Volume XWII, Issue 22
Educating Women To Excel
March 30, 2005
ON THE
INSIDE:
FMLA event
Page 2
Disabilities
Panel
Page 3
Student pro
file
Page 4
Diversity
Column
Page 5
Movie Review
Page 7
Classifieds
Page 8
Meredith dolls viewable online
WEDNESDAY
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THURSDAY
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SATURDAY
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MONDAY
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TED WALLER
Carlyle Campbell Library
Until now, the beloved
Meredith class dolls could
be seen only by those will
ing to climb to the third
floor of Johnson Hall where
they are on display. Soon
they will be available to
anyone with a connection
to the internet. The College
Archives is in the midst of
an exciting project to bring
the Meredith class dolls to
the world wide web in 3-D.
Since 1936, graduating
seniors at Meredith have
presented the College with
a class doll. The dolls are
dressed and displayed to rep
resent memorable aspects of
each class’s college experi
ence. They are a unique por
trayal of the history of the
College, and an important
tradition for alumnae. When
the custom began, alumnae
who graduated before 1936
were recruited to prepare
dolls for the earlier years.
Every class is represent
ed, for a total of 105 dolls.
In recent years Martha Fon-
ville and Ted Waller, who
administer the College Ar
chives, have become aware
of the keen interest engen
dered by the dolls. This in
terest goes beyond Meredith
to the public at large. Un
fortunately, awareness of the
dolls has been very limited
by their location. One solu
tion to this problem was to
make the dolls available on
the world wide web. Martha
and Ted wanted to make the
web pages something spe
cial, however, and hit on the
idea of creating doll images
in 3-D. This approach, also
known as virtual reality, re
sults in images that can be
rotated 360 degrees with the
co^uter nrouse. The 3-D
Johnson, senior art major, arranging a
Meredith dolt for photographing
aspect of the project is the
“hook” that gets users’ atten
tion. Once users are on the
web site they experience the
primary goal of the project:
telling the story Meredith
and the lives of college wom
en over the past 105 years.
The project requires some
expensivespecialized equip
ment. Fortunately, each year
the State Library of North
Carolina offers Digitiza
tion Starter Grants through
the federal Library Services
and Technology Act. The
library applied for and re
ceived a grant in the amount
of $7,025 for a camera,
computer, software, turnta
ble, and other equipment. A
storage room in the library
was converted into a tem
porary photo studio, and the
project was off and running.
The procedure involves
shooting 36 digital pictures
of each doll (rotating the doll
10 degrees on a turntable be
tween pictures), converting
them to a QuickTime movie,
and putting them on the Ar
chives pages of the library
web site. With over 3,600
pictures needed, the entire
project will last well into the
summer. As of March 28,
photography for 72 dolls has
been completed. Charlene
Johnson, a senior art major,
is doing the photography.
The initial response from
the public has been very
encouraging. Feedback
has been uniformly posi
tive, and the number of hits
on the doll web pages has
jumped 300% without any
publicity. The work thus
far can be seen on this web
page: http://www.meredith.
edu/library/archives/dolls/
dollJisting.htm . To view
the dolls, simply click on
any small doll image to
open up a large virtual re
ality image. Users may be
prompted to download the
QuickTime program from
Apple Computer to be able
to view the pictures, and
Windows XP users will have
to click on several boxes to
get past Windows security.
Miss 1906
photo courtesy of Ted Waller