Prep-week update

This has been a busy first full week on this project. I spent most of it doing prep work so that once I get started, everything will run smoothly.

I have met with archivists from Loyola, Tulane, and Historic New Orleans to see if they are interested in the collection and if the collection would be a good fit. I hope to have the archivists from Loyola and HNO come look at what we have before making a recommendation to Ashley.

Ashley and I also met with a graphic designer to talk about logos, design, and branding. She's going to take a look at the website design, so I hope that she has some good suggestions for me soon.

I also spent a lot of time setting up things so that I can start really working on stuff. I helped Ashley purchase equipment both for the shop and for this project and then set it all up so that it works on both of our computers (we both use Macs, which makes everything really easy).

As part of testing some of the new equipment, I scanned my first photo for this project. This is a very young Ashley making a snoball with her grandmother Mary and father Jerry watching. The color is somewhat off. I ordered a set of color bars from Adorama.com, but they won't come in until next week. I may rescan the photo after they come in.

I am currently in the process of setting up the backend of the website. Furthermore, I started a Flickr account and a Hansen's Sno-Bliz Flickr Group, which already has a few members. I've added a widget to this blog to display random photos from the group.

I have also started thinking about metadata and file naming conventions for the online exhibit.

The next step is to start going through the collection and select fun things to digitize.

Capstone thoughts

I will be heading to New Orleans next week to get officially started on my Capstone. During this time I hope to meet with people from the archives I've been in contact with, meet with the graphic designer to help design the look of the web pages, figure out the web hosting for snobliz.com, and pick out items for the prototype online exhibit.

For the online exhibit, I talked with Fac. Advisor the other day about a scope for the prototype and this is what we agreed on (all numbers are approximate:

• A variety of 50 images including (but not limited to)
  • A few celebrity photos
    
  • One or two transparencies of cup designs
    
  • A few photos from Post-hurricanes
    
  • Some from of the store itself
    
  • Regular customers in the shop
• One or two oversized laminated collages
  
• 10 old newspaper articles
  
• A small sample of audio and visual material (amount depends on length)
  
• A few QuickTime VR shots (one of interior of store, maybe one of flavor bottle)

I'm really excited about this project. I need to figure out how to acquire a set of color bars for scanning purposes and a tripod attachment for QTVR shots.

Contacting Archives

I've started to contact several of the archives in New Orleans. So far I have gotten responses from Historic New Orleans and Loyola. I'm still waiting to hear back from Tulane. Responses so far have been positive.

Archives

I'm looking into archives in which we can donate a large portion of the memorabilia that has been collected at Hansen's Sno-Bliz over its 70 years of business. I've narrowed it down to two places: the Special Collections at Tulane Libraryand the Historic New Orleans Collection. From what I can tell, both collections are interested in New Orleans Cuisine and I don't think you can get much more New Orleans than Hansen's. The next step is to contact the curators and see which one is more interested.

First Post

This blog was created as part of a Capstone experience for the School of Information at the University of Texas Austin. The goal of the Capstone is two fold: 1. Create a website for Hansen's Sno-Bliz and 2. Create a prototype of an online archive of Hansen's Sno-Bliz memorabilia. The second part of this project is going to be the more extensive and difficult part, but hopefully the end will be rewarding.

I am going to be using this space to hash out ideas and give updates about the project. Hopefully, it will one day also be used to provide news about goings on at Hansen's, links to news articles about the business, interesting addtions to the archive, and the like.