On the fly

I’m so excited about this project. Librarians are accustomed to learning technology on the fly.  We’re efficient: copying another page’s source code and substituting our own content was one way to get things done quickly when there wasn’t time to build something from the ground up.  It’s wonderful to have...

This great building

It is fascinating to look at the variety of documents connected with the early history of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. The guidebooks and historical accounts are, of course, interesting; but sermons preached there can also be highly revealing of how the meaning of the cathedral was...

Digital Welcome Mats

We were talking yesterday about the purpose of our Morningside Heights historical Web site. What is the overarching vision or the story we are trying to tell? How do we impart any kind of vision to users? One suggestion was that we include narrative elements–for example each compiler of a...

Showing Change

I was curious to see how Omeka sites have illustrated population growth and other changes over time.  I was hoping to find something similar to the Pastmapper site about Greenwich Village, which takes a street in Greenwich village and incorporates census and building data.  It is not an Omeka site,...

The importance of the interface

A follow-up comment on our group discussion of the interesting article suggested by Bob, by Tanya Clement, ‘Half-Baked: The State of Evaluation in the Digital Humanities’ (American Literary History, Volume 24, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp. 876-890; here’s a link via Project Muse) - one point that was raised a...

The importance of the interface

A follow-up comment on our group discussion of the interesting article suggested by Bob, by Tanya Clement, ‘Half-Baked: The State of Evaluation in the Digital Humanities’ (American Literary History, Volume 24, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp. 876-890; here’s a link via Project Muse) - one point that was raised a...

The importance of the interface

A follow-up comment on our group discussion of the interesting article suggested by Bob, by Tanya Clement, ‘Half-Baked: The State of Evaluation in the Digital Humanities’ (American Literary History, Volume 24, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp. 876-890; here’s a link via Project Muse) - one point that was raised a...

Bloomingdale Asylum

For our history of Morningside Heights, I have chosen to concentrate on the Bloomingdale Asylum, which is interesting for a number of reasons.  From its establishment in the Heights until well into the 19th century, it was the single most prominent landmark in the area, occupying the high ground that...

Milbank Hall

I am interested in using the archives at Barnard to learn more about the early relationship between Barnard and Columbia, especially as the Morningside Heights neighborhood was changing in the late 19th Century. As an object of study, I have chosen Milbank Hall because it is the oldest building on...

Fire and Water

On the southwest corner of 113th and Amsterdam stand two of the older buildings in Morningside Heights:  the Croton Aqueduct 113th Street gatehouse (1876)  and the  Engine Company No. 47 firehouse (1890).   I am researching  the role that the aqueduct and the fire department played in the early development...

Omeka Workflow

Robbie Blitz, Digital Projects Librarian and Melanie Wacker, Metadata Coordinator, joined us today to discuss Columbia’s Omeka workflow and metadata procedures. As we move into the nuts and bolts of building our Omeka site, we wanted a lesson in how the organization builds exhibitions for the public. CUL has 29...

Omeka Workflow

Robbie Blitz, Digital Projects Librarian and Melanie Wacker, Metadata Coordinator, joined us today to discuss Columbia’s Omeka workflow and metadata procedures. As we move into the nuts and bolts of building our Omeka site, we wanted a lesson in how the organization builds exhibitions for the public. CUL has 29...

Copyright and Digital Humanities

At one of our last Morningside training sessions Kenny Crews discussed his recent presentations on copyright and DH. We explained our Developing Librarian Project and together we came up with a series of helpful recommendations concerning copyright and DH projects. Any discussion of copyright will be filled with nuances and “what ifs,”...

St. Luke's Hospital

Known today as St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, the hospital was founded by William Augustus Muhlenberg in 1846 and started admitting patients in 1858. It was located at 5th Avenue and 54th Street before moving to its location on Amsterdam Avenue and 114th Street in 1896. Initially, the hospital occupied five...

You Can Go Home Again

I thought I knew the four things I had learned from today’s session. They are listed below. But then, when I read Barbara’s post, ‘Revisiting Requirements Guidelines,’ I realized that we really were returning in today’s session to crucial principles from some of our earliest meetings.  In one of those...

Warping Maps, Seeing History

New York Public Library's Map Warper. New York Public Library’s Map Warper tool helps you visualize how the landscape of a particular place has changed over time. I signed up for Map Warper specifically to complete an assignment in Professor Debbie Rabina’s Information Services & Resources spring 2013 course at...

Improving Our WordPress Blog

Tuesday’s session was primarily about how to deal with a specific issue in our developing librarian blog.  We decided that we would like to share our “four things” among ourselves (and with anyone else who is interested), but we didn’t want to overwhelm the blog with repetitive content. Bob and...

Git Down!

New things: I learned about using snake (jj_jjj) and camel font (jjJj) for naming. The importance of creating a WWW folder for web project content. Git is useful for tracking changes and creating a history of changes. We will be working in a virtual space on our local computers -...

Git lost

Four things learned in today’s session: There is a difference between the Mac and Windows versions of Git which made our session slightly frustrating. Right now our git only goes to Alex’s server, not to the cloud. Eventually we’ll have a virtual server on our workstations. Git will keep track...

Git out of here!

Git is not easy! I learned the following four things today: 1) the difference between Git and Github 2) the file structure for projects in Github and on our local computers 3) committing often is important for roll back 4) best practices for Git when collaborating with others, i.e. describing...

Gitting to Know You

Four things learned today, Oct 1, 2013 When working in Github: “commit often.” Commit every time you’ve made a substantial change. Each time that you commit, you create a version that can be rolled back to in the future. The description field is Optional when you commit. When you are...

Gitting Up to Speed

Today we got our hands on Git. We’d already installed the software on our office desktops, but it wasn’t installed on the 306 workstations, so we needed to download and install it on the DHC computers for our group session. Four things: snake_case and CamelCase. We used snake_case to name our...

Git again!

Things I learned from today’s session. Alex did a great job defining differences between Git and GitHub. Git is the tool that manages the source code and history of changes. GitHub is the service that hosts repositories – it is the cloud. Notepad++ is a good text editor for Windows...

Four Things

One way to solve problems is to copy and paste the error message and search Google for suggestions.  It would still be a good idea to have printed step by step instructions.  We could use some practice in Notepad++  The explanations of why we use certain functions should be more...

Wrangling with Git

Today’s session on Git, though still frustrating due to glitches in the Windows program, helped clarify the application. Here are the four things I learned: Github is an application - it’s the tool to manage source code for each project. Github.com is the website which is a hosting service for...

Site design

Everything you do in design should have a reason. Basic elements of a web page: header, body, sidebar, footer Dividing horizontal space in thirds is eye pleasing and harmonious We will need to design five types of pages: front page, item page, collection page, exhibit page, and neatline exhibit page...

Design

Alex reprised the Design session from 10/29 because so many of us were out that day. Today’s four things: the most important design elements for two-dimensional design are: color, typography, layout The difference between overlapping and non-overlapping design Responsive design instructions, for laptop: 900 px, for tablet: 250 px, for phone: 100...

Screen Design Basics

The three fundamental principles of screen design are layout, typography, and color. The still-valid wisdom of the ancients makes the rule of three or the ruler of four probably the best foundation for a good design. The lack of kerning and a limited number of pixels make sans serif fonts...

Web design

Four things learned in the session today December 17, 2013: Responsive design responds to variability in screen size. The designer can encode multiple sets of instructions based on different screen sizes. These instructions determine how the design will configure itself for each screen size. Overlapping elements are a common feature...

Web Design

From our session today, 12/17/13, on web design principles: The 3 elements of web design are: Layout; Typography; Color. Non-overlapping vs. overlapping design refers to the imaginary boxes either not touching or bleeding into each other. Responsive design  - site adjusts to screen size. CSS rules give instructions on print...

Four Things on PHP

1. For learning more about PHP, we should codecademy.com or Lynda.com. 2. PHP is a widely used open source scripting language. 3. PHP commands are typically incorporated into pages that begin and end as HTML documents. 4. The value and power of PHP is that it can execute instructions based...

PHP Intro

We had a great PHP intro from Alex. I really liked the way Alex taught the class. He had about 7 slides and with each slide, he showed us some code and then asked us what we thought it would do.  Then we pasted the code in a scripting site to...

PHP Programming, Part 2

Four things from today’s session on PHP: PHP runs on the server to generate webpages; Javascript runs on the browser to animate your webpage. Functions are the most common way to organize code; can be built-in or user-defined. Functions can be named and then executed when called. Syntax: echo means...

Programming, week 2

Four things learned: In the phrase ‘object-oriented programming,’ the word ‘object’ should be construed to mean the data plus the methods information that tell you how the data would like to be used. PHP is an example of object-oriented programming. We can teach ourselves more about using PHP on Lynda.com....

git reset --hard origin

Meredith, Bob, and I met this afternoon.  Our assignment from Alex: Put an issue on github create an item in our individual omeka installations. Then back up the database. create a branch called playground and break the site I ran into some problems early on.  My commits were out of...

Collaborative Research

This week we’ve scheduled two “Open Labs” in the Studio@Butler, the library’s collaboratory. Because of the modular furniture in the Studio we’re able to work individually or break into smaller groups to discuss shared research interests and resources. Since we are all struggling to find time to research our individual...

Collaborative Research

This week we’ve scheduled two “Open Labs” in the Studio@Butler, the library’s collaboratory. Because of the modular furniture in the Studio we’re able to work individually or break into smaller groups to discuss shared research interests and resources. Since we are all struggling to find time to research our individual...

Editorial Team Update, May 12, 2015

The Editorial Team (Nick Patterson and Anice Mills) led a discussion of Dublin Core requirements for the Morningside Heights Digital History project. We reviewed the metadata fields as defined by Omeka: https://omeka.org/codex/Working_with_Dublin_Core and also looked at a variety of Omeka exhibits to see how they have defined and used the...

Editorial Team Update, May 12, 2015

The Editorial Team (Nick Patterson and Anice Mills) led a discussion of Dublin Core requirements for the Morningside Heights Digital History project. We reviewed the metadata fields as defined by Omeka: https://omeka.org/codex/Working_with_Dublin_Core and also looked at a variety of Omeka exhibits to see how they have defined and used the...