Lead: Prof. Roger Vetter, Professor Emeritus of Music
Vivero Fellow (2026-2027): Ahmed Dafaalla
The Grinnell College World Musical Instrument Collection is an open-source searchable database intended to provide its users with visual, sonic, and written information about a broad sampling of acoustic musical instruments (and a few electronic ones as well) of both Western and non-Western origins. It was created in 1999, and as website infrastructure has changed over time, so has this site, with the help of many staff and student collaborators. It is currently on the Omeka-S platform and hosted locally on a library server.
The website was designed with desktop and laptop users in mind. I sense that now the majority of its users employ their smartphones when accessing the site. Not being a smartphone user myself, I do not even know how the site looks and functions on such devices. It seems to me it is time to assess its functionality on smartphones and, if necessary, propose changes that might enhance its appearance and functionality on that equipment. I am clearly not qualified to carry out this task, but a technologically savvy college student who grew up with smartphones—a Vivero Fellow—would be far better positioned to assess the look and navigational functionality of the site on that platform. I do not think it would be necessary for the Vivero Fellow to be a musician or even to be interested in musical instruments to work on this project. I am now in the process of phasing myself out of this project but would be happy to work with a Vivero Fellow on this stage of it. If the recommendations produced during this initial phase of the project are of interest to the Burling Library staff overseeing the site, implementing those recommendations (perhaps in the Spring semester 2027) would be the next step and hopefully the same Vivero Fellow would be able to continue being a part of the project.
In this coming semester I envision the Vivero project to have three phases: 1) the Fellow becoming familiar with the site and its “look” on its intended platforms—desktop and laptop computers; 2) appraise how the site appears and operates on a smartphone; and 3) make proposals to the project lead as to what could be done to improve the functionality of the site when accessed through a smartphone.
