Group Meeting November 18, 2014

The main focus of today’s meeting was on exhibits.

1. What is an exhibit?

And what do I need to do to create one? An exhibit is an essay or narrative illustrated by online items that support or enrich what is being said. There is no prescribed length. It should be as long as it needs to be to tell the story you want to tell. We should assume that our audience has no knowledge of the topic of our exhibit.

Meredith showed the group how exhibits and specific exhibit pages can be created using straightforward options at our Omeka site. For each page in your exhibit you can choose from a variety of layout choices.

The Design Team will be communicating with the Development Team regarding basic visual appearance options such as color and font. While those appearance options will alter the appearance of our exhibits, they will not alter our content or layout choices. Each individual should begin, as soon as she or he is ready, to create exhibits and exhibit pages, choose layouts, and add content.

2. Timeline and requirements

The team decided to extend the initial launch deadline for the public site to January 21, thus taking advantage of the lull time of Winter break to get work completed. Each exhibit should have a minimum of eight items integrated into it. People are free to add more items if they wish–either to their exhibits or to our public site in general, where all items will be browsable as items.

3. Example of an exhibit

John discussed with the group an exhibit he had created for his chosen Morningside location–Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. He chose to focus on the competing visions of the architects who worked on the cathedral. Due to time constraints he limited archival research to Avery Drawings. For this building, he felt that there was enough non-archival material available to tell the story he wanted to tell. One key resource of interest for most of our locations is the database “American Periodicals (1740-1940).” This includes a good selection of architectural periodicals for 19th and 20th centuries.

John L. Tofanelli

Author: John L. Tofanelli

John is Columbia’s Librarian for British and American History and Literature. His research interests include literature and religion in 18th- and 19th- century Great Britain, textual criticism, and book history. He has enjoyed the chance to explore the early architectural history of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.