American Ballet Theatre: Digital Accessibility, Exploration & Engagement in the Archives
Project Description:
This digital humanities project proposes the implementation of Contentful, a headless Content Management System (CMS) for the American Ballet Theatre's (ABT) website to become the centralized hub that holds its historical repertoire of performances and vocabulary, with additional access to visual representations of digitized archival items from the ABT Collection at the Library of Congress. Through a comprehensive analysis of ABT’s current digital public-facing databases, I assess Contentful's features will offer ABT's wide range of audiences a reformed digital experience that promotes online learning and exploration opportunities, furthering public interactions with the Company’s legacy.
Objective: Digital Technology & Tools
Methods:
Internal Analysis: I evaluated ABT's online Repertory Archive and Ballet Dictionary to understand their use cases. These findings help identify user experience flaws and inform recommendations on optimizing these platforms for digital learning and exploration.
Used the ‘Design’ research technique from the Taxonomy of Digital Research Activities in the Humanities (TaDiRAH) to improve online participation, accessibility, and usability of ABT’s resources.
Conducted interviews with Digital Asset and Content professionals from the Robert Raushenberg Foundation to gain insight into the industry's variety of management systems and their current (and growing) capabilities.
Developed a use case model that illustrates how Contentful will operate in relation to ABT's digital management systems and front-facing sites in order to achieve project goals.
Researched suitable funding providers and grant opportunities that would likely launch this digital humanities project.
