Mapping Charleston Part III

Student Spotlight: Adem Dickison

As Mapping Charleston, our South Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board (SC SHRAB) grant project, approaches the halfway mark, we wanted to highlight our undergraduate academic intern.

Adem Dickinson is a sophomore at the College of Charleston who is considering majoring in Computer Science. Adem utilizes his comfort with working in a network environment and different operating systems to enter map metadata into PastPerfect, a content management system that will become our public-facing catalog. Until now, the archival map collection was indexed only in an old card catalog system with no cross-referencing. Project staff have reviewed index card entries against the actual maps, and, from there they created an Excel spreadsheet for use on this grant project as well as a future project to digitize the collection. Adem’s process is to pull data from the spreadsheet into PastPerfect as metadata. Metadata is information on a map that will let users find it while searching our PastPerfect catalog. Future users will be able to search by various index fields, including location, name of City engineer, and/or keywords such as seawall, railroad, street, or institution names. Adem’s metadata entry is also what enables us to create connections among maps. So one search will be able to gather all of the municipal wharves that feature city wharves. Metadata entry is a key part of the project.

Left: Adem shown entering map metadata into PastPerfect. Right: a screenshot showing records created in PastPerfect.

Adem is also preparing an inventory for a collection of street files that contain information about the history of Charleston’s streets, including acceptance and dedication, early street paving and curbing records, and general surveys and maps. Many of the surveys and maps are not even known to the staff. Adem is flagging each folder that contains a map, and our project volunteer, Doreen Larimer, is reviewing them for entry into PastPerfect.

A slideshow of maps showing the area around the College of Charleston: 1) 1817 Plan of the College lands showing Coming, Boundary, St. Philip, and George Streets. Shows square of land reserved for the College. 2) 1909 Plat of 14 lots belonging to the estate of Samuel H. Wilson at Calhoun, College, Green, and Coming Streets. 3) Undated plat showing the Central School Building and the Reippe property on the north side of George Street at St. Philip Street.

The PastPerfect catalog will go live on the City’s Records Management division website after the grant project in June, so be sure to check back then to search our holdings!