I know I’ve been MIA for a while but I have good excuses. I led a symposium, and hosted the national meeting of NCPE, and prepped my tenure file, and edited a paper… And, ok, I also spent too much time on feedly but really, do you blame me?
In the midst of all this, I’ve been prepping for my trip to Paris (more on that another day, I promise) and making some pretty serious updates for my fall classes.
One of the Big Changes for my fall classes I’m not quite ready to unveil yet. But the other is done, so…
Laaaaadies and gentlemen, may I present the amazing, unbelievably awesome, staggeringly useful HISP 101 image library!!!!!
*crickets*
I can see you’re unconvinced. Let me explain why you should be impressed.
HISP 101 covers American architectural history. It’s basically a giant vocabulary lesson with dates thrown in. The reality is, most people don’t know a Cape Cod from a Colonial Revival (I’m looking at YOU, HGTV), a transom from a clerestory window, a muntin from a mullion (to be fair, I’ve seen Bob Vila get that one wrong). But HISP students need to know this, hence 101.
Problem is, LOTS of students take this course, from multiple professors, making standardization challenging. Until now, students only had their prof’s slides to work from. And the Internet, but I can’t really expect students in an intro class to delve into that jungle, and I don’t. I’ve been overhauling 101 this year in a few ways, and thought a searchable image library would be nice. Not just for 101 students, mind you. What if you’re an upperclassman an have forgotten that Queen Anne houses often have fish scale shingles and turned wood? HISP 101 library to the rescue!
What if you’re five years out of UMW and want to impress your boss but have forgotten about Richardsonian Romanesque (how COULD you?!?) The HISP 101 library will save you from this faux-pas.
Here’s the nitty gritty:
The library is in zenphoto. I created a new sub-domain and installed the app for it. So far so good. Zenphoto isn’t as user friendly than WordPress, but it’s relatively similar. I played around for a bit to get comfortable.
Then, I worked with my pre-existing image library in iPhoto. (What, you thought I did this from scratch? This isn’t my first rodeo.) I took out everything that wasn’t related and then shamelessly used student aides to add descriptions to the photos. (Thanks, Carol!)
One note about this: there’s a nice iPhoto add-on called iPhoto library manager. It allows you to have multiple separate libraries. If, like me, you have many thousands of photos, this helps keep them organized and iPhoto running a little faster. I highly recommend it!
Then, all that remained was uploading the pics to zenphoto and voila! A beautiful image library searchable by time period, topic, and keyword.
But wait, there’s more! (It slices, it dices…)
The layout may look plain on your computer, but there’s a reason for that. I chose a mobile-friendly theme. Which means even in the field, good examples of a Palladian Window are just a few seconds away. No tiny type or weird layout to contend with.
You may wonder: why not use Flickr or Photobucket or something? Well…
One reason is metadata. iPhoto exported to zenphoto made it easy to keep the metadata (particularly the descriptions) with the pics. This isn’t so easy with some of the other services. I also wanted a service that I controlled and that was free (which ruled out options like smugmug). This way, the site is completely focused. No distractions, nothing unnecessary.
So what do you think? No, it’s not particularly innovative, but I’m hoping the students will find it useful. Only time will tell…
