For my campus map, I wanted to highlight five locations that represent the different parts of my daily life at Carleton. I chose Laird Stadium because I spend a significant amount of time there for football practices and workouts. Severance Hall is included because it is where I live, while Willis Hall represents my academic life since I take many of my economics classes there. I also added LDC Hall because I eat there regularly and Moon House because it is an off-campus house where many of my friends live and where I frequently spend time. Together, these locations provide a picture of how I balance athletics, academics, and my social life.
When creating the map in ArcGIS Online, I wanted to make the locations easy to identify and understand. I used a basemap to provide context for where each building is located and added points to highlight the places that are most important to my routine. Creating the map helped me think about how much time I spend in different areas of campus and how these locations connect to my everyday experiences. Rather than simply showing the geography of Carleton, the map reflects my personal connection to the campus.
I think web mapping has significant potential for digital humanities because it allows people to combine geographic information with personal experiences, historical information, and other forms of data. Maps can reveal patterns and relationships that might be difficult to recognize through written descriptions alone. For example, mapping locations connected to student life could help illustrate how students use campus spaces differently depending on their interests and routines.
ArcGIS Online is particularly useful because it allows users to customize maps without needing advanced programming skills. The ability to add data from spreadsheets, change symbols, label locations, and draw building outlines makes it possible to create maps for many different purposes. Overall, this project showed me that maps can be more than tools for navigation. They can also tell stories about people, places, and the relationships between them.