About Keeping Watch
Keeping Watch is a geo-spatial narrative project that embeds oral history testimonies by former and current fire lookouts on a GIS interface. These stories were collected by Jack Kredell, Chris Lamb, and Michael Decker in the Summer of 2021 across the state of Idaho.
The goal of this project is twofold: to create an online archive for this vital yet disappearing component of Idaho history and to reconceptualize the space these firetowers define via the juxtaposition of the map’s inherent grid and GIS structure, and the subjective experience of those who have, are, and will experience these places.
The towers are open ended in how they are active technology and ruin. They are essential and symbolic. They are already-happened and yet-to-be, their futures uncertain as the landscapes they watch over.
A personal note: this project is the result of a summer spent in the woods and mountains, and alongside some of the best fishing streams in the world. As important as this history is to tell, our time working on this project was undeniably fun. It was one of the best summers of my life spent hiking to towers, catching cutthroat and rainbow trout, and even running away from a wildfire. I felt as if I, like the tower itself, became part of the history–a small piece.
Funding and Design
Keeping Watch was funded by a University of Library Seed Grant and the Center for Digtial Inquiry and Learning (CDIL).
The website was designed by CDIL Co-Director Devin Becker in collaboration with the project directors and English Professor and Confluence Lab Director Jenn Ladino, as part of her CDIL Development Fellowship.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
Using the CollectionBuilder-CSV template and the static website generator Jekyll, this project creates an engaging interface to explore driven by metadata.