NWLC Home

  About NWLC

  Gallery of
  Faculty Projects

  The Mellon Project

 

Whitman College

Spanish

 

 

 

 

 

  

Celia Weller
Professor of Spanish
weller@whitman.edu

Whitman Image Project (WHIP)

Date Awarded: School year 1999-2000, Summer 2000, Summer 2001

Other Participants:
Student assistants: Megan Hellings, Heather Koertje-image digitizers and filers.
Technical support personnel: Ben Houston, staff, Technology Consultant; Gary Esarey, Director of the Language Learning Center, Whitman College.

URL: whip.whitman.edu

Project Goals and Objectives:

The project consists of two parts:

  1. Soliciting copyright-free images from colleagues and students, scanning, digitizing, and titling those images (scenery, architecture, art) from foreign countries for access on the Web. The primary focus of the project is to collect images of countries where we send students on Study Abroad, research trips, and/or whose languages we study. We currently have well over 1000 images digitized, saved on CD format and we have filed information about them in File-Maker Pro. We have digitized images (slides and photos) from many professors and students who have visited various countries in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, etc. We pick only the best images but still are finding that we have a fine selection to choose from and expect that the database maintenance will be an on-going process funded by Whitman College’s funds for student assistants. This part of the project has been completed by student assistants and under guidance of Professor Weller and Gary Esarey, Whitman’s Director of the Language Learning Center. As soon as we finish digitizing the images we already have on hand from Whitman sources, we will put out the call to the Mellon Consortium Schools for images they might wish to lend us. We offer a small “perk” to the lenders of images in the form of their own CD copy of their images and are willing to give photographer’s credit as part of the image file if the person wishes.
  2. Writing unique software which will enable us to access the archived images by key words, place, topic, etc., and easily “grab” the images to form “instant” image groups of “slide shows” off the Web for reference and use by students, professors, and the general public, including, of course, the various Mellon Consortium schools, in class, reports, oral presentations, Study Abroad information sessions, etc. The number, quality and subject of entries in the Whitman (WHIP) database will be controlled by Professor Weller, but we will make this software available to the Consortium Schools should they wish to use our database as well as formulate their own.

Process:

  1. Organization and maintenance of digitizing and scanning equipment-done by Gary Esarey, Director of the Language Learning Center.
  2. Digitizing and scanning slides and photographs; saving the images on CD.
  3. Entering information regarding the images in a File-Maker Pro database.-b. and c were done by approximately 225 hours of student and staff labor. This will be an on-going process.
  4. The writing of the software to enable access to and manipulation of the images is currently in progress. Expected testing and completion of this phase is early summer, 2001. The software is being written by Ben Houston, technology consultant. Professor Weller will work with Mr. Houston on database details and testing.

Outcomes:

Over 1000 copyright-free images digitized, saved on CD, and information on them filed in File-Maker Pro.

Although the database is currently not yet available to the public on the Web (software creation described above in #1 b., is still in progress), Professor Weller has used the images as classroom illustrations, as examples of possible illustrations for a textbook she has written, and in a Power Point presentation for a public presentation summarizing a recent trip to Cuba.

Critical Evaluations:

Although the project is not yet up and functioning on the Web we have been successful in soliciting and digitizing very good quality images from a wide variety of sources and places. We have learned that digitizing slides is relatively speedy, scanning and digitizing photos is slower. We have learned to standardize the quality of our digitized images. We have learned that the images we have been loaned are quite useful and of a quality to be used in classroom and public presentations. We have learned to plan ahead as much as possible as we file information regarding the images, so that we will have very useful reference links in place as we begin to enter the images and information using the software being written to help us manipulate the images from the Web.