James Farmer Project

Revised contract as of 3/20/2020

James Farmer Project
James Farmer Project Group Contract
Kimberly Eastridge, John Forest, Eilise Mahoney, Katia Savelyeva, Megan Williams

Mission Statement

Our mission is to highlight James Farmer’s educational legacy at University of Mary Washington  through the gathering of various classroom related materials related to his years at UMW. We will be conducting oral histories from his former UMW students, documenting some of his classroom materials (syllabi, bibliography, classroom rules, exams), and transcribing and captioning more video material featuring Farmer to add to our Database Collection. We will also compile materials that have been produced by other UMW students such as James Farmer’s lectures, oral histories, and the James Farmer Project. Each of these older materials will be its own Item in an Omeka collection, making the website a searchable set of old and new Farmer materials. We are creating this project to educate former, current, and future UMW students about the importance of Farmer to our campus and school legacy. In particular, we want to create a more effective context for students who wish to learn more about Farmer’s impact at UMW, and have it act as a resource for alumni who were contemporary to his time on campus. In doing so, we will work from the Omeka database and use its collections feature to build public-facing, narrative-based exhibits that serve to draw an audience into the archive itself. We will also use outside tools to help build these narratives and engage audience interest in what we think are our most notable materials. We will create a video highlighting sections of our oral histories and a display of notable Farmer materials to draw attention to specific areas of our archive. Our use of Omeka will ensure longevity for the materials we upload because Omeka’s site structure is built around curating and archiving materials and updates itself. We will seek outside promotion by contacting other UMW classes currently doing James Farmer projects, the Multicultural Center, and the Farmer Legacy project.

Tools/Resources

  • Omeka
    • Potential URL slug: farmer.umwhistory.org
    • Timeline (Timeline JS)
    • Upload materials and input metadata
  • Vimeo or Youtube for Oral Histories
    • For uploading videos and embedding into site
    • Leaning towards Youtube for the ability to auto-generate and then edit captions
  • Youtube Captioning Tools
  • Artifacts that we will be using in the Special Collections Digital Collection:
  • Zoom
    • Online Interviews (Kim is going to test interview to see how it works on Zoom)

Basic Division of Labor

  • Building the Website [leads: John, Kim; helpers: Megan, Katia, Eilise]
    • We would like to use Omeka to create our main website as the special collections format will be most useful in our project.
      • Our website will have two components: a Collection of previous James Farmer websites and an exhibition based on Farmer’s impacts on UMW campus. The Collection of previous James Farmer websites will be dedicated to archiving and linking those sites to give the reader more relevant information, with each site acting as a separate Item. This will be called the Database Collection.
      • The exhibition will include artifacts from Special Collections’ Digital Collection such as photos, documents, and videos. It will follow the narrative theme of his educational legacy. This will not include Items from our Database Collection.
      • Main Collections for our uploaded items:
        • Lectures
        • Oral histories
  • James Farmer in the Classroom (physical materials from the James L. Farmer Papers syllabi, bibliography, classroom rules, exams )
  • Past materials (Farmer sites/projects created by other people)
  • Database Collection
    • This Collection would be dedicated to archiving and linking other resources for people who want to learn more about Farmer outside of what we have contributed.
    • Separate Items for each website with links, descriptions of each site, and credits given to creators.
    • In addition, highlight certain key points of the other projects, esp. if they’re not immediately evident
  • Exhibit / narratives
    • Build and write labels for exhibits in Omeka
    • Create a timeline of notable Farmer materials (lectures, syllabi) that we are including in our online Collection
    • Using Dr. Farmer’s list of books for his class create some sort of library based on those materials
    • Create a ‘highlights’ video of emotionally impactful moments from oral histories, potentially to display on home page
      (Depend on what we can get out of the Oral History Interviews)
  • Accessibility research and implication for entire site [Eilise]
  • Captioning video material (3 lectures)
    • Metadata [Katia]
    • Transcription and Captioning [Katia]
    • Providing context / background information on each lecture (these are not part of the Reflections series, just a separate set of hour-long lectures)
  • James Farmer in the Classroom [Megan acts as Special Collections contact, everyone participates as they are available & as is needed]
    • Use the pictures on the Digital Collection
    • Look through other materials using Eagle Explorer on Special Collections (newspapers, yearbooks, etc.)
    • Use the lecture videos in the Digital Collection to make a timeline
    • Use the syllabus and classroom rules sheet generated by Dr. Blakemore when he was chair of the department
    • Use the Oral Histories conducted in 2008 with faculty of the history department and use Dr. Blakemore’s picture of the faculty at their retreat in the early 1990s
  • Oral Histories (Former Students of James Farmer and those impacted by James Farmer)
    [Editors: Eilise, John, Katia Interviewer: Kim]

    • Finding participants ~ Max. 5
      • Google Poll [John]:
        • Potential Participants:
        • Williams (JFMC), Dr. McClurken, Collette Johnson, Pam Smith, Leonard Ornstein, Mary Hellen
      • Interviewing, Recording (through Zoom) [Kim]
        • Creating Interview Questions
        • Testing Zoom recording features and sharing with Editors (for practice)
        • Scheduling and fulfilling interviews
      • Editing, Transcription, Captioning [Eilise, John, Katia]

 

Schedule of Milestones:

Feb. 7th: Katia meets with Special Collections about captioning videos

Feb 12th: John completes Google Poll to be sent out

Feb. 13th: Megan and Kim email Google poll out to potential interviews

Feb. 14th:  draft of interview questions

Feb. 18th: Revised and finalized interview questions

Feb. 18th: Contacted all locations that hold awards and set up dates to catalog

Feb. 18th: Talk over structure for website, figure out “storyboard”

Feb. 21st: All interviews are scheduled

Feb. 28th, or earlier if possible: A set of group members has met with Angie to discuss Omeka

March 8th: Katia has complete subtitle files and transcripts for three lecture videos

March 12th: A Collection of other JF sites outlined with summaries

March 13th: Good draft of site is completed

March 18th: Katia has full drafts of captions for each lecture

March 18th: Kim will create and share a test Zoom interview

March 19th: have a revised version of our group contract finalized

March 19th: Megan will have all the scanned materials from Special Collections and University Archives

March 23rd: Katia will have revised and correctly formatted all lecture video captions

March 24th: Megan will have all the pictures and lectures from the Digital Collection organized and ready to be uploaded to Omeka

March 26th Megan will have searched through Eagle Explorer for more materials to be incorporated into the site collection and exhibit

March 30th : Captioned lecture videos uploaded as Items into their designated Collection

April 9th: Megan will have all of her items uploaded onto Omeka

April 10th: Eilise, John, and Katia have finalized edits of all interviews (subject to change)

April 14th: Eilise, John, and Katia have finalized transcriptions and captions for all interviews

April 14th: All of James Farmer  in the classroom material will be on the website, in finalized location

April 15th: Interviews have been uploaded into collections with relevant metadata added

April 17th: Front-facing exhibit page is complete

April 18th: Eilise will have all the accessibility components complete

April 21st: Project is complete

 

Advertising Plan:

  • Contact professors doing projects about James Farmer
    • Include a QR code in
      • Professor Delvin’s Intro to Public History (HIST 300zz)=> Megan will include it on her take away
    • Reach out to JFMC (social media)
    • Reach out to James Farmer Legacy [Eilise]
    • Advertised by UMW
      • Main Website
    • ELC and Historic Preservation departments’ social media
    • UMW Libraries social media

Priority Items:

  1. Contact alumni about Zoom interviews
  2. Get all the materials for James Farmer in the classroom together
  3. Finalize captions
  4. Building Site Skeleton
  5. Organize the classroom materials to upload on the website
  6. Begin interviews (Captioning, transcribing, uploading)
  7. Begin editing interviews

 

 

——————————————————————–

Original Contract

James Farmer Project Group Contract 

Kimberly Eastridge, John Forest, Eilise Mahoney, Katia Savelyeva, Megan Williams

 

Mission Statement 

Our mission is to highlight James Farmer’s educational legacy at University of Mary Washington  through the gathering of various materials related to his years at UMW. We will be conducting oral histories from his former UMW students, documenting some of his awards from around campus, and transcribing and captioning more video material featuring Farmer to add to our Database Collection. We will also compile materials that have been produced by other UMW students such as James Farmer’s lectures, oral histories, and the James Farmer Project. Each of these older materials will be its own Item in an Omeka collection, making the website a searchable set of old and new Farmer materials. We are creating this project to educate former, current, and future UMW students about the importance of Farmer to our campus and school legacy. In particular, we want to create a more effective context for students who wish to learn more about Farmer’s impact at UMW, and have it act as a resource for alumni who were contemporary to his time on campus. In doing so, we will work from the Omeka database and use its collections feature to build public-facing, narrative-based exhibits that serve to draw an audience into the archive itself. We will also use outside tools to help build these narratives and engage audience interest in what we think are our most notable materials. We will create a video highlighting sections of our oral histories and a timeline of notable Farmer materials to draw attention to specific areas of our archive. Our use of Omeka will ensure longevity for the materials we upload because Omeka’s site structure is built around curating and archiving materials and updates itself. We will seek outside promotion by contacting other UMW classes currently doing James Farmer projects, the Multicultural Center, and the Farmer Legacy project. 

 

Tools/Resources

  • Omeka 
    • Potential URL slug: farmer.umwhistory.org 
    • Timeline (Neatline or Timeline JS)
    • Upload materials and input metadata 
  • Vimeo or Youtube for Oral Histories 
    • For uploading videos and embedding into site
    • Leaning towards Youtube for the ability to auto-generate and then edit captions
  • HCC production lab
    • Camera and sound systems
    • Backdrop 
  • Digital Archiving Lab 
    • Scanners
    • Photograph Staging materials 
      • Backdrop/lighting equipment
    • Youtube Captioning Tools 
    • Premier Pro (editing) 
  • Artifacts that we will be using in Special Collections:
  • Zoom 
    • Online Interviews

 

Basic Division of Labor

  • Building the Website [leads: John, Kim; helpers: Megan, Katia, Eilise]
    • We would like to use Omeka to create our main website as the special collections format will be most useful in our project.
      • Our website will have two components: a Collection of previous James Farmer websites and an exhibition based on Farmer’s impacts on UMW campus. The Collection of previous James Farmer websites will be dedicated to archiving and linking those sites to give the reader more relevant information, with each site acting as a separate Item. This will be called the Database Collection.
      • The exhibition will include artifacts from Special Collections like his lecture videos that we captioned and the awards that we have digitized. It will follow the narrative theme of his educational legacy.  This will not include Items from our Database Collection.
      • Main Collections for our uploaded items:  
        • Lectures
        • Oral histories
        • Awards
          • Will use the UMW Special Collections metadata system for cataloguing awards 
        • Student materials (physical materials from students and classes, e.g. graded papers, syllabi, etc) 
        • Past materials (Farmer sites/projects created by other people) 
      • Database Collection
        • This Collection would be dedicated to archiving and linking other resources for people who want to learn more about Farmer outside of what we have contributed.
        • Separate Items for each website with links, descriptions of each site, and credits given to creators.
        • In addition, highlight certain key points of the other projects, esp. if they’re not immediately evident 
      • Exhibit / narratives 
        • Build and write labels for exhibits in Omeka 
        • Create a timeline of Farmer awards that we are including in our online Collection
        • Create a ‘highlights’ video of emotionally impactful moments from oral histories, potentially to display on home page 
    • Accessibility research and implication for entire site [Eilise]
  • Captioning video material (3 lectures)
    • Metadata [Katia]
    • Transcription and Captioning [Katia]
    • Providing context / background information on each lecture (these are not part of the Reflections series, just a separate set of hour-long lectures) 
  • Awards Collection [Megan acts as Special Collections contact, everyone participates as they are available & as is needed]
    • Finding some of Farmer’s awards around campus 
      • Special Collections, James Farmer Multicultural Center, Rappahannock Scholars / James Farmer Scholars Office 
      • Photographing and Scanning (Digital Archiving Lab)
    • Work off of existing metadata structure provided by Special Collections for Farmer-relevant objects 
    • Metadata [Megan, Eilise]
    • Potential timeline of awards (TimelineJS) [Katia]
  • Oral Histories (Former Students of James Farmer and those impacted by James Farmer)
    [Editors: Eilise, John, Katia  Interviewers: Kim, Megan]

    • Finding participants ~ Max. 5
      • Google Poll [John]:
        • Potential Participants: 
        • Mr. Williams (JFMC), Dr. McClurken, Collette Johnson, Pam Smith, Leonard Ornstein, Mary Hellen 
    • Interviewing, Recording [Kim, Megan]
      • Creating Interview Questions 
    • Editing, Transcription, Captioning [Eilise, John, Katia]

 

Schedule of Milestones:

Feb. 7th: Katia meets with Special Collections about captioning videos

Feb 12th: John completes Google Poll to be sent out

Feb. 13th: Megan and Kim email Google poll out to potential interviews

Feb. 14th:  draft of interview questions

Feb. 18th: Revised and finalized interview questions

Feb. 18th: Contacted all locations that hold awards and set up dates to catalog

Feb. 18th: Talk over structure for website, figure out “storyboard” 

Feb. 21st: All interviews are scheduled

Feb. 28th, or earlier if possible: A set of group members has met with Angie to discuss Omeka 

March 8th: Katia has complete subtitle files and transcripts for three lecture videos

March 12th: A Collection of other JF sites outlined with summaries 

March 13th: Good draft of site is completed

March 18th: Katia has finalized captioning lecture videos in Premiere Pro

March 20th: Captioned lecture videos uploaded as Items into their designated Collection

March 30th: Eilise, John, and Katia have finalized edits of all interviews 

April 3rd: All awards have been cataloged

April 10th: Eilise, John, and Katia have finalized transcriptions and captions for all interviews

April 10th: All awards’ data has been uploaded into collections 

April 15th: Interviews have been uploaded into collections with relevant metadata added 

April 21st: Project is complete 

 

Advertising Plan:

  • Contact professors doing projects about James Farmer
    • Include a QR code in 
      • Professor Delvin’s Intro to Public History (HIST 300zz)
      • Dr. Turdean’s Museum Education (HISP 313) 
      • Dr. Ock’s Intro to Art Museum Studies (ART 315)
  • Reach out to JFMC 
  • Reach out to James Farmer Legacy [Eilise]
  • Advertised by UMW
    • Main Website
    • School TVs 
  • Post Flyers
    • Monroe, Combs, Library, UC, and HCC
      • Simplistic clean cut design 
      • “Need help with research” 

Priority Items:

  1. Google Poll for Alumni
  2. Find Location of Awards
  3. Learn Captioning/Transcribing Tools 
  4. Building Site Skeleton
  5. Contacting Award Locations and Figuring out Archival Processes
  6. Deciding on Video, Audio, or Transcribed interviews
    1. Location for video (Zoom)
  7. Begin captioning 
  8. Begin archiving awards
  9. Begin interviews (Captioning, transcribing, uploading)