Author: watrall
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Directory of Oneota Scholars – Launch Post
I am excited to announce the launch of my 2017 Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowship project, the Directory of Oneota Scholars. Project URL: dos.matrix.msu.edu Project Overview: Upper Mississippian Oneota sites date from circa AD 1000 to the mid-1700s and are known mainly for their presence in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, but sites are also found in…
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Launching the database
Before embarking on this project, Dr. Watrall said that making a database in SQL and taking online with PHP would involve too steep a learning curve to climb within the context of my participation in CHI this year. He was right. Ultimately, we decided that the most realistic goal would be to complete the database.…
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Mapping?
In this post, I reflect on the possibility of building a spatial map of the information that is contained in the database. The initial challenge is to learn how to build such a map using HTML and Java. HILT and CHI introduced me to the basics of this work, but I would have to go…
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Partial connections in ways of knowing: Technocrats vs. The Database
In some of my earlier blogging in CHI, I reflected on the extent to which a digital database would reflect the ways of thinking and knowing that were used by the people who produced the data points from which the database is built. Here, I try to collect those thoughts. The epistemology of the database…
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Launch of Immigrant Imprints!
I’m happy to announce the launch of my project, Immigrant Imprints: Filipinx Spaces in Michigan. The site serves as a response to and exploration of the diminishment of cultural spaces amidst urban development. By following one culture’s narrative, the site tracks Filipinx American settlement and displacement in Michigan, and particularly highlights their struggle to establish…
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Launch of Capturing Campus Cuisine!
I am very pleased to announce the launch of Capturing Campus Cuisine (http://earlyfood.campusarch.msu.edu/index.html)! This website showcases a research project co-created by Autumn Beyer and Susan Kooiman as Campus Archaeology Fellows. This project uses food remains excavated from a historic privy at Michigan State University (MSU) to explore and recreate the food environment of the campus during its…
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Reflections on Earle Draper and the Making of Company Towns
In working on the website and uploading materials, it struck me that the houses primarily material authored by Earle Draper. Most of that was not by design but primarily due to the fact that most of the material easily accessible (both at the National Archives in Atlanta and the Rare Manuscripts Library at Cornell) is…
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Directory of Oneota Scholars – Final Edits
In the next week, we will be launching our CHI projects that we have all been working on throughout the year. I defended my dissertation proposal last week so was not as focused on my CHI project, but I had some time to finally complete the addition of all scholars that research the Oneota to my website.…
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My MySQL table
Using WampServer, I produced an SQL database of information regarding the production and consumption of hydroelectricity in several towns in Uganda and Kenya from 1954-63. I chose this dataset because these years saw the largest increase in hydroelectric power in the history of East Africa. This dramatic hydroelectric expansion was comprised of several dams, but…
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Creating your project’s identity: What’s in a name?
For my last CHI blog pre-project launch post for April, I want to include a short discussion of the thought process and decision making that goes into creating a title for a digital project. It has been the part of my project that I’ve been sitting on for the longest time, deliberating between different titles…