Environmental Scan for my Project

My own project is to construct a story of Florida’s paleo-Native American sites across different digital tools using the same information and data to test each tool with how it handles and presents information differently. The different digital tools will include those with a mapping component, time line component, pictorial components, interactive components, as well as static components to critically evaluate a variety of different tools on their story telling capabilities. An important component of this project is to analyze how each tool presents the same story in a different way based on its function, features, limitations, and ease of use. My scan of the environment on this particular topic has, so far, produced no other copies of research similar to the tools test I seek to employ. Most similarities I have seen have only been websites from the digital humanities department at different universities offering descriptive lists of each tool and occasional showcases for each tool. However, these showcases are not using the same dataset, crafted information, or creator such as seen on UCF’s center for digital research’s website found here: https://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/projects.html.  Other websites that list tools and there function can be found here: https://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=176357&p=1158575 and https://libguides.utk.edu/dh/tools.

                Other projects that can serve as a point of similarity for my project use a tool or method to present Native American history. While not using the same information or a variety of different tools, the closeness to the concept of Florida Paleo-Native American history and digital presentation should be noted. Such projects can be found here: https://lostworlds.org/exhibits/florida/public-indian-sites-florida/ this project serves to spatially layout a variety of different publicly accessible sites on interactive map on a website to host different information. Another would be found here: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=201 which seeks to present a whole host of information on Florida Native American history segmented by topic in as a static webpage but does not present any visual storytelling aspect and simply serves as printed text available on a digital space. A third project could be the Florida Department of State’s Native American Heritage Trail pdf  which serves as a digital presentation that is visually appealing and serves to tell a contextualized story yet does so in a static, but readably available way.

                My project will differ from those already in the field by presenting the same information through a variety of different tools and methods including both interactive and static to provide a way to contextualize each tool on a standard for comparative means.