This week we are endeavoring to finalize our data and begin the process of creating our digital visualizations. While my partner and I have been focused on the religious connections of the Hungerford School through time, I have found my specific data is veering a bit more toward the board of trustees more generally. Admittedly, I do still see a pattern emerging in regard to the religious affiliations of the trustees, so I will continue to investigate, but it appears that religion may not offer as much of an impact on my initial visualizations as I originally thought.
So far, I have been able to create a year-by-year break down of the board of trustees using three court case files (1934, 1937, and 1952). This breakdown will allow me to create a timeline that can show the membership of the board at a given time. I have also created a spreadsheet to look at the individual board members and establish several variables that I can highlight using other visualizations. Examples of these variables would be race, residence, occupation, religious affiliation, and in the case of some, images. I have only gotten through about one third of the board members thus far, so I will continue plugging away at that spreadsheet this week. Given the massive nature of this list, my final product may unfortunately veer towards proof of concept rather than a fully finished product. Only time will tell though!
My methods of research to uncover this data rest primarily on my genealogical research skills. I have had tremendous luck so far using census records and online newspapers to find the information that I'm seeking. Though, this method does present a few challenges, such as falling into rabbit holes when I see something interesting (like the 1944 Cluett Hall fire that may or may not have caused the death of students?!). However, I've realized that there will be time enough to revisit those stories since the breaking of the excellent news on Friday that the OCPS sale of the property has been halted!
I have a fairly broad idea of how I would like to visualize my findings, however, I have yet to actually apply them to any particular digital tool. I did see something fairly similar on Tableau, though I fear the skill required may be beyond my abilities. I would still very much like to figure out a way to use Scalar since I feel like it would be a great way to pull together several different projects into a virtual "book" of sorts.
For now, I've begun creating a TimelineJS that can be embedded in a larger Scalar project. I have a LOT of kinks to work out, but it is tentatively (and extremely creatively) titled "Hungerford Board of Trustees Timeline." I'll hold here for applause. *crickets*
The general idea with this timeline is to take the data that I've been able to gather from the court case files and represent the trustees through the years. Likely, this will be in addition to graphs on other Scalar book pages that can better visualize the different variables, like race and residence, but this timeline will at least give me a way to answer that burning question of "who were the board of trustees?" in a linear way that's accessible to the Eatonville community.
There is a lot of work left to make this particular timeline visually pleasing, since it takes a lot of html code...thank goodness I managed to retain that knowledge from 20+ years ago!
Please forgive this rather poor excuse for a progress report, which is totally lacking in an official abstract. I wrote the majority of this post before testing positive for COVID the other day and I'm not quite functional enough to pull that together right now.
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