Final Progress Update #4

The challenges I’ve been facing over the past four weeks was finding sources that I was able to use. I believe that this topic has been widely researched so trying to find sources shouldn’t have been that difficult. I might have been making a mountain out of a molehill. I struggled to find sources and to make sure that they were in the Public Domain. I think that I was so worried about finding free and open sources, that yes is an important issue, but it became a blocking factor in my research. It made me question as to whether this was the right historical topic for me and whether or not I could even finish this project. It’s been difficult to get past that mindset and blockage, that I had a hard time thinking creatively on finding sources and how to add it to my website. Other challenges that I’ve faced is making my website interactive. Hopefully as I add more sources it will become more apparent. If I expand on this project in the future, I would like to try another Content Management System to see what more options I can explore and really have the time to make it what I envisioned. Although for now, for this project, I think that I may have seen the light and that is by I was able to find a database that had Public Domain sources!

I found more sources in the Public Domain through a George Mason University Libraries’ subscribed database, Hathi Trust Digital Library. Since I’m running out of time with a month left of the project, I may have to curve my research to focus just on the United States and how the Famine impacted the Irish immigrants that emigrated to this country. I hope that if I continue this project I will expand it to look at sources from Ireland and England. What I will continue to do is add more sources to Omeka and see what I learn from them.