Hello Coed! A 1950s History of Gettysburg College Women

Keira Koch (Gettysburg College)

After studying the challenges of being a woman on a college campus during World War II, Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow Keira Koch decided to expand her research to post-war life. Her project “Hello Coed!” aggregates information from various scrapbooks, oral histories, college publications, and photographs from Gettysburg College’s Special Collections and College Archives to provide a snapshot of college life for women at Gettysburg College during the 1950s. To build the narrative, Koch uses Scalar, StoryMapJS, and multimedia to bring the experience of college women to life. In the next phases of the project, more narratives and voices will be added, and it will be expanded through researching Gettysburg College women in different time periods until there is a complete history of women at the college.

Keira Koch is a sophomore at Gettysburg College, majoring in History and minoring in Public History. The digital project she created as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow with Musselman Library analyzed women’s history at Gettysburg College during the 1950s. Her project used an array of digital tools including Scalar, StoryMapJS, and Voyant Tools. She plans on continuing her research on women at Gettysburg College throughout the 2016-17 academic year.

“Hello Coed!” A 1950s History of Gettysburg College Women