Blog 9: Curation Progress Report

This week, I honestly could have done a lot more work for my curation. I tend to be focusing on the pictures more, which I think is a very important aspect of the curation. But, what I think I should have taken more time and energy doing was thoroughly and completely going through the link I found of influential horticulturalists and deciding which ones I was going to use in my curation, and then finding additional information on those people as well.

This is probably going to be the biggest obstacle for me because I like the fun part- finding awesome pictures of gardens, But actually looking up the history of people and what they do is a little less interesting compared to the pictures and I know I'm putting that off because of it. Starting it will be the toughest thing for me.

The coolest picture I found this week was a picture of vertical farming.

What is awesome about this photo is that it opened up another aspect to my curation, which is to talk about vertical farming a little bit, and how that has such a big thing to do with interesting and unique gardens. Just by finding a picture, it opened up a completely new door for my curation.

To move forward, I need to look up all of the info on the horticulturalists I decide to use, look up a little bit of info on vertical farming to add with the picture to explain what it is, and finish finding the rest of my images.

Something that I could definitely be doing better would be to getting the "hard" stuff out of the way first. It's easy to find the pictures, but I need to buckle down and do the research part.

Curation Progress Report: Blog 9

This week, I have continued to find more and more pictures of unique gardens. I realize that my entire curatio cannot just be of pictues, so I have begun to do some research on influential people in the horticulture community regarding innovations, so to speak, in gardens and vegetable gardens, and what their contributions were and have accomplished.

This is a bit more complicated than I expected, because finding actual inormation on the gardener's themselves is much more difficult than just finding pictures. It takes more time and effort than just typing into the google search bar: influential horticulture figures. I know that I will have to research much more, and go "deeper" for that part of the curation.

I know that this will probably be the biggest obstacle to overcome with my curation. Finding pictures is extremely easy, and there are literally thousands of them instantly, immediately when you type in what you need. But finding the people behind them is often times the tricky part, as I have found with my research.

The best piece of info I found this week was an awesome link that lists the top 30 most influential gardeners. I have begun to go through and find the ones that relate really well to my curation. I still have a bunch more to research but I at least have the foundation for finding the "influential gardeners" part of my curation. Below is the useful link of the gardeners I have found thus far.

http://applebyblog.hortweek.com/2012/01/05/top-30-influential-gardeners/

I definitely feel a lot more organized with all of the information I have now, and have started to go through and evaluate what is valuable to me and what should not be used. The next three steps for me to work on would be to finish going through the link and see which horticulturists I should use in my curation. Secondly, I then need to gather solid information on the people I plan on using. And thirdly, I need to sit down and explore Tumblr, so I know how to use it properly and learn all of the tools that come with it.

Doing the curation progress updates is actually a really great idea and I think it works really weel with this project. It forces me to sit down, and thoroughly go through and organize all of my information, ideas, and future plans for the curation. In this way, I do not feel overwhelemd or as stressed out because I am getting all of my ideas out, but I also have everything I have done, and still need to do listed in front of me.

Curation Progress Report

To begin with, when Mr. Allen introduced the curation project, I was immediately intrigued. The fact that we would be able to pick basically any topic we wanted and were interested in, just research and find information about it, and create a web page for it sounded like such an unusual, awesome school assignment.

So right from the beginning, I was excited about the entire process. I began thinking about what I wanted to curate, and what I was interested in and I thought about curating how to start and manage your own garden, but quickly realized that there was probably a ton on the web already about that. Still interested in that topic, I decided too re-evaluate it and changed it to people who maintain interesting and unique gardens.

One of the biggest problems I have been faced with so far is realizing that I am probably not going to find specific people for this project, as I thought. Going into it, I thought the focus would be on the people, rather than the actual gardens, but now I realize that it will be on the gardens. I'm actually really happy with that, because I think I, along with others, would like to focus on the actual gardens and what makes them so interesting, and less on the person.

 I have found many, many pictures of awesome gardens, but the person is not "famous" per-say, in the horticulture community. What I thought I would find in my research would be renowned people who were very well known for having very well-kept and unique gardens.

I am using multiple websites to aid my research. Pinterest is specifically helpfully and has many pictures and resources. I have decided to use Tumblr as my website for the curation.

The next three steps I need to for the project would be to establish my tumblr account/wesbite, organize the information and pictures I currently have, and expand my searches to more than just pictures- I need to go further than that.

I think one idea that can be made to help make the project run more smoothly would be to not have the entire curation website due in one day, instead have "check points". Making the website due in parts makes it seem much less overwhelming overall. That way, we would organize all of our research probably at better times.