Category: Uncategorized

Final Project Update – The Medium of Microfiche

March 16th, 2022

The Medium of Microfiche is my group’s project that transposes the dusty and overlooked microfiche from Carleton’s collection into a contemporary, interactive digital playground for people to experience an antiquated and forgotten approach to storing information (microfiche). Our project is broken down into three main components: optical character recognition (OCR) to get an extractable text from the microfiche scans, sentiment analysis to analyze the temperament of the content, an interactive simulator that allows you to interact with the microfiche digitally, Our project made us think about the implications of storing information and how it should be kept for future generations to see the medium. Finally, if you liked this project (and Microfiche in general), we highly encourage you to boot up Crazy Frog on fourth Libe to explore the vast and sunken world of microfiche for yourself.

View the project here!
Final Project DGAH

February 22nd, 2022
My group and I are doing a project to study the microfiche collection at Carleton.

Here is our plan:

We’re doing a project studying the medium of microfiche. Microfiche is an outdated method of storing information – they are pieces of film which contain tiny images of documents/pictures that people wanted to save or reference in the future. They help store lots of information in significantly less space. Carleton’s library has an archive of microfiche stored in cabinets throughout Gould.

With our project, we are trying to find out:
- How to use/read various types of microfiche like: negative fiche, positive fiche, opaque fiche, and ultrafiche (carleton has all of these).
Questions we want to answer by reading the fiche:
- What kinds of information does Carleton have stored within its fiche collection?
- What are the sentiments expressed within the fiche?
- Why is Carleton still getting the New York Times from 2020 on fiche?
- How does the medium of microfiche get used? (engagement w the fiche and fiche readers as objects)
- Who typically uses microfiche? What similarities are there between these people/institutions (age/purpose/size/etc)?
Include a link to one or more DH projects that might make a good model for what you plan. – https://www.maltaparisharchives.org/

Proposed Methodology

We are still working on finalizing our data, but we plan to find a set of fiche that contains interesting information about the history of Carleton. Initially, we wanted to use a set of fiche located in the Digital Archives that documented metadata and artifacts associated with gifts given to the college from 1960-2000. After discussing with Nat Wilson, we came to the conclusion that we wouldn’t be able to remediate the contents of these fiche onto a public platform due to the privacy of its contents. Thus, we are back to the drawing board in finding our fiche.

Once we finalize our data, we plan to use the microfiche machines in the Gould Library to scan its contents into a pdf format and run OCR so that we can perform text analysis. Our text analysis procedures have not been finalized yet, but we envision some sort of sentiment analysis. Tangential to our analysis of the microfiche contents, we plan to 3D model a microfiche reader using Photogrammetry.

We plan to present our project on an Omeka website where the interface is interactive such that users can scroll through the fiche as you would when using a microfiche reader, and then click on the fiche to view the fiche and its sentiment analysis. With our 3D model, we plan to enable users to toggle with the reader and click on different features to see what they are and how they are used. This 3D model would be hosted on our Omeka website.

Proposed Timeline

Week 8
- Clean up and choose fiche we wish to digitize and analyze
- Create Shell of html/css/js files for digitizing Microfiche
- Begin transcribing data chosen
Week 9
- Set up omeka
- Create general cards/set up for digitization of selected fiche
- Begin sentiment analysis of microfiche
Week 10
- Finish Omeka site
Team Members and Tasks
- Digitizing Microfiche
  - Darryl – visualization of the microfiche & fiche reader, backend setup of microfiche cards
  - Eric – web/presentation design
- Modeling microfiche reader
  - Henry
  - James
- Omeka
  - Eric
- Writing things abt the fiche medium
  - Luisa
ArcGIS Squirrel Map Experiment

February 8th, 2022

This is a map that I made to experiment with ArcGIS. The map has a few different layers — it has a layer that shows the squirrel population in NY’s central park, and it also has some layers pertaining to Carleton College’s history which other Carleton students created and I imported.

1/25/22: Snow Poem ❄︎

January 25th, 2022

Here’s a poem I wrote in my head as I was walking through the snow the other day … it doesn’t seem quite as good when it’s written out on a page but I hope you enjoy it!

Light is shining 
on the snow, 
And where it comes from 
I don't know.

This light is beaming 
all around, 
on branches, coat sleeves, 
and the ground.

The snow is thicker 
where I walk. 
The trees are tall, 
but they don't block 

The light that comes from everywhere, 
that's falling through the frigid air.

Category: Uncategorized

Final Project Update – The Medium of Microfiche

Final Project DGAH

ArcGIS Squirrel Map Experiment

1/25/22: Snow Poem ❄︎