Event Title

SSA03 - It's All in the Bag: Developing the BookBag Tool to Organize and Analyze Data and Create Narratives Onsite

Presenter Information

Connie Lester, University of Central Florida

Location

CB1-309

Streaming Media

Start Date

4-11-2017 1:45 PM

Description

Archival databates are static repositories for housing data. While useful to researchers, they require users to download images, documents and oral histories in order to analyze the data and develop a narrative. The Regional Initiative for Collecting Histories, Experiences, and Stories (RICHES) has developed digital tools to enable users to organize and analyze the data and begin the process of creating an interpretative framework onsite. The BookBag tool is useful for classroom use, for academic research, and to general reading audiences. RICHES is an interdisciplinary, collaborative, academic-public, digital project that was founded in 2010. RICHES is funded through the University of Central Florida College of Arts and Humanities and the Office of Academic Affairs, internal grants, community grants (Florida High Tech Corridor Council and Winter Park Health Foundation) and grants through the National Endowment for the Humanities. RICHES has two goals: 1) to serve as a model for documenting regional history, especially "hidden" history and culture, through an interactive database that draws from multiple repositories and personal collections, and 2) to develop new digital tools for historians. Omeka, is an open source data management software used in over 300 sites (including the Florida State Archives). RICHES MI is a graphical, map-driven interface that overlays the Omeka database and serves as a sensemaking system for historians by accessing co-located collections. a "sensemaking loop". Researchers using RICHES MI follow the "sensemaking loop," described by Pirolli and Card (2005), that models the process researchers use to develop theories and deep understanding of historical periods or events: searching and filtering, saving information found in their search, analyzing their findings and finally exhibiting their narratives. The RICHES team has developed two sensemaking tools: Connections and BookBag. The BookBag tool has been available to users since the RMI site opened in 2012. Initially, registered users could save search items in the BookBag and create a photographic slide show. Additional refinements followed, and in the current iteration, the affordances of the BookBag include: allowing users to annotate individual saved items and organize their historical data into folders according to their research needs; visualizing saved items on a timeline and a map; browsing the Omeka archive from the BookBag view; suggesting new items for their BookBag based on the RICHES Connections algorithm; visualizing comparisons of topics and tags for saved items; and providing StoryBoard space to let users aggregate their thoughts into a narrative or interpretative analysis. Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card, "The Sensemaking Process and Leverage Points for Analyst Technology as Identified Through Cognitive Task Analysis," http://www.phibetaiota.net/wpcontent/uploads/2014/12/Sensemaking-Process-Pirolli-and-Card.pdf