With classes in full swing this week, I had to focus on the most pressing issues in regard to content creation and tasks for the History Lab internship to make the best use of my time. We didn’t have our usual weekly meeting only because Owen and I were primarily still just completing tasks from last week. We have, however, still been emailing back and forth frequently to keep each other in the loop and look over the work the other has done.
I made a few changes that had been requested by Dr. Snyder to my source identification widget which included creating a few specific graphics and adding information about where to look for more information. The goal is to link to History Lab pages to the appropriate responses for additional guidance, but as of right now, I have not discovered a way to add live links to the widget. I spoke to Dr. Snyder about this and she said she would see what she could find out for me. In the meantime, I’ll continue to play around with it until I can find a solution.
The other big project this week was the creation of our previously mentioned writing guides. I worked on a guide with tips for writing concisely as that is something that I know I have struggled with in the past. It was nice to lay out all the tips and tricks that have helped me with writing within assigned word/page counts. Once I finished writing the guide, I created a page in the History Lab. I then spent some time learning how to use all the formatting available on the back end of things until I was satisfied with the visual aspect of the guide. It is currently unpublished, but as soon as Owen creates his page with his guide to weaving sources, we will send Dr. Snyder links and ask for her approval before we publish them and find them a home in the modules.
The final thing I worked on this week was continuing to add to the Historical Era Links Collection. I emailed a few professors asking for their collaboration and so far, I’ve gotten three responses from my current instructors who all seem eager to contribute. I’m looking forward to seeing all the various resources that the History Department staff can add!
We still haven’t had any requests for tutoring from any of the courses Dr. Snyder has approached, so for next week Owen and I will continue to work on additional writing guides and other useful additions to the History Lab. One project I am excited to start on is a guide to citation of primary sources. One of my favorite Chicago Citation guides actually comes from Valencia Community College. The team noticed that it was missing resources for citation of primary sources as well as primary sources contained within secondary sources. As these are two types of citation that are frequently used in UCF’s history courses, we decided that this would be a worthwhile project to focus on. I have a lot of experience citing primary sources due to my work as a genealogist and will be consulting my other favorite citation resource Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace by Elizabeth Shown Mills to create an easy to use visual guide in the same style as the VCC guide. I hope this will be as useful to other students as Valencia’s guide has been for me.