At the mid semester, I felt I had learned a lot about both the Vinegar Hill area, a topic of which I knew nothing about, as well as some techniques into gathering research data (and presenting it as well).  The concept of visiting archives was foreign to me as well.  Actually going to an archive (like the Brooklyn Collection at the BPL) was an illuminating experience, which will definitely prepare me if I need to visit one again.

Of particular interest were the NYPL maps collection, and the general introduction to GIS.  The NYPLs online collection was an amazing tool to use; the access to the maps I needed was seamless, and there were a lot of maps to choose from.  On the GIS side, CartoDB was a useful tool for me, due to my novice level at GIS mapping.  However, my background knowledge in data science and SQL made it a tool I could learn easily, if I ever needed to apply GIS.