Hello everyone,

So I decided to dedicate this month’s blog post to pretty much the only project I’ve been working on the past semester and a half. I feel a little inadequate sometimes when I’m talking to other SIFs and they talk about the many other projects they spend their time on and how they’ve been managing their time throughout all of them. And I’m just sitting there nodding my head, saying “Yeah, I totally relate to what you’re saying” when I don’t relate at all.

I figured since this is my main project, it would be more fitting if I started talking about it. And I guess also I’ll be able to give updates in the future. Getting started…

This project, led by Amber and Nicole, is basically mapping the history of MARTA. How it was originally planned, what we have today, and what never happened. We’re accomplishing this by going through old maps of MARTA, mainly from the Mapping Atlanta collection in the GSU online library. Once we find an old scan of a map showing MARTA lines all over the city, we take it to ArcGIS and essentially trace over the train lines and export a file that we can use on ArcGIS online. We also look into the contexts of these maps, and figure out all the information and history there’s to say about it. Our final goal is to create a StoryMap, an esri tool which is basically a fun way of showing information on a map. We want to make a slightly interactive historical tour of MARTA’s development. I obviously skipped out on a lot of the small details and issues we face, but that’s boring to read about.

We have come a long way, and although there’s a lot left to do, we are coming to the last stretch of this project. Maybe next time I’ll be able to include a teaser.

Thanks for reading,

Shakib