Digital Projects
This project is an ongoing effort to make diverse picture books more discoverable and to spark conversation about who is represented and how. Based on one of the largest circulating collections of picture books featuring people of color, the Diverse BookFinder is a database expanding on the metadata used to describe both the books and characters. Currently funded by IMLS and supported by Bates College, further development plans include an analytical tool to help librarians look at what diverse titles they have and identify gaps in diverse representation in collections.
Feminist Writing in the Eighteenth Century (Fall 2011)
This project was part of the course “Digital Literary Archives and Web Development,” New York University, Fall 2011. Taught through the English Department, it could also be described as “basic computer science for humanities graduate students.” The above project was the final for the course, whereby students had to digitize a source/ sources of their choice, build an online catalog and website using HTML, CSS, XML, basic XSLT, and TEI. The class assumed no computer science or web development background, all necessary technology was taught in class. Further sample projects available here.
Enlightenment Feminism (Spring 2012)
This site was intended as a companion to the one above, in that it explored a broad view of feminist writing and employed a content management system (CMS) rather than built from scratch. Since the project was completed, a server migration removed all textual files, that is, all the actual feminist texts were stripped away. I keep the site here as a discussion tool for comparing project types and the importance of sustainability in project planning.
Documenting Death: The Records of the New York Marble Cemetery (Fall 2012)
This site was created as part of an online archive documenting Greenwich Village History, a collaborative project in the Archives and Public History program at NYU. It relates the archive to physical space, with a sampling of cemetery and death records. The initial project plan included an interactive map and timeline, but a tech malfunction did not allow for inclusion within the necessary timeframe.
Christina Bell 