Reflection... What an Iguana does best!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel… Except Plaza Midwood doesn’t have a tunnel. (Maybe they could have used one under the railroad tracks on Central. That would have changed the area’s history!) The Plaza Midwood project draws to a close on Thursday with our final presentation of our online exhibit, From the Miracle Mile to Plaza Midwood. So how was the experience of researching and building an Omeka.net exhibit as a group? What did we learn about Plaza Midwood and its context within Charlotte?

Even though I have participated in many group projects, they are always difficult for me since I’m a terrible delegator. It would not be fair to have a group leader that managed the entire project. Therefore, the group contract was utilized to distribute work equally among the group members. While a good idea in theory, in practice it was underutilized. This is not to say that each member of the group failed to complete their portion of the research and data entry. Instead, we each did whatever was needed to finish the exhibit. For instance, as a group we would go to the uptown library to dig through clippings files for useful information. Perhaps a group member would be researching one topic, and information for another would pop up. This project was truly a collaborative effort.

My assigned group role, in addition to the research of my chosen areas of interest (Midwood School and transportation infrastructure), was Item Processing. This involved overseeing the creation of individual items in Omeka as well as the proper input of the metadata. I created a Dublin Core Cheat Sheet for use by my fellow group members. But since I was the most experienced of our group in using Omeka.net, I also served as the “fill in the spaces” group member. Basically, if we needed more information or someone needed a bump in the right direction, I provided it. While the unofficial role of group leader was not one I relished, I am not surprised that it was a position I assumed. In a group setting, it is quite natural for members to defer to an experienced group member. I knew this would be inevitable.

While this was not the first online exhibit in which I have participated, this project presented some unique issues. First, Plaza Midwood is a well-researched neighborhood, at least as far as its residential infrastructure. Numerous essays have been written about the area. This necessitated our choosing a different approach. Who wants to explore yet another exhibit about houses in Plaza Midwood? I had previously done some research into the origins of the Plaza Midwood Neighborhood Association, so I knew a bit about the area’s history. Upon further research by the group, we realized that the commercial and civic infrastructure had not been explored as a singular entity. Some of the structures, such as the Pure Oil station at Thomas and Central avenues, were locally-designated landmarks and had been well-researched. But what about the small commercial strip just down the street? What other entities along the Central Avenue corridor have been historic parts of the everyday life of Plaza Midwood?

Combining the information we had gleaned along with each member’s area of focus, we decided that four exhibit sections with a single creator would not suffice to tell the story of Plaza Midwood’s commercial core. Multiple sections would be necessary. We divided our information into three sections: institutions, events, and infrastructure. The institutions section, named Business as Usual, covered both commercial and civic entities. The events section, titled Community Spirit, featured the various celebrations held by Plaza Midwood as well as highlighted the activist mentality of its residents. Finally, the infrastructure section, Getting Around, examined the physical connections between the neighborhood and the city through transportation. This seemed appropriate since the area was developed as a streetcar suburb and the proposed revitalization of that form of transit will eventually impact Plaza Midwood.

Also, we learned that while Plaza Midwood may today be an interesting and integral part of Charlotte, historically that was not the case. It was difficult to find archival documents about the area. Some pages in the exhibit, especially those about transportation, utilize images from other parts of Charlotte or around the country. For instance, no images of the jitneys that serviced Plaza Midwood were available. Instead, I used an image of the first jitneys in Los Angeles, California, published in Popular Mechanics magazine (and available at Google Books).

Additionally, much of the locally-available imagery of historic Plaza Midwood is already published online (see the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room Image Collection). But some documents had yet to be publicly exhibited. One such item was the Midwood School scrapbook. Many images of the school and its students are being displayed for the first time through our exhibit, which is pretty exciting.

This project also required us group members to get out and about to learn about the area. We made several food-finding fact-finding trips to Plaza Midwood, especially to Zada Jane’s for brunch! Group members interviewed the firemen at the fire station, or traipsed around until we finally found the actual original East Branch Library. We got sidetracked and explored the used bookstore or randomly wandered down a residential street and found useful signs for photographing. This project underscored the need for historians to get out of the library and into the field, something we all forget at times.

The Plaza Midwood Project group was an enjoyable one of which to be a part. Each member brought interesting viewpoints as well as personal strengths to the project. We combined differing interests about the neighborhood—i.e. community events and transportation infrastructure—into a cohesive online presentation that sheds a new light upon one of Charlotte’s most interesting neighborhoods.