Historic Timeline

Salt Lake City and the Winter Olympics historic timeline

The main theme of my timeline is the progression of Salt Lake City, UT from bidding to host the winter Olympics to actually hosting. I love the Olympics and being from Utah, I have always been fascinated to learn about the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympics. In putting the timeline together, I tried to show the full span of time that was the bidding process for the 2002 games. There were a couple bids that I wasn’t able to find any data points for, but I feel the timeline strongly reflects the long journey taken by Salt Lake City in striving to become and ultimately host the Olympics.
                                                    
In order to fully show this span of time, I turned to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). I used various search terms to find images that I could use as data points. I also relied on my own knowledge of the actual Olympics to help determine the timeline. By using my knowledge and the knowledge gathered from various other sources, I was able to narrow my search results on DPLA to the images that would work best for this assignment. Once I had my key terms figured out and started to comb through the results, I realized that it would be easiest to break the results down into small time frames. Doing so allowed me to find just the images I needed and not have to worry about searching through too many non-useful results. As I chose images to possibly include, I entered their information into a spreadsheet. I then used this spreadsheet to determine the final data points to use. I also used this spreadsheet to keep the data points organize by date so that I wouldn’t get them mixed up and ruin the timeline.

As I went through the project, I didn’t come across many challenges. There are only two that seem to be standing out. The first and most challenging was the images themselves. It was difficult to find images that fit some of the major timeline points. However, the larger challenge was narrowing down the image results to the ones that would best work for the timeline and keep it flowing. The other issue I ran into was getting the images to actually show up on my timeline. At first, this was very frustrating because I couldn’t find any help on the Timeline website on how to remedy this. However, after some manipulating I was able to figure out that the URL I had entered for each image was not the correct URL. The correct one was very similar to the one I had posted, but the slight change allowed the images to actually show up.

Overall, I really enjoyed learning how to use TimelineJS. I believe it is a very powerful tool for creating and presenting a story via a timeline format. I hope to find ways of using this tool again both on a personal level, as well as within my duties as an archivist.

References:

Book Torch, Olympic Torch Relay | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=508032

Closing Ceremonies, 2002 Winter Olympics [2] | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=963637

FLAG, WHITE OLYMPIC LOGO | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=508045

Giant Slalom event, 2002 Olympics [07] | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=963805

“Olympic Facilities To Be Built.” | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=948065

Olympic Rings banner at the Utah State Capitol Building, circa 1993. | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=946921&nocache=true

Opening Ceremonies, 2002 Winter Olympic [2] | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=963722

Salt Lake City 2002. (2017, February 01). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://www.olympic.org/salt-lake-city-2002

Salt Lake Tribune article highlighting the awarding of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games to Salt Lake, Saturday June 17, 1995. | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=946957

Slide from 1998 Olympic Proposal | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=944932&nocache=true

TICKET, MEN’S AERIALS FINAL | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=508037

TORCH, OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=507988

2002 Winter Olympics. (2017, November 02). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympics

Utah Olympic Park K-90 ski jump [45] | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=963582

Winter sports drive opens: new committee hopes to make S.L. great recreational center (Article from Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 1934) | Olympic Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved November 05, 2017, from https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=947564&nocache=true

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