My name is Jeremy Guillette, and I’m currently working with the Medieval Object Lessons project as a technical consultant. I keep my head in the nuts and bolts of the project, helping to set up the tools that we need. I’ve worked on other digital scholarship projects at Harvard in the Davis Center and at the Harvard Map Collection, and I’m currently working in the History Department at Harvard as a Digital Scholarship Facilitator, helping to bring digital projects into the classroom around the department.
My work in academic technology has been dependent on open source technologies, and contributing to those technologies continues to be a rewarding part of my work. Working with MOL, I continue to use open source software, and in doing so, I know that our work is not just ours. Just as I’m using tools that others have made, I can make the tools I create available to others.
What excites me about this project, and digital scholarship generally, is how much it can broaden horizons for everyone involved. It makes public outreach much easier, builds openness into the research process, and can broaden the skill sets of researchers and students involved. In MOL, we’re coming up with creative ways to use technology to give students and educators across the country and around the world access to these pieces of history for the first time.