Portfolio Overview

Projects:

Project 1:

https://twitter.com/RITmuse/status/916377751657107456

Project one I was not sure what to think about but did I enjoy myself. I really enjoyed having to to the research about my topic, I had fun designing the cases, and I really had fun working with our class. My only problem was that I had to work on my own a lot and it was a bit of a scramble for materials at the end. But I am glad I was able to do this project. It really helped me understand what Metadata is and what goes into making an exhibit. Overall it taught us the innerworkings behind exhibits and exhibiting, and introduction to metadata, and to think about the visual setups behind putting together an exhibit.
Project 2:

Omeka.net

Project two was difficult but also fun. Working on Omeka, Drupal, and WordPress was an interesting venture. Overall I ended up liking Omeka and WordPress more because they were a lot more user friendly and easier to navigate. This project helped me better learn Metadata and how it works, How to build a good website both for online exhibitions and information, and helped me explore what is out there to work with.
Project 3:

http://agreenthumbandaproblem.omeka.net/

I think this was my favorite however. It really helped me throw myself into my work during a bad situation and focus on something I really enjoyed. Exploring how to work with Omeka was fun and (incidental learning) I ended up teaching myself some HTML in the process! I got a lot better at metadata by this point as well. This project helped us look into things that were important to us and set it up like an online exhibit. This helped the class prepare for if they had to make an actual online exhibit and how they would do so.

A Green Thumb and a Problem

http://agreenthumbandaproblem.omeka.net/
My project was titled A Green Thumb and a Problem. Not only because it sounded funny but because it was covering the garden I grew while coping with depression. I was hoping that my stories and ramblings would be relatable and understandable to those going through something similar to what I went through. Also I included recipes and remedies to help those who need it too and to know that not all of the plants were arbitrarily bought. The Videos and Audio files were on there to help follow my silly thought process about the plants and how it all ties into one another. I added up to 85 tags to make the plants all easily searchable, and they’re all categorized by their family genus species. Recipes and Remedies are also tagged to be easy to search as well. Additional information about all of them are in the about the project page as well. Little blurbs are included in all of them about: how I obtained the plant, who they’re named after (some are named after people I know, some aren’t), some information about the plant itself, and what I use it for. All of the photos were taken by me. I hope you enjoyed my project as much as I enjoyed working on it.

Open Heritage API’s

After reading the article about Open Heritage API’s I think digitizing Cultural Heritage items is important. Other than the fact that I’m a nerd and think historical items should be available to the public. Sometimes it can be difficult to get the word out about these types of resources to the public. However, they can be useful tools for people to use. Also a great way to digitally preserve historical items. Importantly making them engaging to the general public is a hurdle museums and companies need to quickly learn to overcome. It looks like collaboration is another useful element to take into consideration when making this type of information available to the public digitally.

Controlled Vocabulary

Controlled Vocabulary sounds really strange out of context but actually makes a lot of sense when you know what it means. Controlled Vocabulary comes extremely in handy with MetaData and when doing research. One of my internships (one out of two, lets not be crazy here) works with ArchiveSpace every day. With that, my boss made me VERY aware of Controlled Vocabulary and the Library of Congress’s way of explaining things. It seemed very stifling at first, but then it all came together. It makes a lot of sense to have a singular language (or in this case vocabulary) when dealing with how things are cataloged, archived, researched, and explained. Rather than making it difficult for every different museum and archive and library and so on to have to guess the different meanings for something, controlled vocabulary made that part easy on everyone. My internship is very particular about controlled vocabulary when explaining and accessioning items into the archives. So I became very familiar with this very quick. I still look up things on Library of Congress’s website in order to best know how to explain or categorize things. So overall, it’s been really helpful to know about and to have a universal vocabulary shared among all archival practices.

Drupal

I take bad everything bad I ever said or thought about Omeka. Drupal is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I ended up having to learn Drupal in one class period due to certain circumstances, so I wish I was able to have more time to get acquainted with the program. However it was an abrupt start and end to Drupal. I definitely didn’t find this program easy to use or navigate. Also it has a lot of bugs, so often I found myself having to adjust things that should have not been a problem. However on a more positive note when it works the website looks wonderful when it is all put together, the MetaData is compartmentalized in a way where it looks great when finally finished. So overall it was a positive experience and once they find a way to work out all of the bugs I’d be more inclined to use it more in the future.

Omeka

Omeka has been an interesting site to use. WordPress has been fun, but Omeka has been a lot more structured in the process. Which can be both bad and good depending on how one plans to use either or the sites. Personally for a professional establishment I’d be more inclined to use Omeka due to how categorical and organized it is. If I wanted to add a more personal flare, I would use WordPress over Omeka. However my opinion is solely based on the fact that I do not know as much as I would like about either of these sites. I would like to use and explore with them more in the future because so far my experiences with both Omeka and WordPress have been positive and interesting to use and learn about.

How was WordPress Kaye?

New.
Well aside from one word answers WordPress was definitely a new experience. The site itself is fairly user friendly and easy enough to navigate so that part of it was pleasantly surprising. Overall the experience I had with WordPress was not a bad one. I can see why many companies and people use the site. It’s a lot easier to navigate and use than some other blog posting sites I’ve used in the past. It takes some getting used to when uploading media content and editing. But I would continue to use this site in the future after this class has ended.

Cheerleading Page from 1993 Techmila

Shown are various photos from the 1993 Techmila Yearbook at RIT. The Cheerleading Team is hard at work cheering on various teams at games in these photos. The uniforms are different than previous years with now an almost entirely white ensemble accompanied by striped across the top half of the uniform. Regardless of uniform these girls keep up the pep!

RIT Cheerleading Uniforms

These uniforms were lent to this exhibit by RIT’s Cheerleading Coach, Katie Post. They show the change in uniform style over the past two decades. The design is a bit more complex than the simple lettering of “R” to include the word “Tigers” and an image of the mascot as well.
The black uniform was in use from 2000-06 while the white one was in use from 2007-2011.