An interactive map of library data ports and equipment. For data visualization and management.
This is a tool I am developing for the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater to easily keep track of what equipment we have and where it is, as well as the status of our data jacks. Prior to the development of this project, all of that information was compiled in PDF files, which I have included in order to show how far this project came. If you look at the PDFs, you will see that they contain a lot of unrelated information on things like seating and stack layout, resulting in visual clutter. In addition, status information is rendered using red/green coloring, and computer information is conveyed with font. Computer model information is not included at all, but is stored in a separate file, which uses font-type (bold, italic, or normal) to distinguish between models. I am not including that file, as it contains other information our organization has been advised not to share. Needless to say, the way this information was broken up and displayed proved unituitive, inacessible and difficult to maintain.
When the COVID-19 crisis hit and the library needed to respace its computers, the maps that I initially started working off of were 11x17 printouts with updates made in pencil, which were not transferred to the PDFs, so even by the time I started working with them they were out of date. This is why I am comfortable including them as a reference in this project.
Because this program was developed for a very specific use-case and would require a high degree of modification for implementation in other settings, the primary purpose of its presence on GitHub is to show my approach to interactive mapping. It also serves as an example of my coding style and language-learning capacity. I am a self-taught developer, and began learning PHP in June, 2020, and CSS and JavaScript/JQuery in August of that year.
In order to develop this project, I needed to build a database from scratch. I could not have made the progress I did without the help of student library staff members, who took on the responsibilities of data verification and entry. It would be unfair not to give them their due credit for their work, which they performed admirably and to the highest degree of accuracy.
Clark Heideman, Louisa Latimer, Eriana Thomas, Maddi Burclaw, Sofia Maglio, Anna Zickus, Christian Alvites-Sandoval, and Cuauhtli Esparza
I also recieved invaluable guidance from my colleague, Branden McCready.
The code itself, I feel, is somewhat unremarkable. PHP organizes data from the database into a multi-dimensional array, which is converted to JSON and echoed in a data-caption. JS reads the JSON and puts the data into spans and tables, and JQuery provides a means by which to interface with that data to keep it from becoming cluttered and unreadable. The CSS helps keep things tidy, and PHP provides editing capabilites at the end.