ST235A - Digital Projects in History

Author: Joshua Kim

Final Project Proposal: Breaking down the Colby Echo

April 8, 2019 / / 0 Comments

For my final project proposal, I have decided to break down the Colby Echo during certain time periods of Colby’s past. I plan on choosing my time periods after reading “The History of Colby College” by Marriner and “Mayflower Hill: A History of Colby College” by Earl Smith. Once I do so, I will go into the Colby Echo archives thanks to Erin Rhodes and the special collections librarian team. I will then use Adobe premier to use the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC function which will let me make the scanned images into text documents. Once I do so, I will use the Voyant tools introduced by the ITS team which will allow me to analyze the words that come up in each Colby Echo and the frequency of them. Not only will this let me analyze the text more closely, but it will give me more context as to what was going on during the time period in which the Colby Echo was published. Since there are so many words that will come up, I plan on using specific words such as ‘scandal, conflict, protest,’ and any other words that symbolize disagreement. The reason why I want to search these words is to see how Colby has endured hard times during their past and how they grew from it. I want to see the growth of Colby College and analyze the different building blocks that have created Colby College today.

1. Significance:
     – I would like to understand and recognize what opinions and events are being recorded during specific time periods of Colby’s history.
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2. Historical sources
     – The Colby Echo archives through this website:  http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/ColbyCollege/default.aspx#panel=home
     – “The History of Colby College” by Ernest Cummings Marriner
     – “Mayflower Hill: A History of Colby College” by Earl H. Smith
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3. Technical requirements
     – Adobe Acrobat Pro DC with the Adobe Premier
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4. Achievements to date (with examples)
     – Working alongside and multiple meetings with Erin Rhodes and Special Collections librarian team
     – Getting comfortable and familiar with Voyant Tools
     – Finding ways to translate scanned images into text documents (OCR, Adobe Acrobat)
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5. Challenge
     – Finding an efficient way to translate these documents in a timely manner
     – Have realized that the OCR tools I’ve used so far all take too much time to translate or translate too little at once

Digital Final Project Idea

March 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I was intrigued during the visit to special collections when the librarians brought up the idea of being able to dig into the profiles of Colby College Alums, all the way back to the 19th centuries. As someone who has always found an interest in the study of people, I was fascinated with the thought of being able to have a better comprehension of the lives of Colby College students of the past. My goal is to be able to capture the community and the atmosphere in which Colby students embodied decades and centuries ago. I wanted to understand and dig into the roots of Colby College and the rich history that came with this. With this being said,  I needed find a way to be able to encompass the general sense of the school through the alumni profiles.

With this being said, I found that the hardest part of this project was that I didn’t know which alumni’s to choose and how I would go about being able to capture an entire school’s environment through one person. There are also tens of thousands of profiles I had to go through in order for me to truly capture this. After meeting with Erin Rhodes, she brought up the idea of going through the Colby Echo, instead of the alumni profiles. Not only would this save me the time of going through one profile at a time, the Echo would also be a great place for me to read and see the truest of thoughts of Colby College and the voices straight from the students. I still need to find a way to narrow the angle and focus on a specific element of the Colby Echo, but I definitely believe that the student run newspaper would be a great source for me to gain more insight on the history and environment of Colby College in the past.

My long term plan is to work alongside special collections here at Colby and either publish my findings/project onto the website that they are already running, or to upload my work onto a WordPress that is connected through the special collections as well.

Joshua Kim; They Shall Not Grow Old Reflection

March 4, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Similar to the skype with Dr. John van Wyhe about Digital Darwin, this film “They Shall Not Grow Old” gave me insight and shined a light onto a subfield of STS that I had never even considered: digital projects through filmmaking and movies. Although I thought the film was very well put together and captivating through its entirety, I found the half an hour documentary after the movie to be the impressive and moving element of the film. As the director of the movie explained how the movie was slowly put together in bits and pieces, I couldn’t help but be amazed by how all the moving parts came together to create this astonishing recreation of World War I. The following are notes that I took as the director explained each part of creating his digital project:

 

  • Colorization
  • Magazine/comics/sketch’s

Subconscious propaganda within

  • Use of BBC audio tapes
  • Being as authentic as possible throughout the building of the film
  • 600 hours of audio
  • 100 hours of video
    Cameraman can’t capture actual fighting

    • So cleverly used sketches from WWI magazine
  • Had to think Morally and technically
  • Static videos became moving shots
  • Took photos of landscape in belgium
  • Created their own sounds (sloshing, cannon shots, rifles)
  • Microphones around new zealand real bomb shells
  • Forensic lip readers
  • Went into archives, June 30th- pep talk
  • Music track… instrumental music
  • Critics music: Mademoiselle from Armentieres
  • British embassy
  • There were many parts to WWI and had to focus on a specific element
    • Also had planes, nurses, home front, navy
  • Dedicated to god father and great uncle who served in WWI
  • Asked us at the end to look within your own family/lineage to see if your parents were in the world war

 

If I was surprised by how much effort was made into Darwin Online, I was really impressed and shocked by the dedication and thought put into this movie. Never did I expect so much audio footage and video footage to have to be scavenged, own sound effects, or even forensic lip readers. A highlight that the director mentioned was how the production team was able to find (almost 100% sure) the exact letter one of the sargents was reading to their troops in a famous scene before the World War I. The fact that they went through archives and found a specific date that would’ve made sense and aligned the lip movements to the archived letter was just wild to me. Whether this was extreme luck or mastery of filmmaking, this was a feat that put me in awe.

Overall, without the short film at the end of the movie, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate all the hard work and effort put into this movie. I just wouldn’t have known. From the moving shots of static images to actually travelling to Belgium in order to capture the genuinity of the landscape to the clever use of sketches, the movie had so many elements that were so well integrated into the movie. As the audience, I never had to question the authenticity of the movie nor did I stop to think about it. And the singing at the end from the British embassy…a scene I would’ve never expected. If there’s anything I definitely gained through this moving film, I have truly found an appreciation and newfound respect for digital projects and filmmaking.

Joshua Kim; Digital Darwin Reflection

March 4, 2019 / / 0 Comments

I found the Digital Darwin project directed by Dr John van Wyhe to be quite fascinating and an eye opening project that opened up several new paths in the field of Science, Technology, and Society. To be honest, I didn’t even have an idea of what a digital project was stepping into this STS class so it’s crazy to think that a few weeks later, I was able to meet and interact with the director and leader of one of the biggest digital projects made in human history. Never did I think this was even something that was pursued, but come to think of it, it makes complete sense. I mean, someone has to be converting the information from the past and updating them into the technology we use today— I just had never thought about it.

While I had originally thought that a transferral of information from books or manuscripts into an online website would have been pretty simple, after hearing from Wyhe, I’ve come to realize that it is actually very difficult and a huge consumption of time and energy. I was especially intrigued by the fact that the hardest part of this digital project wasn’t the actual searching of the information but getting the okay and receiving permission to use it. But again, I guess that makes sense since we live in a world of ownership and copyright. It was definitely valuable to get the insight to all the inner workings of creating a digital project and hearing all the roadblocks and loopholes one had to go through to create a successful project.

Another aspect of digital projects that I and many other people might not think about is the actual publicizing of the final product once it’s launched. Wyhe explained how with a combination of luck and support, they were able to use the University of Cambridge as well as the newspaper to create publicity once the site was open to public. I found it humorous when Wyhe mentioned that the day that Darwin Online was published, there were no huge stories for the newspaper to cover so the digital project got the most of the attention that was needed.

If there is one thing that I personally took away from Darwin online and the skype with Dr John van Wyhe is the type of people that pursue these types of digital projects as well as the audience these projects are targeted at. I quickly realized that this was a scholars’ world where for the most part, scholars are the ones who create these projects and other scholars are the ones who utilize these sites to gain more knowledge. I had asked Wyhe if there was a particular reason why he chose Charles Darwin to be his subject and model for this huge project of his and although I don’t remember his exact answer, I do remember his message: “I decided to start this because of my love for Charles Darwin and to help make his information accessible in one location.” While I have a hard time imagining myself finding passion in accumulating information into one source, it was exciting and intriguing to seem someone else carry a passion of theirs and make the biggest digital project based on one person.

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