Gathering Interviews and Planning a Layout

So far within my individual research for our COPLAC project, I have organized two interviews for next week. One is with Professor Darin Waters, who is in the history department and has a concentration in African American history in the South. He is very familiar with Asheville’s cultural history, and has had family in the area for several generations. His grandfather, Isaiah Rice, had recently had a photography exhibit through our Special Collections archive that essentially documented the African American experience in Asheville in the 1950s. Waters also has a son who started attending UNC Asheville this semester; he has a unique relationship with UNC Asheville as both a faculty member and a parent of a student. He works as an assistant to the Chancellor as well, and has a greater understanding of the inner workings within our university than some.

We also plan on interviewing Gene Hyde, the Special Collections archivist. As our university archivist, in an archive that heavily contains historically valuable documents, photographs, books, and other materials relating to our university’s history, he would be a beneficial perspective to have as part of our documentation of our university.

I’m beginning to experiment with TimelineJS, a program we will be using in our website. I’m less familiar with it than my partner Casey, but have had some experience using it in a history course I’m currently in. It is a useful tool for creating a concise timeline, with access to implementing audio, photographs, and video components in it. We are also working on a visually appealing and clear design for our website. Implementing TimelineJS might be difficult and will definitely be taken into consideration while designing our website’s layout.

The Relationship Between Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities

Liberal arts and digital humanities both place an emphasis on the disciplines of humanities as a field. They have somewhat similar objectives in regard to the content that they focus on, but have different methods; digital humanities looks at how to apply these disciplines to the digital sphere, including digitizing historical documents and other texts. This also includes digitizing and publishing of oral interviews, relating to oral history, a significant part of our COPLAC project.

Liberal arts and digital humanities overlap significantly, sharing the same objectives and overall concepts, while digital humanities translates these concepts through digital tools to places like the Internet. The connections between these two support my research process for the COPLAC digital project because the methods make oral history much more accessible and easy to document. The ability to record and digitize interviews has significantly benefitted the field of oral history, and add a level of understand to the individual experiences and perspectives throughout history.

History, as a core element of humanities, oral history in particular, is most supported by the digitizing of the concepts of humanities by relating larger events to individual experiences. In a sense, oral history would not be what it is if not for the ability to digitize and publish sound recordings of interviews. The listener not only is able to understand the unique perspective and recollection of a historical event, they are also able to better observe and evaluate the event itself.

Project Contract

Julia Bone, Casey Brown

M. Long, C. Woodcox (DH 373)

 

Mission:

Our mission is to create a historical narrative of the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s development. We would like to digitally map the development of the liberal arts alongside the development of our campus. Our website will function as a digital exhibit of UNC Asheville’s history and its relationship with the liberal arts. We intend to create a website that would be helpful for anyone with an academic interest in the liberal arts, or the overall history of the UNCA campus. As part of a larger project in our COPLAC course, we will exemplify the growth of a liberal arts university through our school’s unique background.

 

We will utilize WordPress to allow a multifaceted experience, complete with text, images, and audio. We will link a timeline through TimeLineJS onto our site to create a more interactive experience. We will pay special attention to the aspects of war and the GI Bill for their influences in the development of our campus’ history, along with the impact of tourism on the city and university.

 

Tools:

  • We will be using WordPress, with the Twenty Fourteen layout. WordPress is easy to navigate and has all of the tools we believe are necessary to properly convey our project’s purpose.
  • We will also utilize TimelineJS. Any image editing can be handled through Photoshop. TimeLineJS will be used to detail important events throughout our university’s history, as well as events that impacted liberal arts and higher education that affected our school. Link to TimeLineJS: http://timeline.knightlab.com/
  • We will upload video components through YouTube and link through our website.
  • We are also considering uploading images from our experiences working on the project, as well as relevant photos of our university that will add historical context. We will go to our university’s Special Collections archive to find photographs that we see suitable for our project.
  • To conduct interviews, we will be using lapel microphones and potentially cameras for recording, which can be found through either our university library or the Mass Communication department.

 

Milestones:

  • Design and build a website using WordPress by October 11th.
  • Conduct first interview with Dr. Darin Waters of the UNCA History Department by October 13th.
  • Conduct interview with Gene Hyde, Special Collections archivist at UNCA, by October 21st.
  • Conduct 3rd, 4th, and 5th interviews by the end of October.
  • Compile interviews with timeline by November 1st.
  • Finish website and add all components for project and prepare presentation for final due date.

 

Who will be doing what:

  • We will cooperatively interview Dr. Darin Waters. Julia will interview Gene Hyde.  Casey will be handling the third and fourth interview, and Julia the fifth.
  • We will cooperatively design and create our WordPress website.
  • Casey will be using TimeLineJS to create the timeline; Julia will research and find information that will be laid out in the timeline.