Scan-A-Thons, Omeka, Categorizations, Oh My!

This whole idea of categorizing things is all super confusing to me for some reason, so I’m just going to type this up disregarding some stuff we talked about in class so I don’t confuse myself. I need a book along the lines of “Metadata for Dummies” or something. I’ll start by mentioning that what came to mind, when discussing how to categorize the Chicory articles, was to divide them by theme. So many of these poems touched on such a wide variety of topics that I don’t think we’d be doing them justice using another method. In just the few poems that I was responsible for, I came across topics from young love to growing up.

I really enjoyed Kristyn’s comparison of Chicory to Robertson’s digital mapping project on Harlem. I read the article after reading her post and I could see the similarities between Harlem and Chicory and being able to see them for more than just as one whole piece. Robertson paid so much attention to detail and dug deep into the neighborhoods in Harlem in order to get to the roots of what made the area unique. We should look at the Chicory articles the same way: as unique and individual pieces that make up this magazine. By organizing the Chicory articles by theme, it’s almost like we’re deconstructing the entire magazine and getting to the heart of the why the magazine exists in the first place. As a  researcher, I feel like searching by themes also makes it simpler to find what you’re looking for. It might be a bit of a pain to sift through a bunch of articles to find one relevant to your topic depending on what you’re trying to find.  (But, maybe that’s just me).

As far as Omeka goes, I didn’t find this as relaxing as I found the scan-a-thon and I think I know why. Interpreting the poems and trying to describe them in ways that would make them easily accessible to users was a little intimidating. I’m a firm believer in “simple is better”, however the challenge is not in making descriptions simple, but in making sure I didn’t misinterpret someone’s work and have that take away from the intentions of the writer.  I didn’t want to get too specific because perhaps the poem wouldn’t have made sense after reading its description, so that was a little challenging as well.