Crunch Time

Hey everybody!

 

So today the chapbooks group did our class presentation on what we have accomplished so far. The last 48 hours have been very hectic as can be imagined as we all tried to meet with each other as much as possible and make sure that we were all on the same sort of page. At this point we have all completed our scanning and we all have ideas on how we want the exhibit to be displayed. The work that must occur now is making all of those ideas a physical reality. For myself I feel that I have finally been able to get a solid grab on Omeka and what it can offer. While I am not able to do everything that I originally had intended to do, I have been able to manipulate Omeka in some way or another to my liking. I believe this is an issue that is plaguing the group as a whole as many of our original thoughts and ideas of what this exhibit should look like are slowly fading away as we realize the limits of Omeka. Regardless, we will manage and work through this.

 

What’s left for me is a great deal of post processing my jpeg images of the chapbooks.  I know what my website pages will look like, and I have a pretty solid idea of what text will be put in place. What I do not have is aesthetically pleasing images. The process I have created is as follows:

–          Using MS Paint I crop out the section of text that I plan on highlighting in my overall theme

–          I than open MS Photoshop CS6 to rotate the image so that the text becomes straight. Unfortunately many of my images did not scan out completely straight.

–          Once I have done that, I input the image back into MS Paint to draw in my border

–          Next is to upload the image to Omeka and input the metadata

My plan right now is to leave the inputting of the metadata for these images to the very end as it will be a simple task of copy and paste. While time consuming and tedious, it is in no way very difficult. Furthermore I would like to have the physical website ready for Saturday when our group presents at the Scottish Colloquium at the University of Toronto. To make sure that happens I feel that the metadata can be put on hold.

 

We are in crunch time, and the next 3 days leading up to our presentation in Toronto is going to be a whirlwind of group meetings, frustration, and post processing. As I mentioned before, this is my very last assignment which luckily allows me to dedicate as much of my free time as possible to its completion which is something that I am very grateful of because I know some of my other group members are not as fortunate.

 

Until next time.