If I had to describe my experience working through the digital scholarship project reconstruction, I would explain it as reformatting information to be condensed into a more straight-forward, accessible format. While the original format of The March digital project was beautifully organized, the book allows the content to flow in a more cohesive manner in a way that college students, like myself, have become accustomed to in class settings. The March digital project itself can be described as a representation of the work conducted by James Blue through the making of his documentary, coupled with the work of civil rights activists to create the original March on Washington for jobs and freedom.

When my friends have asked me about the work that I have been doing for the DREAM Lab this term, however, I have truthfully just kept it simple and said that I was using information provided to me from a website and turned it into an ebook. I would say that I copied text and other data over from the website and pasted it into a format that would be easily understood by students. When I take the time to think about the work I did, I realize that parts of it were much more complex than that. For example, every image that I transferred over to the Pressbooks format had to be fixed with alternative text. Alternative text is used to alert those with visual impairments that an image is present on the webpage they are visiting, and provides a detailed description of what the image is in the context of whatever they are looking at. Another part of this project that was also more complex was what went into transferring text over to a new format. While copying and pasting seems like it would be easy, there is a lot to consider before placing the text. What will it look like in this format? Will it flow cohesively in relation to the other data? Are there any alterations that need to be made? Thinking about each of these questions in relation to the data was necessary in order to construct a successful project.

I think the most important part of my project that deserves attention and explanation is the content itself. Currently in our country and around the world, people are standing up and proclaiming that black lives matter, in spite of what systemic racism has said otherwise. This project demonstrates how not even sixty years later, we are still fighting for the same things that those who took part in the March on Washington were fighting for back in 1963. It is important that students use this project as a tool to learn about the ways in which injustice has been fought over the years and how it is still being fought today. Learning from the history that has been made available to students through these projects can only help them learn from others’ perspectives on our nation, and help them decide what they want to do with the knowledge that has been presented to them.

Image Credit: “Laptop” by @Daskblogs