Hi everyone!! I am back with a new post. As the semester comes to an end, I have been reflecting on the two digital projects we completed in the CHI Fellowship. One was a simple introduction to digital storytelling. The other was an interactive map that we built from the ground up. In this post, I want to focus on Mapping East Lansing Memories and what it taught me, especially about how version control supports cultural heritage work.
I had always thought of version control as a tool for programmers, but working through the fellowship showed me that it does much more than manage code. Digital projects involve many decisions. We decide what to include, how to describe materials, and how to present community stories. Version control records these choices and shows how the project develops over time. This structure creates clarity. It also encourages collaboration when working with marginalized communities. Through the fellowship, we learned that cultural heritage work is itself shaped by power. Choices about stories, places, and representation influence how meaning is formed. These choices are rarely visible in traditional settings. Version control offers a way to make this process open. It documents each change and makes it possible to see how ideas shift. It reveals the work that leads to the final product and shows that cultural heritage is created through ongoing collective effort. This level of transparency supports accountability and helps ground digital heritage projects in ethical practice.
These ideas became concrete when I started working on Mapping East Lansing Memories with two other CHI Fellows who are also international students like me. Our goal was to create an interactive map using Leaflet that documented our experiences as newcomers in East Lansing. Every place we added held a memory shaped by hope and uncertainty. Our relationships to place were shaped by academic pressures, cultural adjustments, and everyday attempts to settle into a new country. The project aimed to capture these small but meaningful locations that shaped our experiences. Very quickly, we realized how complex collaborative memory work can be. Each of us experienced East Lansing differently. We arrived at different times. We followed different routines. We carried different emotional worlds and different ideas about what felt important. Creating a shared digital map while preserving these individual experiences required careful negotiation.
This was the moment when version control became essential. It held the project together and kept us moving. None of us were programmers, yet we had only two weeks to create a working interactive map. We set up a GitHub repository to manage our files. Git gave us a simple structure that allowed us to work at the same time without getting in each other’s way. The map work itself was complex. We used Leaflet to set coordinates, place markers, adjust zoom levels, and test how the map looked on different screens. Each step required small changes. These changes happened in many parts of the project at once. One person worked on the sliding feature that showed how memories shifted over time. Another added written content and checked that the pop ups opened correctly. Someone else tested marker styles and organized the visual layout. Version control made this teamwork possible. Git kept every update in order and prevented one set of edits from erasing another. It also made each contribution visible, which helped us work with more care and respect for one another’s efforts.
Version control taught us how to collaborate with care. We learned to write clear commit messages. We communicated before making structural edits. We paused to review changes instead of rushing into updates that might cause conflicts. When mistakes happened, Git allowed us to recover without panic, but those mistakes also encouraged dialogue and reflection. The process showed us that building a cultural heritage project is itself an act of interpretation. Each location we added required discussion about meaning, context, and representation. Version control created a shared space where these decisions could be addressed thoughtfully.
Through this project, I learned the importance of version control and how it creates shared responsibility and makes collective labor visible. In cultural heritage work, where ethics, representation, and collaboration matter deeply, this visibility is crucial. It shifts attention away from the idea of a single author and toward a more honest understanding of collaboration. The CHI Fellowship gave me the theoretical vocabulary to understand why version control matters. Mapping East Lansing Memories gave me the lived experience to appreciate its value.
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