World War II, Veterans, Immigrants, Home Front Workers, Holocaust Survivors, Women, African Americans, Politics
Time Period
Geographic Location
Project Categories
Content Type
Oral History, Images, Mapping,
Target Audience(s)
Creators
Museum of History and Holocaust Education
Year(s)
2016
Host Institution / Affiliation / Project Location
Kennesaw State University
Software Employed
Labor and Support
Georgia Journeys’ 2016 launch coincided with the opening of the MHHE’s permanent exhibition by the same name, bridging the museum’s broad focus on the history of World War II and the Holocaust with local perspectives that resonate with the museum’s visitors. The core of the exhibit consists of 12 biographical panels based on the testimony of veterans, home front workers, and Holocaust Survivors from MHHE’s Legacy Series oral history project. Appealing to a wide range of visitors, from 5th graders to older adults, the exhibition features timelines, maps, artifacts, audio recordings, tactile reproductions, and iPads seeded with the Georgia Journeys digital exhibit, encouraging overlapping of location, personal testimony, chronology, and theme. It now includes more than 30 “Journeys.”
The project is directed by MHHE curator Adina Langer, who works closely with a team of museum educators and student interns. Some Journeys support the Georgia Standards of Excellence (the state curriculum frameworks), while others augment exhibits elsewhere in the MHHE. While physical exhibits may travel or rotate, digital additions to Georgia Journeys are permanently accessible.
On average, a "Journey" stakes about 120 person-hours to create from start to finish including oral history transcription, script writing, image gathering, and content input. Adding initial site selection, construction and design to the number of Journeys included on the site, it has taken approximately 4000 person-hours of work thus far. This includes designated server maintenance from the KSU UITS team as well as early design consultation work with the folks at Curatescape as well as an application web designer on KSU's Staff.
Georgia Journeys uses the Curatescape web and mobile app framework for publishing location-based content using Omeka content management software. Curatescape is open source and free when combined with the use of an on-site Linux server hosting Omeka. Curatescape uses OpenStreetMap as its base layer. Originally created as a real-time mobile tour app, Curatescape lends itself to the geo-historical storytelling at the heart of Georgia Journeys’ methodology with a few simple adjustments. In addition to its emphasis on personal perspectives linked to specific locations, Georgia Journeys uses the dynamic tagging, controlled vocabulary subjects, and digital exhibits features built into Omeka to encourage multiple ways to explore content on the site, key to the informal learning paradigm central to MHHE’s mission.