Upcoming Projects

With this project I want to gather the locations of all of the small businesses in Buckhannon (such as ice cream shops, local restaurants, antique stores, etc.) and show them on a web map that includes hours, websites, and contact information for each business.

For this project, I’d like to have a time based story map of how the United States came to be the way it is today – including geographical boundaries of states, when they were acquired, and the history behind the acquisitions.

This project will be super similar to the evolution of the United States project, however, it will be solely focused on the counties in West Virginia. As of right now, I honestly have no idea how these counties were decided upon, so this project may not even be feasible.

I feel like this is pretty self explanatory – how many fast food joints does an area have per x-amount of people. Some restaurants have location data freely availably on their websites, whereas some don’t. I’m hoping that if they don’t have it publicly listed, I can make contact with someone who can provide me info. I think it would be interesting to also see which chain “wins” in different areas of the nation with the most restaurants in an area.

This project will look into the response times of fire departments in Upshur County and surrounding areas. Depending on how easy it is to access fire department location data, I may expand the analysis to West Virginia or the US as a whole.

For part of my life, I lived in Pickens, WV – a tiny, tiny little town in Randolph County, WV. The communities of Pickens, Helvetia, and Czar are very near and dear to my heart, and I think it would be a fun project to build a StoryMap about the history and settlement of these areas.

Of all of the projects I want to do, I think this one will by far be the easiest. Essentially, I just want to create a web map of the home-locations of all of the presidents and vice-presidents of the United States. I think it will be really interesting with the first 10!

Growing up with a grandmother as a librarian, I realized at a young age just how crucial libraries are to communities. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it also highlighted a need for internet access not only for school-aged kids, but adults working from home too. Internet is just one service a public library provides, but I thought it would be interesting to see which areas in West Virginia are underserved in terms of libraries – especially in areas that are also underserved by internet access.

Yeah, it’s kinda morbid, I know. But I think it would be really interesting to see the locations of some of the most well-known (and maybe not-well-known) serial killers in the US.

I guess this one could be considered kind of morbid as well. I thought it would be really cool to map out all of the headstones in Upshur County, WV. Establish the property boundaries of the cemetery and take photos and information (names, dates, etc.) of each headstone. I’d then run some analyses on the birth and death dates to see if there is any correlation in the time spans and locations of the graves. This project will be the most labor-intensive by far.