1. Saturday, October 18, 2008 Tracing the Greatest Generation: Preserving Personal Histories through GIS and Multimedia Technology Mark Bryson, Michael Brandt, Amanda Perry, Sam Dykstra, and Kirk Scarbrough

2. Project Background The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2000 to document accounts of U.S. war veterans. Grand Valley State University is a collecting partner through its history department and has archived several first- hand accounts through interviews from surviving veterans. The underlying purpose is to preserve these stories for future generations. This project focuses on World War II veterans, and their stories are valuable teaching tools in K-12 history classes. But the combination of GIS, GPS, multimedia, and internet technology provides an interactive platform for a wider audience to learn to appreciate their experiences. Library of Congress Veterans History Project Saturday, October 18, 2008 Source: http://www.gvsu.edu/library/digitalcollections/index.cfm?id=9A2DB0EB-0786-A637-598720846FBCCD75

3. Project Overview GIS mapping helped us to reconstruct events of each veteran and allowed us to recreate maps of their service. Instead of using the traditional method of gathering GIS data by going out into the field to collect GPS points, we gathered data by identifying significant locations and geocoding them with their latitude and longitude coordinates. In addition, we were able to incorporate videos, images, and written narratives using online mapping technology for learning and dissemination. Saturday, October 18, 2008

4. Geocoding via iTouchMap Saturday, October 18, 2008 Michigan Space Grant Consortium University of Michigan 1320 Beal Ave 1216-C FXB Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2140

5. Databasing This project resulted in a digital atlas of more than 100 themes that were combined to trace the distribution of Veterans throughout the war. The atlas offers students a personal look into the lives of World War II Veterans and opportunities to explore geographic concepts such as: –Location –Place, –Space, –Distance –Direction –Distribution (density, concentration, pattern) and other spatial relationships using dynamic mapping. Saturday, October 18, 2008

6. ArcView Maps Saturday, October 18, 2008

7. ArcView Maps Saturday, October 18, 2008

8. ArcView Maps Saturday, October 18, 2008

9. Integrating with Google Earth After we gathered the latitude and longitude of the start locations and training forts of the veterans we incorporated those points into Google Earth. Saturday, October 18, 2008