Group: Tunnel Exploration Team (MJ wanted this name)
To begin with our project, we went through the Digital Collection of the Carleton Archives. From this source, we were able to compile a collection of photographs of the tunnels and the graffiti that covered its walls. To refine the collection, we drafted captions for the images based on corresponding articles on the tunnels, also found in the digital archives.
With this base information compiled, we wanted to move on in our project and schedule a visit to the tunnels. Here, we realized that this was easier said than done because Facilities does not want people in the tunnels because of security and safety concerns. This posed a major problem to our plan as we intended to build a 360º virtual tour of the tunnels, and we had gotten the equipment to do so; however, not being able to access the tunnels had us thinking of alternatives.
Without a clear alternative yet, we went to the Physical Archives in Gould Library in search for more information on the tunnels. Here, we were given the tunnels file, and we were able to go through multiple articles and documents regarding the tunnels. Texts ranged from opinion articles on the graffiti in the tunnels, to official documents stating the risks of keeping the tunnels open to everyone in Carleton. Most of the best resources we found were historical articles by the Carletonian (all of which are digitized here). We also reached out to David Lefkowitz and scheduled a time to interview him about his involvement in tunnel artwork.
With this new perspective of the tunnels, we thought that we could do a timeline of the tunnels. We are now working on compiling all the information that we want to put in such a timeline; we are digging deeper to find important chronological events, and reworking the image captions to fit our new project. We are considering the timeline building tools Chronos Timeline, Tiki Toki, or TimeToast to display our data.
Tunnel Exploration Team, it’s too bad you were stymied on tunnel access, but it seems like you’ve got a lot of archival material to work with! Given that, I wonder if Omeka might actually be a better solution for your platform. It would let you catalog all the archival pieces you’ve found, build interpretive exhibits on top of them, and also pull the items into one or more timelines using the Neatline Time plugin which can be configured to use the attractive TimelineJS framework.
I also still wonder if you could use SketchUp to make a very basic version of a stretch of tunnel and insert some images in context along it for a version of a virtual tour… here’s a process for making a virtual museum like this that shouldn’t be too difficult.