Jenny Reeder

So as much as I fear admitting it, I think there’s a secret side of me that really wants to figure out web design. I like to put pieces together and see the result as a sort of mosaic of textures and patterns and colors, much as I find when I quilt with textiles. I recently completed an archives management program at NYU, and I found that amid the isolation and drudgery of archival arrangment and description, I found a secret satisfaction in being responsible for the complete organization of a collection, in deciding how the series would fit together, and then describing it and people actually using the online EAD finding aid. I dabbled a bit in XML description, but not enough to get a good feel for it.

For the past couple of years I’ve done some contract work for Lola Van Wagenen on a website she is producing: Clio–Visualizing History, http://www.cliohistory.org/. Now, because I haven’t designed the site, I’ve simply provided textual editing and I’ve retrieved some of the images, I think this would be a great opportunity to really explore the depths of the site according to what we learned in class this week.

The purpose of this site is to illustrate (quite literally) the importance of visual history, particularly women’s history. Clio (the company) has produced one major documentary film on the Miss America pageant and has several others planned on women photographers, bluegrass artists, tennis players, and comedians. As well, the site features an extensive gallery of early women photographers and scholarly writings about them.

The site is static with a lot of images. The photographs are especially appropriate on a website about visual history; it is helpful that they can be opened with source captions. The gallery includes articles written by nineteenth-century women photographers,but these only appear in transcript form. It would be great if they had scans of the original printed articles. The site also includes helpful bibliographies, filmographies, and webographies, with links. The website navigates fairly well with site tags at the top of each page which divide down further under each division. There are no flash options or video files, which is a bit unfortunate especially for the section on Clio’s films. It would be great–and easy–to add Flash video files.

This Clio site is definitely a valid website and a good start. The site will continue to develop and expand and live even more up to its potential.