Engaging Community and Spatial Humanities for Postindustrial Heritage: The Keweenaw Time Traveler

Working with the public in historical data creation

“…The Keweenaw Time Traveler Project (KeTT; Lafreniere et al) employed a public participatory GIS model that asks "Citizen Historians" to create historical GIS data from Sanborn fire insurance plans, produced between 1880 and 1950. The project included the public in the design of the webapps by utilizing an in-person user-centered design approach (Scarlett et al 2018). The three distinct KeTT webapps ask users to classify building materials, building use and function, and to transcribe map notations about ownership and other qualitative information about the built environment.…”