Tool Takeover: StoryMap JS
For my tool takeover I made an interactive map using StoryMap JS using some research I did for the Over-The-Rhine Museum in Cincinnati. My research centered around the city’s 19th century midwives and included maps of midwife residences and midwife assisted births.
For these maps, I used Google My Maps and while it served its purpose, it was neither user friendly nor did it allow for much interpretation due to the fact that it was not built with storytelling in mind. It was essentially a bunch of pins on a map, color coded by midwife, which told you a baby’s name, date of birth, and the midwife’s name who delivered them. It was buggy, hard to navigate, and I was unable to embed any media into it. Had I known about StoryMap JS, I think that my project would have looked very different and could have been used by the museum in a more public capacity.
What I liked about StoryMap JS was that it allowed me to bring together multiple different elements of my research. Aside from the maps that I made, I also wrote short biography paragraphs for the city’s midwives and collected archival materials on them. These things all existed separately within my project and with My Maps, there was no real way to integrate them. On the other hand, with StoryMap, I was able to include my bio paragraphs and a photo for each location. My only critique of this would be that I was limited to just one photograph. I think that my map would have been even more engaging and would have been more representative of my research if I had been able to include multiple images per slide.
Obviously, this project was just a mockup but I definitely think there’s potential in it. It is an easy to navigate interpretive product and could easily be embedded into the museum’s website as a widget or as the jumping off point for a walking tour. I also think that from an educational standpoint, making a StoryMap could be a really cool project for high school history students. I see it as a really interesting alternative to making a slide deck or using something like Prezi.
All in all, I really enjoyed the process of creating a StoryMap and will definitely keep it in my toolbox as I embark on my career within public history!
If you are interested in viewing my StoryMap mockup, it is embedded below. If you are interested in learning more about my midwife research, please reach out to me at ltheders@luc.edu and I would be happy to tell you more!
