Project
Proposal:
Online Historic Walking Tour of Oakland
1. Project Lead
and Members
The team members are
Katherine Falk, Michael Roberts, Barbara Stone and Dan McMahon. Dan
is ostensibly the lead, having come up with the original content idea.
Katherine and Michael are leading on the technological aspects of the
implementation.
2. Project Vision
Statement
Oakland is a city with
incredible historic buildings, reflecting its long history (for California)
as an urban center and transportation hub. It is also a city which does
not have extensive web resources describing its history. Third grade
students are required to study local history topics as part of their
curriculum, and while much of their study of these topics can be done
by actual tours, or by visits to museums, additional information on
historic topics on the web (information specific enough to be useful)
would help these students to choose or support their projects. It would
also help to reinforce the utility of the Internet as a research tool
for children and adults with an interest in Oakland history.
The web resources which
exist in the city of Oakland are largely in the "information about
information" category, and there is very little actual content.
The organizations involved (the Oakland Museum, the CityŐs official
website, and the Public Library) have from very little to no content
on these topics. Our project seeks to define the interface, templates
and organizational structure of a useful and scalable information system
for historic buildings and sites, and to attract the interest of and
provide examples for these agencies which should be doing this work.
Our group will concentrate
on the downtown area for the sites included this semester, with from
10 to 20 sites included. To organize the information and ensure scalability
and ease of assembly, we plan to store the images and information in
a database, and to explore constructing the pages (or page templates)
on the fly, rather than create static pages for each site. The interface
design should include the options of map-based selection of sites, and
list-based selection, with relations between sites (physical location,
addresses and site or building names) evident from these two means of
access. Finally, the use of images and style of writing will focus on
accessibility for ages 9 and up.
3. Assessment of
Business Case
The goal of our project
is, as stated previously, to interest the agencies in Oakland in doing
this kind of detailed content provision, and to provide examples of
both the content, and the technological underpinnings of a moderately
sophisticated system. These agencies are the ones which should have
ultimate and primary responsibility for providing materials of these
kind in the long term. We have a sense that these agencies could use
a bit of a nudge on these projects, and that our group can assemble
a product that would provide this nudge.
There are many kinds
of competitive materials, primarily non-web brochures. Many Oakland
neighborhoods have their own walking tours established in brochures,
and we will be assembling and examining these materials for inspiration
and potential models. The only web-based product that is similar is
the page at Oaklandnet.com (the
cityŐs official website) that introduces their walking tours. It describes
each tour vaguely, and indicates when and where the tour starts, but
there is no actual historic content. (See http://www.oaklandnet.com/community/walking_tours/tour_front2.html)
The value of a successful
presentation of historic content through an online walking tour is two-fold;
such material has educational potential, and also has some potential
in the promotion of economic revitalization of many areas of Oakland.
Many people have been using the Internet for the latter goal for some
time, but the former goal is only beginning to be recognized as a possibility,
and our project could, while concentrating on the educational aspects,
still be written with the economic and promotional aspects in mind.
(History is never neutral.)
There are a few other
neighborhood history projects that may assemble some web content in
the short term, and contacting the groups assembling these, or providing
links to their project results would enhance this project site by increasing
its utility as a history gateway.
4. Roles and Expertise
of Team Members
Dan McMahon has a BA
in history, and has worked on web-based and non-web historic information
products for public agencies, specifically libraries. These have generally
been static, single-site products, rather than larger systems, and have
ranged from elementary school level histories of historic buildings
to adult-level explorations of larger historic topics. His focus has
been content creation and assembly, and using the graphics and text
capabilities of the web to better shape information products provided
by public agencies, including revisions of document genres that predate
the web. Dan will be initially working on content location and assembly
of the information on the specific sites chosen.
Katherine Falk has experience
in publishing, and tremendous graphics and design sensibilities. She
is skilled with intermediate and advanced web technologies, and will
be setting up the back end of the product, with a database running on
the SIMS server. She will also explore XML, to see if itŐs applicable
to this project in our time frame, and will have a major role in designing
the appearance and graphic nature of the site.
Barbara Stone has a background
in real estate development, and experience with the educational needs
of her own children. She is aware of other historic documentation projects
in Oakland, and will be helping with usability testing, competitive
analysis and content revision for the appropriate age level. Barbara
will also assist with selection of the sites chosen to be covered.
Michael Roberts has extensive
experience in managing websites, and has worked with database-driven
sites in the past. He also has set up RealAudio-based sites.
5. Identifying
Key Users and Their Needs
The primary topic of
this "popular-level" historical information product is the
third-grade students and their teachers that explore local history topics
in the Oakland schools. But the writing should be targeted and provide
enough detail to be of interest to adults as well. One primary source
for information on historic structures in Oakland is the Cultural Heritage
Survey done by the Oakland City Planning Department, but the writing
style and level of detail in this public domain set of books is moderately
dry. Some of the same information can be assembled in a more accessible
form for 9 to 20 year-old readers, with more emphasis on graphic and
illustrations to frame the detailed information.
The quality and accuracy
of the content, and the ease of use of the interface should also be
sufficient to gain the respect of public professionals such as city
librarians and planning department officials, and to illustrate to such
people how the kinds of information they have can be tailored into a
useful web presentation for the public they serve.
6. Descriptions
of Technologies Planned for Use
We aim to keep this project
small and focused; however, we also would like the website to be easily
scalable so that it can be expanded in the future. The best way to do
this is to use a database-driven architecture, rather than create static
web pages. Products under consideration include Microsoft Access, Oracle,
and MySQL. We are also looking at XML, although time and technology
probably will not permit us to use it this time.
We would like the information
in this site to be easily reusable under different circumstances. The
metaphor we have in mind for the site is that of the walking tour. Users
will be able to click on a map of downtown Oakland and can then "visit"
the place they selected. However, some people may want to visit specific
types of places (movie theaters, parks) or locations in a certain zip
code. They should also have the option of searching for entries that
meet their criteria, something a database is very good at providing.
Another consideration
is that although we are aiming this site at a particular audience (schoolchildren),
it would be nice if this site was useful to other (older) audiences
as well (parents and teachers are two groups that immediately come to
mind.) With a "flat" website, we would have to create two
different versions of each page, a simple one for at children, and a
longer page for adults. However, a database would allow us to create
different "views" of the same information, minimizing our
workload and making maintenance and expansion of the site easier.
HOME
|