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Untold Stories of Women in Science

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Mike Caprio edited this page Jan 29, 2019 · 14 revisions

Tell the Story of a Prominent Female Scientist, Explorer, or Researcher from the Museum

Hackathon Findings

Hackathon Projects

Help us tell the world about the prominent female scientists and explorers who chronicled natural history for the museum by creating compelling interactive narratives and visualizations of stories, imagery, and data from AMNH.

This is an open-ended challenge. Your project can come in the form of a visualization, an infographic, or some other type of interactive media on a web page or even a mobile app.

Background

Please note: this challenge is exclusively for high school and Brown Scholars teams. Each team will pick one female scientist to work on.

Museums contain incredible collections of cultural and natural heritage, and the American Museum of Natural History is a prime example; however AMNH has also been an active research and education institution throughout its nearly 150 year history. The museum has undertaken over 700 expeditions since it was established and has collected 33 million specimens from all over the world (and beyond).

But who are the scientists, explorers, and researchers doing the collecting and exploring? This challenge is all about the women who chart the frontiers of nature and science, and understanding their roles and contributions at the museum.

In collaboration with the New York-based Women in Natural Sciences Chapter of the Association for Women in Science and the AMNH Research Library, the aim of this challenge is to explore the scientific significance of female scientists' work, and also to place their work in social and political contexts and examine the difficulties of working in the sciences as a member of an underrepresented group. We hope that an extensive biographical exploration will highlight aspects of the female scientists' passion for the subjects they studied, as well as revealing supporting and/or opposing influences on their work.

Below is a list, which is by no means exhaustive, of the more prominent women in marine exploration who have an association with AMNH.

* Eugenie Clark        * Libbie Hyman         * Angelina Messina     
* Dorothy Bliss        * Evelyn Shaw          * Clare Kellogg Stout

Solutions

The AMNH Research Library, its online resources, its new Metasearch tool and its API Portal will be invaluable for this challenge as you dive into the past. You will be able to integrate the new REST API provided by the Library to display all catalogued information related to these female scientists. Critical to note: it is very important to provide proper citations from primary sources that are verified, like the Research Library (not Wikipedia or other online media outlets). A Research Library orientation session will be scheduled with all high school teams prior to the hackathon to explain in detail.

Ultimately we would like to understand more of the historical info about these prominent museum female scientists from the past, and create metadata for the number of species they described, where in the world they explored and collected, and where their collected specimens ended up. Also, we would like it if their research could somehow be highlighted; this could be: listing the species that they described, showing the number of and links to the publications they produced, or something else notable, like a famous exhibit akin to the Miner coral reef display.

Dr. Miner and Mr. Olsen inspecting Coral Reef Group, Hall of Ocean Life, June, 1934

Try to think about these topics while you explore the past and examine the lives of these female scientists and researchers. You can start with the questions below, and by downloading and using the biographical template document in the challenge repository:

  • AMNH expeditions - Can you gather a historical overview of your chosen scientist's explorations - where did her specimens come from and are they now on display? What were the goals of her expedition(s)?
  • AMNH exhibitions - Is the work of your chosen scientist part of an earlier exhibition, are her specimens still being displayed?
  • AMNH research - Can we understand how particular specimens collected by a your chosen scientist contributed to science by finding reference to them in subsequent scientific papers?

Some possible solutions might be:

  • An interactive app, visualization, or series of infographics that depicts your chosen scientist, data about her collections, and her impact on the museum throughout history. What's the best way to present this data about her career?

  • Develop a microsite which tells the story of the life and career of your chosen scientist. What can we learn about her and why she was interested in the particular specimens she collected? What would others find interesting about the type of research she pursued?

  • Anything else you can think of!

PLEASE NOTE: Each team will have access to a virtual server at the hackathon where they can host their projects. Details about how to connect to those servers will be provided to teachers at their orientation! We expect that team members will be bringing their own laptops.

Resources

SNAC, International cooperative for entities

SNAC is also a database for entities using EAC-CPF. It has been called the "Facebook for dead people" because of the relational networks it creates between people. The current beta prototype includes hundreds of thousands of records, mostly derived from catalog and finding aid (archives) descriptions. Because there is no automated way to pull records, this site may not be helpful to incorporate programmatically into your challenge, but you could potentially search it to learn about your scientist's relationships to other people, and the Museum could ultimately contribute information about the women scientists from your work into their database.

Challenge owner: Christine Johnson

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