I have made some progress on the website, “Traces of Western Illinois’ Underground Railroad,” at http://timroberts.org/wiugrr/. There is a smattering of digital artifacts available for users to study, which are organized into three thematic exhibits. There are numerous tasks to be accomplished, including uploading more artifact images and organizing them into appropriate exhibits, developing the map platform that allows users to see the location of various UGRR sites, and, as the instructor suggests, enhancing the site’s appeal by enhancing text content, diversifying font sizes and styles, and developing a “myth/reality” page on the site, which shares such dual information about people and places that are part of the website’s collections. I should also try to imbed a background image in the heading area of the website.
To accomplish these tasks I plan to visit my university’s archives to see if there are regional UGRR relates artifacts there, whose digital images I might, with the university’s permission, use for the collection. I also plan to become more familiar with various Omeka functions, including a user contact function, which I think should be available through the Simple Contact plugin. I plan to conduct some additional research on selected people and places to enable content development about their potential “myth vs. reality” aspects. And I wish to conduct an additional interview to gain more feedback about how the website could have good appeal.
