Our project involves determining trends in the Carletonian archives throughout time. For this aspect of the project, we created a timeline relating historical and Carleton-related events to Carletonian articles published throughout the year. The timelines in embedded below:
Data
This timeline was created using the digital archives of the Carletonian available through Gould Library and Carleton College historical timelines available on the Carleton website. The process of selecting historical events was manual so it did not require any additional data cleaning.
Tool
For the timeline, we utilized TimelineJS, a tool that allows you to create interactive timelines by linking to a spreadsheet containing dates, headlines, descriptions, and media. You can also organize timeline events based on eras or specific groups. The timeline updates automatically as the spreadsheet is updated, making this tool very easy to experiment with and test.
Data Visualization
This data visualization takes the audience through Carleton’s history based on how the Carletonian reports on it. There are historical events that are not included as they did not appear in the Carletonian, showing what events were deemed relevant enough by Carleton students at the time. For example, there is little publication about the beginning of development of the Arboretum although it is a very important aspect of Carleton today. The timeline is not intended to explain a certain trend, but more to allow for exploration of what is and isn’t included.
Style
TimelineJS has a few options to increase the timeline’s clarity that we utilized, including increasing the initial zoom level to reduce the clutter of overlapping events and switching the navigation to the top of the screen so that the front cover image would draw the audiences’ eyes first. We also included eras representing the different titles the Carletonian has been published under to show how quickly the alternative titles come and go without having to click on a certain historical event.
2 thoughts on “Final Project Data Visualization: Timeline of the Carletonian”
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I really like how informative and accessible this timeline is! The interplay between the images themselves and then their descriptions contextualizes the editions well. I would love to know more about which Carletonia editions you chose to highlight. Also, how did you choose to caption each timeline datapoint?
I was so engaged in your timeline, that I had to stop commenting to go through the whole thing! I am impressed by just how much thought went into both the timeline’s captions and the cultivated works. The quality is there, and I am left wondering what other articles were found that didn’t exactly make the cut. Incredible work.