Following last week’s meetings and update, the team has spent their time working on the Caldecott data, Newbery vizzes, and our social media and outreach. We are almost done collecting the author and illustrator data and when complete, we will begin working on the protagonists. Emily and Georgette will search for the protagonists’ gender, race, and ethnicity. Once the Caldecott data is collected, Kelly will begin working with the data in Tableau. In the meantime, Kelly met with GC Digital Fellow Rafael Portela, and they reviewed the Python code Kelly created to scrape the Caldecott awardees. 

Regarding social media and outreach, we found more accounts to follow on Twitter and Instagram, and started creating original content. We were already following several DH programs and Newbery authors, so we added Caldecott authors/illustrators and related diversity projects and organizations. People of Color in Publishing (@PocPub), Latinx in Publishing (@LatinxinPub), Books for Kids Organization (@booksforkidsorg), and the Children’s Book Council (@CBCBook), just to name a few. We hope that when we share our vizzes, they will offer helpful feedback and promote our project when it is finished. This week we will continue to work on the following: 

Meg: I am going to write two 500 word blogs and automate postings to our social media accounts, including posting visualizations to Instagram. 

Emily: I will continue working on the Caldecott data, finishing up author/illustrator and then moving on to protagonists. I am planning on double-checking the data I collected with the articles Georgette found. I will be on the lookout for interesting content for our Twitter and Instagram pages.

Kelly: I got help from Rafa to understand how the Caldecott Python scrapes could have been more effective-something that will be great to play with if we continue the project beyond the scope of the course. I also continued to clean the data for the Newberys, as we now need outside feedback.

Finally, I played unsuccessfully so far with displaying the data counter-factually, as removing white people didn’t do much since there are some early authors and protagonists of color. But, I plan to play with grouping by decade and non-Census lenses as I have the next two days off. 

Georgette: I am finishing up collecting my portion of the author/illustrator Caldecott data, and will then move on to the protagonists. I will use the articles I found to double check my work on early honorees. 

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