THANKS to everybody who helped out with this!

• Tom Woodward’s mockup of before-and-after photos
• Tom Woodward’s code for the before/after photo page on GitHub
• Working spreadsheet of addresses with links to old and new photos
• The Jackson Ward Then and Now group on Flickr
• Participants: Julie Arendt, Melanie Barker, Gardner Campbell, Nell Chenault, Kathleen Delaurenti, Anna Groves, Eric Johnson, Ben Lamb, Ashley Maynor, Erin White, Sara Williams, Tom Woodward

Update 3/19: VCU Libraries Archives Coordinator Ray Bonis sent along a collection of even older photos of the Jackson Ward neighborhood in 1907 from the Internet Archive.

Original proposal:

So much of the South and southern identity is tied to a sense of place. Time passes, people come and go, but geography stays the same. I am fascinated by this idea.

VCU Libraries has a great set of 1970s photos of Richmond’s historically African-American Jackson Ward district both in our Digital Collections site and on Flickr.

I propose we stroll over to Jackson Ward, make then-and-now photos of some of these structures, and find a way to share these photos in a way that tells a story about the neighborhood and the city.

Could we design a project to use a (hypothetical) special collection of menus or cookbooks to find evidence of social change? Did restaurants change their menus after integration? How and when did various ethnic flavors and ingredients enter our experience? Is there a way to trace a culture’s understanding of ingredients and their cultural heritage? What is the relation of fusion cuisine to cultural authenticity? Could it be visualized? What other questions might we ask of such a collection and how would we display the findings on the web?

Here’s an idea that can pair with John Glover’s earlier post.  I suggest that a group of folks each contribute 3 – 5 photographs currently on their smartphones to a group photo pool (Flickr?). We then break into smaller teams/pairs to create brief (five panel?) narratives using only the images available.

[Proposed by Nell Chenault.] It is a challenge to gather together publications, research, and information about the “New South”. Can a tool be developed to assist with this research issue? A portal or widget which focuses on many of the themes?

I’m planning a new version of an existing class that will focus on helping students understand and build their own digital identities (while learning about writing, oral presentations, argument, etc.). I have some ideas, but I want MORE. I’d love to talk with anyone teaching freshmen, in particular, but anyone working with undergrads to help them understand the best way to construct their online identity would be great. I’m especially interested in concerns about privacy, professionalism, and ways to talk to students about lifelong interaction with their new constructed digital selves–and, of course, new assignment ideas. See y’all soon!

I’d like to have a session about telling stories digitally, using whatever tools, on whichever platforms. Depending on our interest, this could be show-and-tell about interesting stories you’ve seen or created, brief walkthroughs of tools you’ve used, ideas about best practices, etc. Not thinking of a full-on intro to Digital Storytelling, like Bud Deihl’s workshop Friday, though maybe those of us who attend it can use some of what we learn there as a springboard for discussion & ideas.

Alternatively, if we want to run a Make-type session, we could try to create a story told collaboratively across many platforms, to give us all a hand at trying new tools. In this kind of scenario, perhaps we could all resolve to try a new (to us) platform for storytelling, but offer to act as resources for each other — e.g. I don’t have an Instagram account, so maybe I could try to tell part of our story on there and learn something about it, while answering questions about, e.g., WordPress. Not necessarily thinking of a complete/coherent narrative here; it could be finding new ways to present different aspects of a fictional project (Newspapers to Prisoners; Enslaved Geographies; etc.).

I like fiction and telling stories, but the practical takeaways I see for participants would be:

• Exposure to new tools
• Ideas about pitfalls & virtues of different kinds of storytelling
• Examples of online engagement/storytelling that might inspire you to try new things with promoting/discussing your project
• (Perhaps) experience using a new-to-you storytelling tool

Since mapping seems to be the de rigueur route to engagement, I’m looking for more interactive ways to present historical maps, documents, etc. with a geospatial element. We already use HistoryPin (primarily for photos), but have found that to be fairly one-sided. I want the audience to actively participate, to have to work for it, not just present them with visualizations. Something which encourages our patrons to draw their own conclusions from historical maps and discuss or share would be magical.

I’m interested in learning more about the Omeka plugin Neatline (neatline.org/), VisualEyes (www.viseyes.org/), or any other open source tools that you all might know.

I’ve got an idea for a web-based resource and companion app that right now I’m calling Content Note (CN). Similar to the way Common Sense Media reports on what’s in movies (and other entertainment) from an age-appropriateness perspective, CN would provide information about how many scenes in a particular movie (and eventually other forms of media) contain racism, misogyny, domestic and/or sexual violence, homophobia, ableism, etc.

The primary goal of CN is to provide a resource that victims of violence, people from marginalized populations, etc can use to avoid being triggered. Secondary goals include allowing the general population of moviegoers to make decisions about which movies to financially support based on their content; to ask researchers, students, and others working on social justice-related topics to both help collect and share access to the aggregated data; and eventually to build sample curriculum surrounding social justice & media-related topics for teachers to use in the classroom at various levels.

In this session, I’d like to discuss this idea briefly as a group, and then break out into smaller interest groups to work on three main questions: 1) what data should we collect, 2) how that data should be collected and organized, and 3) how the data should be presented via the web. This would be a great session for anyone interested in movies, social justice, data architecture, open access, web design, or all of the above.

Thoughts, criticism, suggestions, etc all welcome in the comments. I look forward to seeing you all in a couple weeks!

I’m a tech-savvy but non-coding librarian and filmmaker and I’d like to learn more about creating mobile apps or other transmedia tools for engaging audiences after/before/during the life of a documentary project. Any others interested in this topic?

I’m currently working on a new documentary and could propose an app idea for this film that we could try to hack together in a MAKE session if there’s interest… Alternately, are any of you willing to lead a TEACH session on some mobile app creation or transmedia tools?

I’m really interested in exploring ways in which the 3D printing revolution might make its way into fields that aren’t really about material culture.  It’s somewhat obvious how archaeologists might use 3D printing, or engineers or product developers or model-makers.

But a lot of what we all do here–whether we’re historians or activists or poets or community builders–is based in words and text.  I’d love to kick around ideas with folks interested in imagining what our world will look like when everybody has easy access to 3D printers.  We’re almost there already.

I have a suspicion 3D printing will have a significant role in how we come to communicate ideas to others.  But will it affect the questions we ask in the first place? Thoughts on this are very welcome!