I thought it was really interesting to actually put our new web mapping knowledge to use with an object that we had already interacted with thoroughly in previous assignments. Before this assignment, I had no idea what kind of history this water pitcher had; where it came from, who made it, and how it got here. The spreadsheet provided to us did include the origins and path of the object, yes, but seeing the differences in location in an actual map made me realize just how far this object has traveled to get to where it is now. It’s one thing to read locations from a list, it’s another thing entirely to see those locations connected on a world map.
Although, the process of making this map on ArcGIS was more frustrating than I originally anticipated. In my opinion, the user interface is pretty confusing at times, specifically in the classic view of ArcGIS, but the classic view seems to have more options and functions than the updated one. We also ran into one bug where we could not complete a line layer, but after multiple attempts it all of a sudden just started working, leading me to believe that this platform may have more bugs within it.
Bugs and confusing interface aside, I think this platform and web mapping in general have a lot of potential in portraying the stories of objects, people, locations, and ideas in the digital humanities.
