Summary: This project will begin the documentation of the history of a location through the use of community-based timeline. It will show that historical information can benefit from the use of accessible, well-designed and free timeline system.
A timeline can be defined as a graphic representation of a series of events over time. Historians leverage the graphical and interactive nature of timelines to more clearly show the development of historical events over time. Furthermore, technology has enabled the creation of interactive, media-rich timelines that combine text, images, audio, video, and links with enhanced graphical user interface (GUI) to enhance usability.
The emergence of community-based content management, or wiki, has enabled the involvement of a broad range of user roles—creating content, managing existing content, and commenting on the submissions of others. It can be assumed that wiki functions best in an accessible, well-designed, and free environment—one where anyone can contribute and where the software managing the system is open source; i.e., free from commercial licenses.
By leveraging the power of collective contribution with a well-designed, accessible timeline, important historical artifacts can be collected and presented in the construction of a robust, user-friendly and organic system.
About the authors
Kip McQueen
is a company director working in Manhattan who was born and currently resides in Freeport, NY. Soon after setting out to research the history of his hometown he realized the need for timeline system, unlike anything available, to help manage and create a story with the artifacts he would curate.
Ben Dunkle
is a professor at Canisius College, in Buffalo, NY. He teaches graphic design and web stuff. He is a core designer for WordPress, the most ubiquitous content management system in the world, and works on WordPress stuff every day.