Immigrants in the Coal Fields

The exhibit used multimedia elements from Appalachian collections, including audiovisual resources, maps, manuscripts and oral histories, plus some newer, dynamic elements, courtesy of the journalism longreads app Creatavist to explore the history of immigrants in Appalachia, particularly those who worked in the coalmines.

Students were hired to mine manuscript collections, create transcripts of oral histories, and digitize photos and upload to this storytelling application to create this narrative. The project took six months to complete, based on student schedules and also using the Atavist application, which included correspondence with developers as the app was in beta mode. Students were not previously familiar with any of the technologies, but the six-month schedule gave us the opportunity to train them and troubleshoot any IT issues.

The Atavist longform reads application was the main digital tool used to tell the story of immigrants in Appalachia, which more than technical skill or CSS competency requires an understanding of how to structure a historical narrative in a way that broadly appeals to readers. Timeline JS is a user-friendly interface that allows anyone to easily embed content, and Social Explorer allows users to generate maps based on Census data provided by the application.