Davidson College – Digital Maps, Space and Place

October 24, 2014

PA 6 Project Proposal

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Question to be answered

I propose to create a digitized version of my Senior Capstone Project. My current project is a series of maps I have created on ArcMap, a comprehensive timeline, and a narrative of chapters that answer the question how has the landscape of Davidson College changed between 1837 and 2013. My background research includes archival research, history books, aerial photography, and interviews. I am investigating the history of the landscape to the East of Baker Drive and to the North of Laundry and Commons – including the ecological preserve, “down the hill”, the cross country trail, and the newly purchased McIntosh Farm. Although I have created these maps, timeline, and narrative for my Capstone Project I have no way of presenting them as one unit. Yes, there is a paper, but no way of presenting all of my work to the general public unless the viewer is well versed in ArcMap and has access to my folder of work that includes images, maps, Davidsonian articles, and other research. While the final paper is important, it is also important to link the paper back to the initial research in case someone wants to verify or explore my sources. Additionally, my capstone currently isn’t digital. As Seth Long argues, digitizing maps can “move work closer to an objective view of material space. To fix these issues I will use my DIG360 project and create an online exhibit using Omeka and the Neatline Plugin.

How the question will be answered

The online exhibit will include a page (or neatline time frame) for each of my maps overlaid on a present day map of Davidson College. As you go through the exhibit hopefully you will be able to click on each building, road, or other feature and find the source I used to draw it along with the narrative that goes along with that time period.

Going Beyond my Capstone

In order to place this project in conversation with our class goals, I will look towards the future of Davidson College and include a short study on the ideal College Campus. I will adapt methods from the human centered design activity, and Sommer and Atkin’s Shopping mall paper and ask a number of students and faculty what their ideal campus (only in my study area) would look like. I will provide a basemap of Davidson College for them to have references and draw from. I will not ask them to pull anything from memory, but instead to focus on what they value in the Davidson College landscape, and what they would change. To combine the data I will draw out the ideal map of Davidson College in a similar format as McLean’s Smell map on ArcMap and include it in my omeka exhibit. The smell map uses a complicated key and categorization method that I will adopt for symbolizing student and faculty mental maps. Instead of including a narrative with the exhibit I will write a short discussion on the use of value mapping as a way to understand human relationships with the landscape around them.

Goals of Project

To digitize capstone project in a user friendly, in depth Omeka exhibit
To develop a map of the Student and Faculty Ideal Campus in my study area

October 23, 2014

Memory Box

For alumni and current students, the campus of Davidson College holds many memories, and, for my final project, I would like to present those memories and thoughts on a map of campus. As suggested in the “Ten rules for humanities scholars new to project management,” it is important when starting any creative process to ask, “What contribution/important intervention is this project making?” In mapping the memories of Davidson College campus, I aim to archive the student experience and how that has changed overtime–including positive and negative, social and academic experiences. Having locational memories of Davidson’s buildings could potentially inform administrative decisions about the necessity of the current slue of renovations and building projects on campus, inform the college about the mental health of its students, highlight current and historic problem areas on campus, or merely be an interesting record of the time spent at Davidson.

The culmination of this project is an interactive website (or mobile app) that will allow users to zoom and tag places on campus and anonymously insert memories. In addition to engaging current students to insert their memories, I aim to contact alumni or use the resources in the Davidson Library archives to bring in a historical perspective on what students used to do and what has happened on campus. The memories presented on the website will entirely depend on what users bring to the site: memories of going out during Frolics or memories of studying during finals. Potentially, as Nedra Reynolds found in “Maps of the Everyday: Habitual Pathways and Contested Places,” user input may reveal spatial boundaries between certain groups on campus, similar to the Leeds students who were afraid to walk through certain parks or neighborhoods or the anonymous interface may serve as a sounding board for current issues (similar to YikYak). Ultimately, my role in the project will be to create a design that is easily accessible and fun to use.

The first and most important step in the methodology for creating the website will be to decide which tool could create a simple and clean design for users. Second, I will ask people to post memories to the map and to share the website in order to gather data and create as holistic of a picture of Davidson as possible. Thus, as I move forward, I will need to keep the user of the website in mind, since user input is the crux of my project. Although I will be working alone on this project, I think that some of the goals outlined by Stan Ruecker and Milena Radzikowska in “The Iterative Design of a Project Charter for Interdisciplinary Research” are applicable to my own project. Specifically, their goal to “move forward at a steady pace” is an admirable goal for any project; however, I believe it is important to keep in mind, as they do, that creative projects can often pass through many phases before the final version and creativity should not be hindered by deadlines. As I mentioned above, the user will be the critical component of this project and I will need to test and revise the interface of the website in order for design a website that not only works but also inspires people to use it.

As I develop the website, I may find that there are limitations to what I can achieve. For example, in many in-class discussions, the topic of exclusion has been a primary focus–who has access to the map, whose view does it represent, are maps accurately representing the truth? In making a repository of memories of the Davidson College campus, I may also have this bias and may have to limit which memories can be included. For example, while Chambers should obviously be included on the map, I may not be able to include places that are important for certain groups, such as the backstage of the theatre or the varsity athlete’s weight room. I also may not be able to include places that are not marked by physical structures. This limitation is summarized by Henri LeFebvre, who raises the question about the relative importance of the built versus the natural environment in a landscape–i.e. are the freshman dorms more important than the tree behind Commons?

In conclusion, through Omeka or a mobile app, I aim to design a map that serves as a memory box for Davidson College that will not only serve as diary of the student body, but may also reveal something new about the current situation or history of campus.

October 15, 2014

PA 5: Evolution of Campus Workout Facilities

Heganoo Exhibit

I have taken an in-depth peek into the construction and destruction of gyms on campus throughout Davidson College’s history to form an argument stating that the increase in importance of physical fitness as well as the increase in the college’s financial capabilities resulted in more fitness centers existing on campus. Heganoo, which we decided was great for events and the life of a subject, proved to be effective at depicting my narrative. Seth Long, in Digital Maps and Social Data addresses that maps (such as poverty maps) are “a mashup of spatial and non-spatial data”. His point resonates in my Heganoo exhibit because my narrative would be much weaker if it lacked images and description as well as the interactive aspect. As the map maker, I can ensure that the reader has an understanding of my argument since I can accompany the map with non-traditional map features such as text and pictures.

Furthermore, in Mobile Stories, Farman states in “Site-Specificity, Pervasive Computing, and the Reading Interface” that ““Stories tend to offer the illusion that they present the events in their entirety (and if they leave out anything, the omitted portions are simply not relevant)” (Farman, 9). With Heganoo, I was able to shape an argument with all relevant information because of the tools that I had in hand. As a viewer of maps, it is helpful to see change in location accompanied by dates, explanations, and images that can further educate the user.

The college’s history involves the ‘birth and death’ of buildings; some ‘die’ faster than others, and the ‘birth rate’ for certain types of buildings is higher than other types. For example, as expected, academic buildings typically outlast and are more frequent than athletic buildings. Until, 2001, only two workout facilities (not places where teams compete, but places where students can workout) ever existed on campus at the same time. Previously, the need for more dorms or academic buildings took priority over athletic facilities (rather appropriately), which is evident by the demolishing of the first two gyms on campus. The reason for one type of building taking priority over another can be explained by Lefebvre when he mentions in the Production of Space that “(Social) space is a (social) product” (Lefebvre, 27). For Davidson College, at one point in time, there wasn’t enough need for workout facilities to be a top priority for campus updates, but as the social structure of Davidson changed so did the structure of space. The increase of fitness centers is a result of necessity, capability, and social change on campus; as time goes on Davidson College is more capable and aware of providing students with fitness centers (and this could apply to other types of buildings as well).

September 26, 2014

A College that Grows: 1939 and Now

Link to the geocoded map of Davidson from 1939/1940

I took an image of a map of Davidson College from 1939-1940 and used MapTiler to mark points on this map that corresponded with a current cartographic view of Davidson College similar to what someone would see in Google Maps. While geocoding, I only found it to be a challenge when a building on one side didn’t correspond to a building on the old map of Davidson College. I wasn’t sure if this would skew my results, but it turned out the way that I hoped it would. Overall, the program is very straightforward for the purposes that I was using it.

My geocoded result shows the accuracy of the traditional map as well as change over time (click on the link above and use the slider in the top right to see the differences between the two layers). The map tells the story of a growing college. Like people, the college has changed in certain ways and has remained the same in other ways as time has gone on. An example of accuracy is shown by Main Street (once called U.S Highway No. 21), which lines up almost perfectly with the Main Street in the bottom layer; Concord Road does as well. Differences include additions of dorms, academics buildings, and relocation of certain buildings such as the fraternities (currently in Patterson Court but once in Jackson Court-bottom right of old map). The most noticeable consistency is Chambers (large building in the center) as well as the paths on campus, which we can only see through the top layer since the trees in the bottom layer block our view.

The story that the map is telling isn’t limited to just showing position change of buildings, but we can speculate as to why certain buildings moved. For example, the library used to be far from Chambers (top left building on top layer map), but now it is located right behind Chambers. This position change shows clustering of academic buildings, which the college currently does. The increase of population accounts for additional dormitories, expanding the campus, and possibly moving the fraternities to Patterson Court so that the faculty could have Jackson Court. These two observations lead me to a realization from this ‘story in the form of a map’: necessity brings change, and change is made possible by money (we might even be able to say that potential needs arise when the money is there).

With this information, I could use a map like this in the future to estimate trends of how the campus might evolve. Obviously, Chambers will most likely remain where it is; it is the Sun while other buildings are planets that can enter an orbit from Chamber’s ‘gravitational pull’. Furthermore, people determine what is necessary to change, which means that the layout of Davidson College is very much a social construct. People are predictable, so the evolution of Davidson College should be as well.