If you have a story to tell about the bombings at this year's Boston Marathon, Katherine Jewell wants to hear it.
Jewell is a history professor at Fitchburg State University who was near the 26-mile mark when the bombings occurred. A resident of Watertown, she was also among the first residents to be ordered to "shelter in place" during the city-wide manhunt that shut down Boston four days after the bombings. To collect stories of bombing-related events from runners, spectators, residents and others, she's created an online, crowdsourced platform where people can mark where they were at a given moment, and then write what they saw, heard and thought. Contributors can also add photos and video.
"People are probably thinking, 'Does my story matter? I wasn't right there, I wasn't hurt, I wasn't a first responder,' and yes, everyone's story matters," Jewell told the Telegram. "We need to come to terms with this event as a community, to be able to heal. We can respond in a positive way to a violation."
The Mapping the Boston Marathon 2013 project "seeks to establish a collective narrative and sense of how the events spiraled out from the blast sites," Jewell writes on the project's site. "The data recorded will be publicly available and searchable for present and future research. Together, these stories will not only record the experiences of Bostonians and their friends and family across the country and the world, but will also serve as a place of connection and reflection."
Contributing to the project, which requires a Google account, can be done here.