Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Omeka

The collection I chose to examine was Hero's and Villains: Silver Age Comics.  Out of the selection of Omeka collections this particular one looked fun and I wanted to know more about it.

The collection is broken down into six different tabs: About the Exhibit, Comics Timeline, Browse Exhibits, Browse Collections, Browse Items, and Resources.  About the Exhibit gives the viewer a small description as to why the collection happened and has a video to go with it.  Comics Timeline goes through the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Modern Age and tells us what was going on in the world and how it affected comics as well as when super heros made their first appearances.  The browsing options make it easier for a visitor to find what exactly they're looking on the site.

With this site you can search for your favorite superhero and find a list of comics they were in and discover a history of when they were created.  For example, when I looked up Iron Man, I found six different covers of Iron Man, each of which tells me the title, a description, the publisher, coverage, etc.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Ecoding experience

After my first night of TEI, I was wondering if I could finish the leaf.  I don't know if it was reading Thoreau's scribble or all the symbols associated with TEI, but I was exhausted.  GIMP was a great source to use because of it's abilities, but I still couldn't read a good amount of the words, and the different codes to remember was just too much.  I had to take several breaks throughout the process because I just couldn't focus on the project.  When all was said and done, I had many errors in my encoding, but it was just a first draft.

When I went to class on Monday, I learned about a few more tricks that could help me out with my leaf, and I was feeling a little more optimistic.  Probably the biggest help was the reading document that was provided to us in dropbox.  When I went home and started to read some of the document, I realized that I had seen a lot of the same sentences in my encoding, and all of a sudden, the words that were at first "illegible" became very much legible.  This document changed the project for me and suddenly I was picking up steam and reading Thoreau's handwriting much easier.

As far as the encoding goes, I learned something new about it each class.  The first class I learned the basics(which wasn't quite enough).  The class following that, I learned a lot more about adding things to the encoding, and that is also when I discovered the reading doc.  Last class I got a better grasp on strikethroughs and deletions as well as metamarks.

I'm fairly confident that I did well on this project.  I know I'm just a beginner in text encoding, but with the pieces of advice that I got, I was able to produce something that shows my comprehension.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Skype Conference with Paul Schacht

   The Skype conference with Paul Schacht was very cool.  This was the first time that had ever used Skype for a conference or a learning purpose, and it's actually an effective tool.  Paul had a lot of good things to say and having him in our class helped because it put another perspective on the project getting started on.

   Based on what Paul said it sounds like the available online material about Thoreau is limited, and by doing a project like this, it will provide countless opportunities for Thoreau scholars who would like more than juts pdfs and boring html.  Paul said that the Internet allows putting text out there in all it's fluidity and incorporates a narrative of changes.  Reading the many different revisions of Walden side by side will lead to plenty of research and discoveries that scholars may have never noticed.  They can also look at Thoreau's edits and sometimes determine his mood or intent, and that is pretty incredible.

   Paul said that in the next few years they hope to add more texts to "Readers Thoreau" and foster discussion on Walden and other texts.  The discussion's would be monitored but with the limited audience they wouldn't have to worry about "trolls" but they would have to keep an eye on scholars jumping down other scholars' throats.

   Overall this meeting we had with Paul was beneficial for me and I think for the class.  He is obviously passionate about what he does and he had all the answers to our questions.  I can only hope I like this project as much as he does when all is said and done.