Creating and sustaining public engagement in spatial humanities and deep mapping projects

There has been a plethora of work produced in the fields of public participatory GIS (PPGIS), spatial humanities, and historical GIS (HGIS) that illustrate the benefits of engaging public stakeholders in digital and deep mapping projects. Scholars have promoted many different public outreach activities and programs that attempt to engage the public; however, little work has been done to evaluate the impact these activities and programs have had in creating and sustaining public engagement. Using the Keweenaw Time Traveler (KeTT) project as a case study, this paper analyses six community outreach activities and programs used to engage the public in the exploration of the KeTT deep map over a one-year period. This analysis uncovers the depth and breadth of engagement users have with the deep mapping environment and provides a set of best practices other projects can use to create and sustain public engagement.