The premise of the project is good, and the publications that I’d like to display and have site visitors compare are available. The challenges that I haven’t met concern (a) the selection of issues from said publications, and (b) the structure of this feature of my site.
The publications that I have in my photo archive are the Soviet bloc-backed World Youth and the CIA-backed Student News and Information. The photographs are not of great quality, something we’ve discussed. And I have tried to improve the quality of some, with so-so results. Were they old yellowed documents, the poor quality would be forgivable. Because they’re full-color 20th-century magazines, it’s problematic. The chief problem is not appearance, though, but content. It would be good to start viewers off with two issues that address similar topics. I could then show issues with wildly different themes to suit a higher level of difficulty. In which case I’d have to use two new publications, the titles of which are not yet familiar to the user.
The structure of the site concerns what visitors see when. My plan as yet is as follows (I’m afraid I pasted from Word).
Home page for “Cold Fronts.”
Menu
1. Organizations (each site accompanied by images of its publications).
2. Maps
3. Analysis
4. Which is whose?
A. Opening page introduces the comparison.
1. On this page is a list of demographics (students) or perhaps events (Vietnam War), each of which links to a page with a sheet from two front publications—one communist and one capitalist.
a. Vietnam War (example)
i. At the bottom of this page is a simple toggle to select “which one is whose.”
Here I need some kind of extension on Omeka that will show users “congratulations!” or “wrong!” in response to their entry.
What do you think of that structure, Professor?
