by Claire S. Schen, Ph.D.

We welcome this guest post about the chapter “Typhoid of 1843 on StoryMaps: Collaborating to Tell Local History” by Claire S. Schen, Ph.D., Kimberly A. Plassche (nee Falkowski) and Keith Mages from our new book Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices Through Online Narratives.

We were inspired to share our story of an “unusual, motivational, and challenging” learning experience with students on “a new topic, new content areas, and a new digital platform.” (177) “We” – a faculty member and two faculty librarians (at the time) at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) – worked together to build an archive for the learners that drew upon specialized collections at UB in the history of medicine, maps, and local history. Students also moved beyond the archive of topics and sources assembled ahead of the project. The digital story focused on the devastating typhoid outbreak in 1843 in the small town of Boston, NY that was studied by Buffalo physician and one of the founders of the medical college which became UB, Austin Flint, MD. Flint’s work on this waterborne illness was cited by John Snow in his more famous work on cholera in London around the Broad Street pump.

Typhoid in North Boston, NY, 1843: Small Town, Big Story

We were motivated to share our working collaboration because we saw how the month-long class project “inspired learners and helped them to be creative producers of digital information.” (169) Hands-on experience lessened hesitancy about digital platforms and made the original research less overwhelming.

“Research can be a struggle, and with grades riding on outcomes learners can shy away from creative, even risky struggle. A collaborative project provided a way to share the risk and struggle – and to celebrate the end result. The digital storytelling project developed research skills and modeled ethical research that students will be able to apply on future projects, whether in traditional research formats or through digital storytelling.” (184)

-Plassche (nee Falkowski), Schen, and Mages (2024)

Library sessions helped the students learn more about the work of librarians and the digital platforms and research collections and methods. The critical analysis of primary sources led to discussion about class and poverty in a rural setting and the privileged position of expert medical practitioners, like the allopathic doctors who distrusted the botanical or Thomsonian practitioners operating in the area. Online primary sources, like the censuses of the nineteenth century, and crowd-sourced resources such as Find a Grave became important tools for the students as well. Here they could see the benefits of digitized materials, including digitized original pages of the census, and the shortcomings of machine-reading of nineteenth-century handwriting. Ultimately, students created an ArcGIS StoryMaps of their findings. In turn, we saw the fulfillment of metaliteracy goals through the experience: actively evaluate content alongside one’s own biases, engage with intellectual property ethically and responsibly, to produce and share information in collaborative and participatory environments, and to develop learning strategies for lifelong personal and professional growth.

Claire S. Schen is an Associate Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Kimberly A. Plassche is a Senior Regulatory Consultant at Compliance & Risks, Ltd., where she researches international product safety legislation. Keith C. Mages is the Curator of the Robert L. Brown History of Medicine Collection, a division of the University Libraries at the University at Buffalo.

Plassche, K.A., Schen, C.S., and Mages, K.C. (2024). Typhoid of 1843 on StoryMaps: Collaborating to Tell Local History. In Aird and Mackey (Eds.), Teaching Digital Storytelling: Inspiring Voices through Online Narratives. (pp. 189-208). Rowman & Littlefield.