Title

Gettysburg Monuments Map

Roles

Student Author:

John D. Duncan '17, Gettysburg College

Document Type

Digital Project

Publication Date

9-15-2015

Department 1

Computer Science

Abstract

The Gettysburg Monument Map can be found at http://historicgettysburg.us/MonumentsMap/Monuments.html. It was developed when I had a brief bout of unemployment in 2009. Originally it was in Ruby on Rails as a database application, which died when I could not keep up with version changes in Ruby that kept breaking the application.

In 2015 I was working with one of my students from Gettysburg College, John Duncan (2017), on some research and we put together an initial version of this application for the web using my data from 2009. We originally thought of doing this in Google Maps, but faced myriads of problems. We found Open Layers for the mapping, and have not looked back. John worked on the application for research credit, and then I was able to obtain funding for a summer job for John in 2016. John completed this application, and implemented it on the Android OS using Apache Cordova.

I am extremely pleased with the results, but there is so much left to work on. I would like to 3-d monuments for at least the most significant monuments, and link them in the map. I would like to write histories for the monuments, and link them to regimental histories or other web resources. But my area of expertise is CS, and any of these additions would be more appropriately done by a history person.

So I am putting out an offer to any historian or just a history buff who likes to walk around on the Gettysburg Battlefield. Help me complete this application. I will provide any technical infrastructure that you might need.

I hope some readers will choose to interact with the battlefield and the history of Gettysburg, and take me up on this offer.

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