Innovative Timelines

One of our projects at OEIT is for the Edgerton Center–helping them catalog Doc Edgerton’s notebooks to create an online exhibit and history of his work. All of these notebooks, as scientific notebooks documenting research, are date-stamped. These notebooks can also be paired with the photos and videos that documented that research.

In parallel I’ve been conversing with Tom and Marion (who I worked with at COSL) about a project of their’s, TwHistory. They “go through journals, diaries, letters, and other original sources to deliver the day-to-day lives of people who lived through some of histories most exciting times.” They’re current focus is on Gettysburg.

By serendipity I’ve found a couple projects/tools that might help both visualize their data.

• Timeline: “With this widget, you can make beautiful interactive timelines.” Timeline was developed by the Simile Project at MIT with funding from the Mellon Foundation.
• Timeglider: Timeglider describes itself as “web-based timeline software for creating and sharing history and project planning”. A recent news report on the Rosenberg Archives that used this software is what got my attention.