Group Curation

Curation

Starting in Week 4, we’ll kick off some of our class meetings with a short curatorial introduction to a project, process, or product with applications or relevance to geospatial analysis. In small groups, students will briefly and collaboratively present a “curation” of their choice, explaining how their chosen project was created, what kinds of spatial data were required in order to make it, and why it should merit our attention. Additionally, students will identify areas of growth for the project, carefully interrogating its design elements and/or its data elements.

Instructions

In self-assigned groups of 3-4, choose a project, process, or product with applications/relevance to the geospatial analysis, e.g.:

• A particularly rich dataset
• An interactive web map or mapping project
• A still (e.g., static) map or series of still maps
• A methodology or workflow

Requirements

The curatorial introduction should be about 12 minutes in length, and at 15 minutes, groups will be unceremoniously cut off. They should respond to the following prompts:

• How is this project, process, or product engaged with the geospatial analysis?
• What are the key spatial datasets associated with this project, process, or product? Be as specific as possible.
• What methodologies were used to create the data? If the authors don’t explain, make an educated guess.
• What areas of growth can you find in this project, process, or product? More specifically, what kinds of spatial datasets would you add and what kinds of different design choices would you make if you were the lead developer/curator?

Curatorial groups have total autonomy over the format of the curation. Whether the presentation includes a slide deck, a live demo, a hands-on interaction, or something else entirely is completely okay with me, as long as it stays within the 15-minute mark.