For this week we as a class have been focusing on building out the infrastructure for our digital projects. The module started with thinking about content use and digital projects which led to the activity of storyboarding. This activity was an interesting step in the planning process of the digital project. I first went and looked at a former digital project to get a sense of how I wanted the Omeka site to look like and what I had done in the past. I used that as my example to plan what my digital project for this course may look like or at least to use as a model to see what worked and where I could improve for this time around. For this digital project my main component is going to be an interactive map, which I still need to digitize to include on the site. The storyboarding part of this module was a bit difficult I will say as I hand drew my pages and I am definitely not an artist by any means! It was a very basic outline of what I wanted the digital project to look like with of course room to move things around as I progress in the building process. This activity helped me to think about what I wanted the project to look like before trying to put anything together on the digital space.
The next part of the building of the digital project infrastructure was the content templates. This activity was interesting and had really helped to write out exactly how the content that I planned to have incorporated on the digital project. It helped me to think about the audience and keep that in mind when selecting the content and what features I would like to include on the site. I think I struggled a bit with the ‘features’ versus the ‘elements’ portion of the assignment and I may have ended up swapping the purpose of those.
The last activity was to build out an exhibit on our Omeka site that would be incorporated into our digital projects. I had originally planned to have exhibit pages so this activity was really helpful in building my digital project’s infrastructure. I made one exhibit page which showcased one of the Hollows that a community of people resided called Corbin Hollow. I still plan to add more primary sources to the exhibit once I get a bit further along in the process. I also still would like to add cover images to the exhibit pages that are zoomed in photos or the element on the interactive map that I am highlighting, so in this case I would add a zoomed in photo of the little ‘Corbin’ cabin icon that can be found on the interactive map. There is still much work to be done but this activity reminded me of how to use Omeka’s exhibit builder which is a great skill to have. Check out the exhibit I build on my project site here!