For my first blog post I will be introducing Chicana Disaporic: A Nomadic Journey of the Activist Exiled by Linda Garcia Merchant. In her digital work, Linda chronicles an ideological journey of Chicana women, who strived to find a place of their own, after straddling the sideline of the Chicano Movement and the White Feminist Movement of the 1960s – 1970s. This online exhibition depicts the struggles and achievements of women enrolled in the Chicana Caucus of the National Women’s Political Caucus (NWPC) from 1973 to 1979, and it does so by using speeches, posters, photographs, and interview clips, to present a concise narrative and timeline using the unique interface of the website.
To begin dissecting Linda’s digital exhibition, she received funding and support through the 2017 University Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Incubator (DSI) Fellowship from her university. The materials for her project were collected from the Chicana Por Mi Raza Digital Memory Collective, a online repository containing over 100 various oral histories, as well as over 5000 digitized archival documentation, pertaining to Chicana’s and their role during the civil rights movements of the 1960’s–making their voices heard and saved foe generations to come.
Once information was gathered, and which is done so continuously, Linda processed the information using two types of digital software: an application called Scalar along with an application called Omeka. Scalar is an online platform that provides researches with a digital template that can be used to present data more organically–deviating from the more linear presentation of data. Researches are able to combine various media templates with their own writing, creating a much more immersive experience for the view, and with minimal technical experience required. Omeka is a open source publishing platform that allows researches to make their work accessible to the world wide web. The question I have now is how does a web platform like Omeka support the application processing power of Scalar?
Lastly, Linda presents here work in such a way that is divided up into six chapters or themes. Each chapter highlights a different component to the Chicana’s character throughout their six years as a part of the caucus– for example, detailing motherly duties or political clout– that shapes their ideological journey. If a viewer wants to examine the content even further they are able to use various options–grid, radial, path– to track the important narrative that each primary source contributes to. Overall, I think this is a user friendly website that does a great job at providing insight into a topic that not many people may know about.