It has all come together.

Our website is up. We have received some suggestions and expect to be done with all our edits by the end of this weekend. In a weird way I do not want this project to be over, but I am excited to graduate and move onto bigger things.

The process drew deficits in curriculum to my attention. I realized how much more could be done with a proper chain of classes. A background in archival studies, some background in code, a class on writing digital history, and then a project like this would have been ideal. As it stands we are limited to a blog style historical page. I understand that this is where things start. From here we can expand and develop the craft. The workforce of a college student boy provides unique utility to the field of history. Projects like the Codex of Mendoza can be tackled by graduate and undergraduate students. The digital aspect of history should be a tool as much as it is a way to present information. Computer programs can be used to pull data and make sense of complex figures to later be interpreted historically.

I do feel like we have created something valuable for a future researcher. When we began our project little to nothing on the censorship in this area was readily available on the internet. Sources were out there but not searchable. Our efforts brought together a vast amount of information into one place for the first time on this subject. For our efforts we may have earned a spot in our school’s archives. Our video and oral transcriptions include rich history about St. Mary’s County.

I hope that our school continues to encourage students to sign up for these COPLAC courses and that we opened the door to a new tradition. I appreciate being able to take the course and feel like my college experience was unique because of it.

I have some lingering anxiety about the full launch of our website. I hope we do not offend anyone too deeply and the openness to criticism is somewhat daunting. Our website will probably go unnoticed until it is relevant for someone though. I believe our information was conveyed in a respectful way and all of our interviews were left true to the message of the person being interviewed.

I am interested to see how censorship rises as an issue once again. The alt-right movement has been gaining steam in profound ways. The efforts to being prayer back into the church despite constitutional protections while simultaneously citing the constitution as a reason to keep semi-automatic weapons is perplexing. It is easy to write off people with conservative views as ignorant, but they do not believe that and writing them off does not make the belief go away. The dismissive nature of academic liberals emboldens the causes of radical conservatives rather than diminishing them.