A Sneak Peak at a Project Coming Near You
by Malekai Mischke, Joshua Song, Eliza Malakoff
For our project, we hope to use the digital archive of the Carleton arboretum to create an interactive StoryMap showing how the arboretum has been used throughout the decades, and exploring how the arboretum has interacted with the overarching mission and culture of Carleton College.
We will be using the data from the arboretum digital archives, and supplementing that data with documents from the greater Carleton digital archives. We will start by categorizing every document from the archive by decade and type in a shared google doc, as well as gathering metadata in a separate document. By examining this data and identifying trends and other things of interest, we will decide what story we want to tell about the Arb and choose the documents – and parts of those documents -that best tell that story.
Our final vision is an interactive StoryMap that takes viewers decade by decade through the Arb. The StoryMap will incorporate important primary documents, found anecdotes, and a visualization of land use (likely historic maps). We have looked to a before-after look at Tallahassee and a before-after look at Kentucky as models to the kind of interactive look through time we want to create.
We have created a calendar that allows for both flexibility and structure:
Team Arb,
I love the concept of a historical tour through the Arb, and I think you’ve identified a rich source of data in the dedicated digital collection that will give you plenty to chew over for this project. Cataloguing and categorizing that collection is a great first step — from my brief investigation it looks like you could tell a number of stories about the original vision of the arb, the financial side of the picture, the human uses and abuses, and the non-human impacts for nature and wildlife.
Your detailed calendar provides helpful benchmarks and I’m very curious to see what you all get up to! Just make sure you are doing something that complements the project of the other Arb group and does not duplicate their efforts.
Groovy! I look forward to seeing what story/argument your final DH project will tell. I think it’s great that you’re exploring connections between the arboretum and both Carleton’s overall mission and Carleton’s culture.
Looking back at some of the other projects, I think this one is really interesting! I use the Arb pretty frequently, so it will be interesting to see how your final presentation turns out and what information you find most important. One of the really cool things about the Arb that I like is the little patches of enclosed spaces that prevent animals from entering a certain area. This way, the people who study it can see the effect that local wildlife have on the ecosystem. I wonder if the animals found there would end up influencing how the landscape itself is shaped as well!