Hacking the Humanities Final Project
Members of the group:
Emmy, Shannon, Kevin
Topic and Objectives:
We are planning to create a project that details the development of the Arb from its creation to its current state. This project would consist of a timeline detailing both major events having to do with the Arb and maps of how the land that makes up the Arb has changed. When mapping the arb we will mark out how the land is being used (farmland, natural prairie, etc.) as well as important locations like the Druid circle and monument hill.
The proposed methodology( What data do you hope to use and how do you hope to find it? What tools and techniques will you use to gather sources and store your data? What analyses or transformations will you conduct on those data?)
We hope to use both current and past maps of the Arb in order to find out what land makes/made up the Arb and how it was divided. We will also use information on the history of the college as a whole that pertains to the Arb in order to get information on specific Arb-related events. We plan to look through the Carleton Archives in order to find these maps and information on events. If there isn’t sufficient information within the Archives, we plan to go to the Arb office or reach out to the Arb Director in order to find more specific information. The biggest analysis/transformation that we will conduct on this data will be transferring the information from historical maps to interactive, digital ones using ARCGIS or other software.
Presentation:
We plan to create one final map with a time slider. The user would be able to change the slider to see what the arb looked like at a given time. In addition to showing areas of change in the arb, we would also plot points with information on historical events in the Arb.
Timeline:
We hope to spend this upcoming weekend doing research. Hopefully, we will have almost all the materials we need, so that in class 8.1 we will be able to start working on compiling the actual interactive map together.
We hope to be almost done by the beginning of week 10, so that we can spend the last of our class time working on the project making small tweaks to make sure it looks fan-freaking-tastic*.
* no promises
Project Model:
We think that the interactive map/timeline of the Battle of Gettysburg that we looked at in class is a good example of a timeline based map system. Like this project, we hope that ours will allow the viewer to both move forwards and backwards in time as well as in space in order to see the full story of the Carleton Arboretum.
Post links:
http://thien-bui.com/hacking_humanity/ Kevin’s
One reply on “Mapping the Arb”
Team Arrrrrrb,
As I told you in class, I think this sounds like a great project, and you are already in good hands working with Nancy and Wei-Hsin, who probably have more Arb-specific information and map layers than the archives.
As for platform, a story map makes a lot of sense, but the technology has developed a good amount since the Gettysburg one was published. I’d encourage you to use the new StoryMap builder which will let you combine narrative sections, images, maps and other interactive embeds into a long-form scrolling presentation.
For additional information and resources check out Alex Knodell’s long-running Archaeology in the Arb project, and the beautiful Field Guide to the Arb that Nancy and several collaborators put together several years ago (I have a paper copy in my office if you’d like to see it).