I’ve had an incredibly hectic week for reasons unrelated to the project, but the chaos has managed to find its way into my research and other work for the course.

John and I decided to narrow the scope of our website even more and focus on general education and especially the Humanities sequence (HUMN) at Geneseo. Due to this change, we are planning to eliminate the local history page noted in the project contract and add a page specifically about general education and HUMN. I plan to include the most relevant aspects of local history into my page about the college’s history. We also discussed the role of the timeline, which we still need to figure out. From what I can tell, TimelineJS, while very user-friendly, won’t do exactly what we explained in the contract. I still think a timeline of some sort would be a helpful visual on the site, even if as a general introduction to some topics. I’ve yet to work up the courage to check the schedule laid out in the contract in the past few days because I know I’m so behind, but I’m hoping to finish my print-based research by the end of this week and start creating the pages next week.

As for my print-based research, I’m still buried in the archives. While I’ve been fairly productive, there’s a lot more I want to get to (mostly Faculty Senate records and newspaper archives) that I feel like I won’t be able to move through quickly. I’m also worried that there won’t be a natural stopping point to my research and I’ll miss something important. Hopefully any gaps in my research will be filled by the interviews (which will hopefully be completed by the 18th–scheduling is a nightmare).

I’ve also become slightly concerned about the visual appeal of my pages on the website. I’ve mostly been going through course catalogs and faculty bulletins, which are very informative but aren’t visually interesting. I’d like to avoid a wall of text followed by a picture of another wall of text. Photos of the campus are always an option, but I’m not sure how appropriate sunset pictures (of which there are an abundance at Geneseo) would be for a page about gen. ed. I’m planning to ask Liz Argentieri, the special collections librarian, if she knows of any images in the archives that might be useful.

In addition to continuing (hopefully finishing) my research this week, I’m hoping to go back through my blog and make any changes I feel necessary, including changing post titles and maybe adding a few pictures. I’d also like to change the name of my blog, which I’ve never really liked, and get a new header–hopefully I’ll remember to take a picture on a day with good weather.