Community histories can be a powerful tool for bringing people together and contributing to a more inclusive historical record. For my Digital Humanities Pedagogy Project, I chose to focus on the digital tool Historypin.com for its digital storytelling potential. I first encountered this tool in one of our class readings, where it was discussed in relation to community archiving and public history projects. Curious, I looked it up and began to imagine its potential for future digital humanities projects. Its user-friendly interface, reminiscent of Pinterest, felt familiar and welcoming, well-suited for community-focused projects. In the following paragraphs, I will share the history of this digital tool, its common uses and potential within the digital humanities, and a few challenges I encountered along the way.
I. Background information
Historypin was launched in 2011 through a partnership between Google and Shift Design, a UK-based nonprofit (Sizemore 2015). It functions as a collaborative, community-driven digital humanities tool that supports digital archiving, virtual mapping, and interactive storytelling. Individuals as well as institutions can upload images, documents, audio, and maps to build collections collaboratively on a local or global scale. Historypin’s vision statement emphasizes the idea of bringing people together “one story at a time” (“About” 2020), and the tool rests on the principle that “everyone has a history to share” (Abraham 2012).
Today, the team behind Historypin reflects its global orientation, with members based in New Orleans, London, and Sofia. The most recent statistics show that the platform hosts over 365,951 stories, 27,544 projects, and contributions from 80,000 users across 2,600 cities (“About” 2020). Although the platform once included a mobile app, that feature has since been discontinued (Abraham 2012). Fortunately, though, Historypin has been and remains free to join and use, unlike many other web-based applications and DH tools. It is especially popular in community-based archiving and digital mapping projects. The map-centered interface supports simple searches as well as more advanced filtering by geographic areas, timespans, and specific collections (Millard 2015). Its emphasis on hidden histories, often overlooked by institutional archives, is one of its most compelling strengths. Collections such as the California Pride project or the Sourdough and Rye Jewish American collection demonstrate how Historypin can highlight underrepresented stories and histories (Sizemore 2015).
II. Digital Humanities uses and projects
Historypin’s commitment to telling hidden histories positions it as an ideal platform for community-driven projects. The tool’s crowdsourcing features enable collaborative metadata creation and description, ensuring that more of the story is told alongside the historical image (Abraham 2012). Moreover, its educational uses are equally compelling. Teachers in K-12 and higher education can implement digital humanities projects using Historypin in their classrooms. Possible projects can include asking students to create collaborative maps or digital storytelling collections and tours featuring a historical subject or local history (Sizemore 2015). I can easily envision Historypin being used to map downtown Hattiesburg through the ages or to document the grassroots history of Civil Rights activism in the area.
Features like the “Then and Now” image overlay, which uses Augmented Reality to combine archival photographs with contemporary street views, open up exciting possibilities for museums and cultural institutions. Rebekkah Abraham’s article “Opening up Historical Collections with Historypin” describes how community pinning events brought people together to contribute images. For instance, at the “Pinning Reading History” event, volunteers uploaded over 4,000 pins (Abraham 2012). Historypin has also proven valuable for academic projects. To illustrate, English professor Sarah Bilston at Trinity College used Historypin in her Victorian Short Fiction class. After reading Charles Dickens’ “The Bloomsbury Christening,” her students used archival images and Historypin’s “Then and Now” tools to create a digital tour through Dickens’ England (Exploring Literature, n.d.). Their collaborative literary digital mapping project can be accessed by following the link below. https://www.historypin.org/en/the-bloomsbury-christening-3/geo/51.454547,-0.134586,11/bounds/51.296604,-0.299381,51.611946,0.030209/paging/1/pin/1141769
Cultural memory institutions have also used Historypin to expand access to digital collections. A study by Baggett and Gibbs (2014) compared their collections on Historypin and Pinterest with the university library’s digital collections and found that the Historypin collections received three times more engagement than the library website. While this engagement did not necessarily drive users back to the library’s website, it demonstrated the platform’s ability to broaden reach with a new audience (Baggett and Gibbs 2014).
III. Challenges
Although Historypin’s interface is user-friendly and the site itself provides many tutorials, I did encounter several small challenges. The first involved image formatting. Most of my photographs were taken on an iPhone and saved as HEIC files. However, Historypin only accepts JPEG or PNG formats for uploading images. After converting the images on a Mac, I then had to reduce their file sizes below 5MB using tinypng.com. While not difficult, this extra step could pose a barrier for users unfamiliar with digital image processing. Another challenge stemmed from my use of modern images. Because my project focused on a recent visit to the Mississippi Delta, I could not take advantage of the historical overlay feature. This limitation resulted from my own design concept, but it also revealed how access to archival or historical images can greatly enrich the storytelling possibilities for a collection.
Next, finding up-to-date scholarly sources on Historypin also proved difficult. Most published articles and studies date from 2012 to 2017, and even Historypin’s own blog has not been updated since 2021. This raised some questions about the platform’s current development, as COVID may have hindered progress with community-based projects. Other limitations noted in scholarly reviews include concerns about institutional control over data stored on third-party platforms and the timeline feature’s inability to support dates before 1840 (Sizemore 2015). Scott Millard (2015) also identified the challenge of inaccurate user metadata when he happened upon a local church with the wrong address listed. He ultimately realized that this potential weakness is also a strength, because the platform’s crowdsourced nature allows users, including institutions and regional experts, to address false information by adding comments.
Lastly, teaching digital skills turned out to be more challenging than I expected. It required me not only to understand how Historypin works but also to translate that knowledge into clear, easy-to-follow steps for someone else. Through this experience, I learned to keep it simple and avoid making assumptions about what a user may or may not already know. Digital tools can be intimidating, so meeting people where they are is essential. I also learned the value of having a structured plan when leading a tutorial. Understanding a tool is one thing; teaching it effectively is another. Providing context, explaining why a digital skill matters, and connecting it to the user’s interests will help to create the needed motivation to learn a new tool. Additionally, offering examples and encouraging hands-on experimentation will help to make the digital humanities more approachable. Sometimes, just introducing an element of play makes the digital tool feel less daunting.
Overall, exploring and teaching Historypin has given me a deeper appreciation for the potential of digital humanities tools. Historypin’s user-friendly design, collaborative nature, and emphasis on community storytelling make it a powerful resource for educators, communities, and cultural institutions. Its ability to showcase both well-known and hidden histories broadens our understanding of history and empowers users to participate in the historical narrative. While there are a few limitations, Historypin’s ability to foster engagement, collaboration, and inclusive storytelling remains its greatest strength.
Works Cited:
“About.” Historypin About, Historypin, 2020, about.historypin.org/about.
Abraham, Rebekkah. “Opening up Historical Collections with Historypin.” Multimedia Information & Technology, vol. 38, no. 4, 2012, pp. 27–28.
Baggett, Mark, and Rabia Gibbs. “Historypin and Pinterest for Digital Collections: Measuring the Impact of Image-Based Social Tools on Discovery and Access.” Journal of Library Administration, vol. 54, no. 1, 2014, pp. 11–22.
“Exploring Literature with Historypin.” Digital Learning and Scholarship, Trinity College, https://edtech.domains.trincoll.edu/historypin/. n.d.
Millard, Scott. “Historypin: A Global Community Collaborating Around History.” Reference Reviews, vol. 29, no. 5, 2015, pp. 49–50.
Sizemore, Michelle Dore. “Historypin.” Historypin – Mapping the Humanities – University Wiki Service, The University of Texas at Austin, 22 Apr. 2015, cloud.wikis.utexas.edu/wiki/spaces/MappingHumanities/pages/42533056/Historypin.