Processes
We began by visiting the Gould Library Special Collections, where we digitized the physical copies of the books used in the marathon readings. We also digitized the t-shirts and posters of the event. Next, we collected digital photographs from Tom Lamb, the special collections librarian.We also conducted an interview with Mike Kowalewski, the English professor leading the marathon readings. He gave us an overview of the history of the marathon readings, a general list of the books as well as promotional materials and other media that we can use in our project. Mike said that the English department has been trying to find a way to commemorate the reading marathons and better advertise it to students, so he was really excited about our project and was happy to help.
In Omeka, we created a directly-embedded timeline. The data for the timeline came directly from the Carleton Archives, and takes the form of books that we digitized and gathered information on. We scanned all the books that have been used for reading marathons and then added information about both the book itself as well as when it was read and any interesting details that we learned from our interview with Mike Kowalewski.
We used Neatline Time, a plug-in on Omeka, to create this visualization. We initially tried to use timelineJS, but it ended up being really nice that Neatline Time is already integrated into the Omeka environment, so we went with that.
This timeline is one of the key ways that users can explore the history of the reading marathon because it ties all of the books to the time that they were read. Users can then choose to click on a particular book to learn more about it if they would like. There were not a ton of ways that we could customize the timeline through Nealine Time, but we played with the color scheme in Omeka in order to make the visualization easier to read in the context of the whole website. We also feature high resolution scans of the books on each pop-up so that users can quickly see what the timeline is about.
In addition to the timeline, we also made a few visualizations in Flourish to highlight some of the trends over time. All of this data was hand-scraped from the interview, the inside signature cover, and the documents that Mike shared with us. Through customized titles, colors, and styles, we made these graphs easy for viewers to understand.
Our final site is complete with an exhibit page, timeline, gallery, and oral histories.