Sarah Johnson
I'm transitioning from a 20+ year academic career, teaching design history and the history of technology to a public history job, so I can live in the same location/residence as my partner. I've been interested in the digital history since the mid-1990s, and have worked on a few digital projects on content provision. My current job as Putnam County Historian gives me access to an amazing collection of maps and other types of public documents. I see this as the opportunity of a lifetime, because I would like to secure funding to support a large scale digital humanities project focused on producing virtual driving tours of aspects of Putnam County's history, such as mills, mining, summer tourism, Revolutionary War sites, the Cold Spring Foundry & Civil War, etc. Previous historians have charted these tours, and I would like to add layers of information--oral histories, digital mapping, video tours, etc. and augment the analog tours that already exist but that are largely unused. I went to a digital mapping workshop at the Museum of the City of NY in November 2013, and have been trying to get the bigger picture and the skills I will need. I would love to attend the AHA THAT camp to network with other area scholars, see what people are up to, and generate some interest re: student interns, consultants, etc. I'm a formally trained academic historian, with a background in 18-20c material culture interpretation, including academic teaching, museum exhibition research and installation and I would love to segue to digital humanities with my current public history job to utilize my interpretive skills and promote Putnam County's history to a broader audience.
