Exotic Taxidermy of the Victorian Era

A collection project for DSCI350M

Exotic Taxidermy of the Victorian Era

A collection project for DSCI350M

Project Description

Our theme for our collection is exotic taxidermy from the Victorian Era (1837-1901). This theme is interesting because it highlights Victorian morbid fascinations with the exotic resulting from colonialism. Additionally, the taxidermy itself is not always anatomically correct, showing a lack of emphasis on scientific accuracy. As taxidermy began to gain popularity, populations of wealthy status believed that exotic taxidermy in the home insinuated luxury, therefore causing a rampant increase of taxidermy furniture in the home. The intended audience of this collection is anyone curious about the history of in-home taxidermy, the evolution of taxidermy away from science, or researchers focused on Victorian ideals and attitudes. Our audience can use our collection as a consolidated hub of resources on this topic to refer to in research or curiosity. Our collection will be made up of photographs of taxidermy, both finished and in-progress, which showcase the process of creation, as well as methods of displaying pieces. The content for this collection comes from various sources, such as the JSTOR archive, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Natural History Museum.

Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder

This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.

Using the CollectionBuilder-CSV template and the static website generator Jekyll, this project creates an engaging interface to explore driven by metadata.

Welcome to CollectionBuilder-Sheets!

Using the options below you can select demo metadata to explore a pre-built collection, or load your own metadata from the web or your local computer. The configurations are temporarily stored in your browser's session storage, so will remain only until you close this window!

Select one of our example collections

Paste in the full url for a CSV hosted online, such as a published Google Sheet (see below for instructions!)

Select a CSV file from your computer

Metadata Tips

Set up your metadata carefully following the template guidelines. Be especially careful with column names in the first row–they need to exactly match the template, with no spaces and no extra white space at the end of the value. Records without an “objectid” will be skipped.

Note: no information is sent to the server, the metadata and configuration change is only on your computer.

How to Publish Your Google Sheet

In your Google Sheet, ensure that your metadata is the first sheet in the spreadsheet (by default named "Sheet1"). The tabs can be dragged to reorder if necessary.
Click “File”, “Share”, and select “Publish to the Web”.
On the popup modal, use the dropdowns in “Link” tab to select “Entire Document” and “Comma-separated values (.csv)” options, then click “Publish” button.
Copy the link that is provided.
In the "Use Metadata CSV Link" form above, paste the link and click "Submit".

For example, a published link looks like:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSn7AA-cbsXT3_nNUGftc1ab-CKXOJHMQCIENeR9NHElbyI9_qA99o0-HNZdG04v-M2_N21bUe_krQQ/pub?output=csv

How to Download Your Google Sheet as CSV

On your Google Sheet, switch to the sheet tab that contains your metadata (by default "Sheet1").
Click “File”, “Download”, and select as "Comma Separated Values (.csv)”
The file should download to your computer’s Downloads folder
In the "Use Metadata CSV from your Computer" form above, click “Choose file” and navigate in your file explorer to select the downloaded CSV, then click "Submit".

Other Web CSV

If you have a CSV available anywhere on the web, you can use it by referencing the full URL. However, depending on where your CSV is hosted, you may encounter CORS errors.

For example, to use a CSV hosted in a GitHub repository, use the “raw” link:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CollectionBuilder/collectionbuilder-sample-data/main/psychiana_cbdemo_gh.csv

Paste the link into the "Use Metadata CSV Link" form above and click Submit.

To share your work with others, the default template can also load web CSV metadata specified as a parameter in the URL. Add your full metadata link to the end of the CB-Sheets instance’s URL as the “csv” option, like:

https://collectionbuilder.github.io/collectionbuilder-sheets/?csv=<your metadata url here>

For example:

https://collectionbuilder.github.io/collectionbuilder-sheets/?csv=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CollectionBuilder/collectionbuilder-sample-data/main/psychiana_cbdemo_gh.csv

or

https://collectionbuilder.github.io/collectionbuilder-sheets/?csv=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSn7AA-cbsXT3_nNUGftc1ab-CKXOJHMQCIENeR9NHElbyI9_qA99o0-HNZdG04v-M2_N21bUe_krQQ/pub?output=csv

Note: the metadata URL can not have any & (i.e. additional query string parameters). Having a & in the URL will cause the parsing to fail.