Your Impact

Part three of our three-part series, Your Knowledge, Your Stories, Your Impact

In this last post of the series, we would like to acknowledge the wonderful impact that our blog readers and followers have had on the Panama Canal Museum Collection so far and thank you all for your participation and engagement with the collection’s online presence—your contributions are showing in the numbers and beyond!

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Your Impact By the Numbers

WordPress allows us to capture a variety of site analytics.  With this information, we can see which posts receive the most views, are shared the most, and receive the most (or fewest) comments, among other insights.  This allows us to tailor the content of the blog in a way that we hope will make it most relevant to our readers.

Here is a sample of those numbers:

• More than 220 comments have been shared on our 175 posts, adding valuable information to our records
• 76 of you officially “follow” the blog
• On average, 58 of you view the blog each day, posting about 38 comments per month
• Since our first post, you have contributed to the more than 3,800 views to the blog
• The PCM Collection blog has been viewed in 40 countries on 5 continents (Most popular are the US, Panama, and Brazil)

Those are impressive stats, considering the short time that the blog has been active!  We hope that you will continue to interact with us, as it has made such a positive impact on the blog and helped us increase its reach.  Also be sure to share links to the blog with your friends and family who may be interested.  And, if you haven’t already, you can follow us to receive posts directly via email.

On the right side of the blog, there is a box that says Follow by Email (see below).  Simply enter your email address into the box and click Follow.  You will then begin to receive a copy of each new blog post directly to your email, as soon as it is posted.

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You Can Impact the Future of the PCM Collection Blog

Using the same type of information as above, we are also able to track individual visits and comments on specific posts, to see which posts get the most traffic.

The Top 5 Most Popular Posts are:

Children’s Flag Ceremony

Canal Zone Police

Volunteer Spotlight: Stephanie

First Place in the Cayuco Race

Girl Scouts

This information can help us make our future posts more interesting and relevant to you as we can begin to recognize the types of objects that resonate most and spark the most discussion.

While we will continue to observe the blog’s analytics for trends, that is not the only way we determine the types of posts to make.  Your individual feedback is extremely important in shaping the content of the posts, so we encourage you to continue your impact by using the Contact section of the blog to ensure that your ideas are captured.

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Your Valuable Impact on Current and Future UF Students

The PCM Collection blog is also an educational tool that can play a role in educating future generations.  Here, your knowledge and stories are captured in a way that makes it possible to add this information to the library’s database, where it can be accessed by students and researchers studying the Panama Canal and Canal Zone.

Education is also taking place behind the scenes, as our bloggers are all University of Florida students!  We have a wonderful corps of student volunteers who select, scan, edit, upload, and write the posts that appear on the blog every day.  These students come from a variety of academic departments and while not all of them study Latin America or the Panama Canal, they are all very serious students with a sincere interest in the PCM Collection.

Our bloggers work hard to create relevant and interesting daily posts.   Yet, because they did not grow up in the Canal Zone, they simply do not have the same knowledge base as many of our readers.  So while we try to mitigate any errors that may appear in blog posts, mistakes can sometimes serve to point out good areas of focus for orientation or review, since the collection is so large and contains many lifetimes’ worth of knowledge.  To that end, we rely on the patience of all our Zonian experts as we educate a new and very interested generation of people.

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Thank you all so much for your many contributions to this collection.  Your knowledge, your stories and your impact all serve to place the objects in the PCM Collection in a larger and richer context, making them an invaluable resource for research and education at the University of Florida.

Please continue to share your experiences and ideas with us in the comments and via the Contact form!  Your continued participation will help make this blog a fun and engaging online connection to the Panama Canal Museum Collection.

Your Stories

Part two of our three-part series, Your Knowledge, Your Stories, Your Impact

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If we, at UF, have learned one thing about folks who lived in the Canal Zone, it’s that you all have fabulous stories!  At last year’s Panama Canal Society Reunion, we were riveted by many of the stories shared with us throughout the weekend as we sat together at the Library’s PCM Collection table.

If you have an interesting story to tell, you could be featured in the Stories from The Zone section of the PCM Collection Blog as a guest blogger.  This section does not yet have any guest blogs and we hope to soon fill it with fascinating and true stories of life in the Panama Canal Zone.

What is your favorite Canal Zone story to tell at dinner parties?  What is the funniest thing that ever happened during your time in The Zone?  What event had a significant impact on your life?  Perhaps you know a surprising story behind a photograph that was featured on the blog.  If you have a great story, we want to share it on the blog!

Anyone can be featured in this section – here’s how:

1)      Contact the blog staff through the Contact tab with an idea or brief description of the story you would like to share in your post.

2)      If you are telling a story about a particular object (from a blog post or the Digital Collection), be sure to provide a link or title of the object so that we can link to it in your post!

3)      We will respond with some thoughts, ideas, or questions that may help to round out and complete your story.

4)      Any posts submitted will be edited for spelling and grammar, but your content will remain unchanged.

5)      We will post your story to the Stories from The Zone section of the blog.

Any stories we post in this section are publicly viewable, meaning that anyone in the world can read them!  So here are some tips for making a high quality post:

• Between  500 and 1000 words
• Structured like a short story— with a clear beginning, middle, and end
• True stories!  We want to feature your memories of actual events and experiences
• Stories about an object from the Digital Collection or a past blog post are encouraged

If you have a story, start by contacting us!  Send us a message using the Contact tab and we will work together to make a great post.

If you know someone else who has an interesting story, please share this post with them and encourage the storytellers in your life to put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard!) and share their memories of life in the Panama Canal Zone!

Your Knowledge

Part one of our three-part series, Your Knowledge, Your Stories, Your Impact

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The PCM Collection Blog is very lucky to have such interested and engaged readers!  And we are so pleased that so many of our readers have asked how they can be more involved in contributing their personal knowledge to the PCM Collection.

There are four big ways you can help to add information to our object records:

1.)    Commenting on blog posts

2.)    Suggesting specific digitized objects from the Panama and the Canal Digital Collection you would like to see featured in a blog post, so the community can contribute information

3.)    Suggesting types of objects to be featured in blog posts

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Comment on Blog Posts

The fastest and easiest way to contribute your knowledge of the Panama Canal Zone to the PCM Collection is to comment on the blog posts!

There is no need to create an account or register with WordPress.  All you need is a valid email address.

Sometimes we may be looking for a specific piece of information about an object that is posted.  In other cases, the object may have little or no information (metadata) in its record, so any information you are able to provide can be quite valuable.

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Suggest Digitized Objects to be Featured in Blog Posts

Many objects in the PCM Collection have already been digitized and are available in the Panama and the Canal Digital Collection: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/pcm/all

This digital collection is public, so anyone is able to browse the objects.  There is no need to create an account or register as all the information you need is viewable by anyone.

If one is of particular interest and you would like to see it posted on the blog, just let us know and we can make sure it is highlighted on the blog.

Here is how to tell us about an object from the Digital Collection you would like to see posted for discussion:

First, Select the Object

1.)    Visit: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/pcm/all

2.)    Find an image you would like us to post on the blog

3.)    Click on its title

4.)    Click on “Description” in the upper left

5.)    Copy the Permanent Link to the object and note its title

Then, tell us about it!

1.)    Visit the blog and click the Contact tab

2.)    Send us a message that includes the link to your object and its title

3.)    Tell us why you would like to see it featured on the blog—Is it especially rare or interesting?  Does it have significance to you, personally?  Do you have a story about it?  Would you like others to comment on it?  Would you like others to identify some aspect of the object?  Just include a little something about the object and why you want to share it on the blog so that the object has some context.

4.)    We will likely post the object, along with anything you have written in your message about the object.

5.)    If you have a great story about the object, we may suggest that you write a longer guest post to about it, which may be featured in the Stories from The Zone section.  (More info about this coming Monday!)

Sending suggestions for objects may seem like a lot of steps at first, so if you have any questions or need help, please let us know via the Contact tab!

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Suggest Types of Objects to be Featured in Blog Posts

Not only can you browse the Digital Collection for specific items you would like to be featured, but we also welcome your suggestions for more general types of objects you might like to see in the blog posts.

If you have a specific knowledge area (Ex: Military in the Canal Zone, stamps, airplanes, molas, architecture, railroads, Boy Scouts, or anything else you can think of!), we can make an effort to post items relating to this topic, so that your specific knowledge maybe captured.

To let us know about your ideas for blog topics or types of objects, send us a message via the Contact tab.  We look forward to hearing about the topics within this collection that interest you the most!