Image source: Hedren Sum
Using data from roots.sg, I helped Associate Professor Galina Mihaleva of ADM and Hedren Sum, Digital Humanities Project Manager at NTU Institute for Science and Technology for Humanity (NISTH) to prepare for their recent exhibition Talking Cheongsams at DigiMuse Presents, an exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore. I thought to myself, “What a headache to view the huge variety of cheongsams!”
Hear what a cheongsam has to say about its own history at the @natmuseum_sg from now till 17 Feb. This interactive cheongsam exhibit was created by #NTUsg Asst Prof Galina Mihaleva and Hedren Sum and is part of DigiMuse, a programme where culture meets tech. #wearabletech pic.twitter.com/uxzqDBadVa
— NTU Singapore (@NTUsg) February 10, 2019
I had to find a way to organize and showcase the list of cheongsams in a way that viewers would be able to navigate easily. I found a few free web-based timeline tools and explored three of them to create timelines of the cheongsams with (see below).
The timelines helped to provide an overview of unification on how the aesthetics of the cheongsams in the collection developed over the years, prompting new questions.
1. Tiki-Toki
Tiki-Toki enables you to create interactive 3D timelines. Tiki-toki timelines are most suitable for image heavy data, as it results in a very visually captivating timeline. Create your own by following this tutorial.
Here is our visualisation of cheongsams on Tiki-Toki. Click the image below to view.
2. Timeglider
Using Timeglider is really easy! All you have to do is input your content into the straightforward editing tool. Viewers can see the range of cheongsams in trend during a particular era clearly, and click on each item for more information. Use this tutorial video to help you through creating one of your own.
Click on the image below to check out our Timeglider timeline.
3. TimelineJS
TimelineJS has been an all time favourite tool in our team. All you need is a Google account to save the provided Google Sheet template to your Drive. The Google Sheet enables you to organize your content neatly. Follow the tutorials recommended in our earlier posts to create your own.
Check out our very own timeline showcasing the cheongsams below.
Let us know how these tools can help you, or if there are others that you recommend in the comments below.
Be sure to check out other posts tagged Digital Scholarship, follow us @NTUsgLibrary and our hashtag #NTUsgLibraryDS on Twitter for more interesting tools and projects!
Student Assistant Tan Pei Ting Stella contributed to this post.
