Final Post?

Well final blog post for the year. This last stretch has been pretty hard. During the last weeks of the semester I have spent working on the website or studying for exams. So I figure I’ll touch on how the website project is wrapping up but also reflect a little on the class in general.

The website is in its final stage and is really just getting its final once over to make sure everything is working. I’ve found that the manner in which Omeka saves can be quite, for lack of a better word, temperamental. It often feels like small changes you make sometimes aren’t saved when you think they are, making for an aggravating editing/ testing process. Despite the few problems I’ve been encountering I think the website is looking pretty good. This last week I have added tags to all of my items. This will hopefully help viewers searching for a particular image or map without having to manually look through each of the exhibits. That I think is one of the more difficult things about designing websites that I’ve learned. Even if you have a huge source of information, data, or even visuals, the effectiveness of the site diminishes greatly if there is only one way to find said material. This is something I’ve experienced myself when using pdf’s.  Despite being very convenient, some pdfs are not fully text searchable and must be combed through manually to find specific information. This is very time consuming especially when the document or source is extremely long and you only need something as simple as a single sentence quote. Hopefully with the implementation of tags I will avoid having anyone try to search through the whole site just to find a picture of Eramosa’s roads or some other simple visual.

Now that class is over I have to say this course was a lot of fun and was very different from the other 4^th year seminars I’ve taken. Generally, seminars are the next logical step in the undergrad formula, just more research and writing with some feedback gauging your readiness for the next step in academia. This class however was the first in a long time to make me really think about history differently and apply myself in a totally new way to the tasks. Honestly, I think this class should almost be required for anyone looking to move forward in their schooling. Despite how immersed we are in technology, this course really shows you the amount of work that goes into the simple digital resources we use every day or in our other classes. So that’s my final word on the class, lots of fun but very different from the mainstream histories.

Anyways not sure if I’ll ever update this blog again or even look at it but it has been kind of fun.

China Net Critique

Last week and final week of presentations have come and gone. Before getting into my review of Trevor’s presentation/website, I have to say this week we saw more really interesting projects that are much closer to being done which was neat and gave some last minute inspirations.

On to the review. First off I have to say I was really impressed to hear that Trevor had decided to undertake coding his own website. I know he has some of these skills from before but I know it still isn’t an easy task given other responsibilities and course assignments. Overall the site looks really good and I can’t really nitpick anything in terms of deign or layout other than maybe the dark colour scheme but even then it still looks very professional. I do have to say that the dynamic moving visuals are really neat and make the site seem that much more professional and impressive when compared to other simple text based websites one find when doing on-line research.

As to the content, I was really impressed with the large number of links and resourses provided to viewers interested in the Chinese language. Honestly I think this is where the site and overall purpose of the site really shines. It is awesome to have a resource that helps bridge the viewer with another body of work in another language. I recently completely a project on Chile for another class and would have loved a site like this to help me navigate Spanish sources and point me in the right direction when looking for non-English sources.

Trevor mentioned the unfortunate lack of Chinese characters and although I don’t understand Chinese I do understand that some concepts can only be explained in a native language. Because of this need I would really like to see Trevor find a solution to this problem but given the time constraints and the limited number of options I would understand if one isn’t found in time for submission.

The presentation was nice and short. Despite its interesting nature it was a good call to not dwell on the technobabble that many hear when explaining coding. Additionally, I like how with this presentation Trevor brought forward an additional tool not talked about in class. This program was Sublime Text which is pretty much an enhanced version of Notebook that colours and formats text to help with coding. This tool seems really neat, and notwithstanding the insane price tag, would be a really good tool for those who want to code. I can’t tell you how much a program like this would help; the colouring alone helps with the organization and reading of code and would definitely help with debugging for novice programmers.

All in all, Trevor’s presentation was really good. He presented a nice looking site with real purpose and utility and even was able to share new tools with the class which is always a bonus.  

Presentation Reflection

On March 23rd I presented my online exhibit along with a few other classmates to show what progress we had made, and more importantly, get some feedback and suggestions as to how to move forward.

                 I think the presentation of my Omeka online exhibit was pretty good. My presentation was simple and was meant to give people a good idea of the content of my project but without getting bogged down reading text verbatim to them.  I tried to stress the utility of the site and its simplicity. At the same time I wanted people to see the mapping work, pictures and other visuals I had included to give viewers a better context of the story I was trying to tell. All in all I think the presentation went pretty well.

The feedback I got was actually really useful. First of all, I was reassured that my project did not appear too bland or lacking in visuals. I was worried and had mentioned my concern during the presentation that my project lacked the same visual appeal as other classmate’s projects. In the end many classmates seemed to think the simple esthetic was quite appropriate for my project. Personally, I was quite relieved that its layout, as simple as it was, still came across as professional and well structured.

Another big piece of advice came from Trevor who suggested I make a title page that briefly outlines the content of my exhibit to let people know generally what to expect. I think this is a really good idea especially when I had not yet designed a definitive front or home page. So from that suggestion I think my home page will explain to viewers that the exhibit contains information pertaining to the Suffolk swing riots, British immigration, the  Grosse Isle quarantine, and Upper Canadian farm life just to name a few. This I think will really help people not only discover the site and learn more about the Freure family’s immigration but also other information that ties into the greater Freure story for their own use. Despite its purpose to promote the Freure family story and give context to their immigrant diary, I would also love for people to use the exhibit to find additional sources for their own project. For example I would love for an undergrad student to use this site to locate information on immigrant quarantines even if they have no interest in the rest of the Freure story. All in all, I think my project is coming along really well and has received new inspiration from my classmates. 

Writing for the Public

In addition to taking Digital Humanities this semester, I am also taking Uses of History with Professor Gordon. This class is somewhat similar to Digital Humanities as it looks at how history is applied outside the basic form of academic history with the writing of books and essays. The fundamentals of public history have helped a lot in determining the perspective and voice of my online exhibit. As an online exhibit, it is accessible to everyone and the language should reflect that.

This should not be misunderstood, the Freure family exhibit I am constructing will still be of the highest academic quality I am capable of but I would also like it to be as accessible as possible. For example, this site should be informative to those doing research on any number of topics such as Canadian immigration or farming to name a few but should also be useful to those with a passing interest in the history of Eramosa and Wellington County or those interested in immigration stories and genealogy. This is where structure of the exhibit pages comes into play. In order to be as effective as possible, pages will use short informative titles that nicely sum up the content of the page. As to the content of the pages themselves, I want fairly short blocks of text accompanied by images to give visual reference to the material. Very rarely do I want to resort to longer consecutive blocks of text to get the information across but sometimes that is just a necessary evil. I think these structural choices will help keep readers interested in the content and help them remember what content is found where on the site in general. Too many times, in my own experience have I found myself flipping through pages of online documents and sites, looking for a small snippet of information for long period of time. This I find kills online resources when it simply is more burdensome to use the digital resource than a physical one.

The Omeka Update

I didn't update the blog for a while due other assignments but time to recap what was missed the last few weeks. So the last couple of weeks we have not had class in order to work on the course project. My project focused on the Freure family immigration story and is using the online exhibit tool Omeka and google earth.

So I finally got around to using Omeka in earnest and so far I have to say….meh. Not the most academic vocabulary but that just about sums up my opinion of it. Omeka for those who don’t know is a set of tools that allows anyone to put together their own online exhibit with emphasis on displaying items like you would in a physical museum. This program seems useful in setting up exhibits around the different time periods and events that occur in the Freure family immigrating to Canada and establishing a family farm. So far this has worked out pretty well. However, there are some issues that I want to touch on. First of all, the free basic plan of Omeka has quite a few limitations as to what you can do in terms of building your exhibit. Specifically, there is a limit as to how much data you have to work with in terms of text, pages, and most importantly images and other items you upload to the site. Although this hasn't limited my project, ye,t it is still a problem that constantly looms over as I add more and more items to the site. Another problem with Omeka is the way you upload files and items. Essentially, in order to put something up on the site as simple as a picture you must first add said item to a large repository of items on Omeka. So pretty much you have to upload all your items in advance before building the actual pages because you are unable to simply upload a picture or item from your computer to the page you are working one. This might be a small gripe but it does take up time when you are used to being able to upload images directly from your PC to a web page.

Another downside of basic plan Omeka is the lack of plugins. Plugins are the different types of pages and programs you can have on your Omeka exhibit. These plugins range from simple pages of only text to more advanced tools for recording Meta data something I’m extremely unfamiliar with and won’t attempt to explain. The real problem with Omeka is the fact that with the basic plan you only have access to a small list of these tools while others are only available with the very expensive plans. As a student that is not an option for me to buy an Omeka subscription to get access to these tools.

So that’s my initial reaction to Omeka while making my online exhibit. More critique to come…