Progress
So far, we have identified and scanned all the archival CLAPs we plan to use. We’ve also cleaned up our data a little bit — it’s all in a folder together, and it’s sorted logically. We talked to Tom Lamb and David Bliss in the Archives, who were helpful in our digitization process, and we’ve reached out to the current CLAP staff directly (more on that later).
Problems (and proposed solutions)
One issue we’ve run into so far is that although we reached out to the current CLAP staff to get digital copies of the magazine from this school year, we do not have access yet. We followed up with them; however, if they don’t respond in a timely manner, we will scan and use PDF copies of our personal CLAP collections. (If that ends up being the case, we may not have every single issue, but we’ll try our best.) This issue hasn’t required us to change our plan yet, but it has slowed us down a little bit.
Tools and Techniques
We plan to use Adobe Acrobat to OCR our PDFs sometime this weekend. After that, we will assemble our corpus and run it through Voyant Tools to analyze it for patterns. We may also use Flourish or Rawgraphs.io to create visualizations of our data/patterns. To assemble our pseudo-CLAP for our final presentation, we may use either Adobe InDesign or Google Slides.
Deliverables
- Completed: Data collection (nearly)
- This weekend: OCR the PDFs
- Early Week 9: Assemble & analyze corpus
- Late Week 9: Making visualizations (graphs, pseudo-CLAP, website)
- Week 10: Present!
We’re pretty much on track with our original timeline of deliverables so far. We may try to get ahead a little bit to give ourselves more breathing room on the back end.
Links
- Back issues of the Carleton Literary Association Paper (CLAP), 2002 – 2023, collection PB188, Carleton College Archives, Carleton College, Northfield, MN. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/186.
- Carleton Literary Association Paper (CLAP), 2024-2025 academic year, Carleton College, Northfield, MN.
- Nicosia, Emma. “A Brief History of the CLAP.” The Carletonian. February 21, 2014. Accessed February 28, 2025. https://thecarletonian.com/3752/news/a-brief-history-of-the-clap/.
Personal Messages
Assata: So far I’ve scanned some issues of the CLAP into pdfs. And we will collaborate on the OCR of the digitizations. At some point down the line I’ll work on graphing the data.
Eliza: I’ve helped scan PDFs in the archives and helped write blog/lab posts. (My “team charter” role isn’t really relevant yet.)
Josephine: As of right now, I have spent time in the archives scanning pdfs and renaming the scans to create a more comprehensible data set.
9 thoughts on “Final Project Update (Assata/Eliza/Josephine)”
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Hello Assata, Eliza, and Josephine! It’s great to hear that you all have made such good progress on your final project! I’m really excited to see what sorts of patterns will emerge from the different issues of The CLAP, and I think this is a great way to explore how campus humor has evolved over the last two decades. I can’t wait to see y’all’s visualizations and findings, and I’m particularly intrigued by your “pseudo-CLAP.” Very interesting stuff folks :D!
This project sounds really exciting! Your plan for OCR and text analysis with Voyant Tools, along with potential visualizations, sounds like a solid approach to uncovering patterns in the publication’s history. The flexibility in your workflow, especially having a backup plan for missing issues, seems really great. Looking forward to seeing how your analysis turns out—especially the pseudo-CLAP!
Hi all, this seems like a really interesting project! Having a big digititized collection/ analysis of the CLAP seems really cool! I wonder what trends you will discover when you start putting the data through the visualization tools. I wonder how the content has changed over time and how influential CLAP staff is serving in this change.
Hi Eliza, Josephine, and Assata. It sounds like you all have made great progress on your final project! I hope things continue to go smoothly! Hopefully, the CLAP will respond soon so you do not have to only use your personal copies. Good job and I look forward to seeing your finished project.
Hi Assata, Eliza, and Josephine! It sounds like your final project is coming along well! I’m very interested in seeing if there are specific words/phrases that are common among different CLAP magazines. Do you guys have any guesses on what patterns you might discover? I’m excited to learn more about the CLAP from your final project!
I’m glad to hear that you haven’t had to change your plans, and the pseudo-CLAP sounds like a fun idea! Also, I have a few editions saved, so if you’re missing some, just let me know, and I’d be happy to look through the ones I have to see if I have one that you all need.
Hi all, your group is making great progress with the archival CLAPs and staying adaptable despite challenges with obtaining digital copies. The planned use of OCR, Voyant Tools, and visualization platforms sounds promising for analysis. It’s great to see collaboration in scanning, organizing, and preparing data. I am looking forward to your final project and presentation!
Hey all, I think you are doing a great job making progress with this project and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I hope you get a response from the CLAP staff soon so you can get access to the digital copies.
Hi Assata, Eliza, and Josephine, I really like how you collaborated with archives staff and reached out to current CLAP editors, which demonstrates your willingness to incorporate others’ expertise. I also like your backup plan: using your own personal CLAP collections. Using Flourish or Rawgraphs.io for visualizations and creating a pseudo-CLAP with InDesign or Google Slides are also great ideas!