Friday, 14 January 2011

Using Wordle for Archives

Yes, I know I'm coming slightly late to the party but I've just discovered the fun of using Wordle for Archive Collections - it's great!  At lunchtime today I've been experimenting with entering the text from a number of small film collections (such as the example below).  This means that you get an overview of the main subjects, places and names which appear in these films.  I haven't worked out yet if there's a way to stop a word from appearing more than once so if anyone knows if there is a way to do this then please let me know.  As well as being eye-catching and nice to look at I think Wordle could be very useful, for highlighting the places or subjects which are discussed, or in the case of film archives shown, in a particular collection.  It could also give a general overview of the content of an entire archive, a filmmaker, a particular project - anything you want to highlight from your collections really... it's also quite an enjoyable way to while away a hour or so!

The examples below are from the text of my cataloguing for four films by Antony Clover, an amateur filmmaker from Portsmouth.




Posted by Kathryn at 15:05
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7 comments:

  1. Kiara14 January 2011 at 16:04

    I love wordle and used it for the Ballast Trust logo. Did you see the Archives Hub new postcards which feature a very wordle looking collection of words http://twitpic.com/3pnpvf

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  2. Kathryn14 January 2011 at 18:42

    Thank you! I knew I had seen an archive wordle example in the past few days that reminded me to give it a go, I just couldn't remember what it was. Yes, the Archives Hub postcards look great. It's a great idea to use them as postcards.
    I've just spotted lots of interesting sounding links in your blog post http://webwatchingforarchivists.blogspot.com/2010/10/round-up.html But I'm going to restrain myself from checking them out on a Friday night, put my computer away, and pour a large glass of wine!

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  3. Zoe14 January 2011 at 20:57

    Ooo I love it! Never heard of it before but I wish I had. We did a gallery invitation for an exhibition a couple of years ago that had loads of artist taking part. The front of the invitation was covered in their names, all in different colours and sizes, and it took ages to get right.

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  4. Anonymous17 January 2011 at 18:34

    Hi Kathryn

    There's an option under 'language' to 'Make all words upper case' (or lower case). I think that would remove your duplicates, as they have initial capital letters.

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  5. Kathryn17 January 2011 at 19:46

    Thanks Amanda, I'll try that tomorrow when I get into work and let you know!

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  6. Karl Magee31 January 2011 at 14:20

    Hi Kathryn
    If you edit / revise your text before putting it into Wordle you can create a 'cleaner' image. You can check, for example, that a word only appears with a capital letter - if a word also appears in lower case both versions of the word will be included. You can also use the ~ symbol to link words / create phrases (good for film titles, etc)

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  7. Kathryn31 January 2011 at 20:42

    Hi Karl,
    Thanks for the tips! I'll need to give them a go this week sometime.

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