May 2015-June 2016
From explorers measuring a pre-industrial world to virtual worlds built with code, technological advances and human ingenuity have heightened our senses, expanding perceptions of the universe and our place in it. Eden Phillpotts, inspired by the magnifying glass, remarked, “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
This exhibition grew out of 2014 Buchanan Library Fellows projects. Students were trained to use Omeka, Neo4j, and GIS technology to dig deeper into scholarly and primary sources. We wondered how new technologies have changed our ability to visualize large data sets. How have the inventions and discoveries of past centuries changed our perception of the universe? Curators from the Central Library, Special Collections, the Divinity Library, the Music Library, and Peabody Library identified items in the libraries’ collections that spoke to the way our world view has changed over the last six centuries.
View Online: Picturing Our World | Digital Exhibit