Declaration of Independence, Digital Exhibit

I designed a prototype digital exhibit of the Albert H. Small Declaration of Independence Collection at the University of Virginia using a Microsoft Surface installation. It was touch based (like an iPad) and allowed for up to four simultaneous users.

This is probably the most beautiful information graphic I have designed, but I created it before the project had a set data structure. Thus I violated the first principle of software design: "Don't make it pretty until it's right."

Before I started color coding and annotating my database diagrams, I tried several ways of teaching my colleagues and employers how to read them. This was my best attempt.

This represents the height of my attempts to annotate and color-code database diagrams by hand. As my designs became more complex, I ended up writing DAVILA to automate the process.

I created this as a handout for my talk, "Reading Other People's Mail: Letters as Primary Sources," in the Harrison Institute Original Sources Lecture Series at the University of Virginia Library.

I used it to show the basic structure of any letter and how key components (dates, names, places) can be programmatically pulled from text to recreate correspondence networks.

A podcast of the talk is available on iTunesU. Go to University of Virginia, UVA Libraries, and click on Harrison Institute. This was my first podcast talk, and frankly I've always been too scared to listen to the recording, so I make no guarantees.