Using TimelineJS to Make a Timeline About My Grandfather

Check this out....use the arrows in the image area to move, or click on items in the timeline below it. I created this using TimelineJS. I learned about it during the Amigos [Library Services] 2013 Member Conference, held last week, in a session called "Getting Digi With It" by Caroline Castillo and Jeanette Sewell of the Houston Metropolitan Research Center of the Houston Public Library.  They use it to create timelines with primary source materials and oral history recordings from the Houston Area Digital Archives.

Once I saw this, I knew I had to try it out here on my family history blog!  I think I'm going to have to create a separate page on this blog just to store all the timelines I plan to make!

Making a timeline was quite easy - Jeanette has a Prezi that outlines the steps.   Basically, each line of a Google Drive spreadsheet (a template is provided on the TimelineJS site) is an event, with date, description, links to media (images, videos, Google maps, etc.).  This is published to the web, and then the spreadsheet's link can be copied and pasted into the TimelineJS Embed Generator. This creates a timeline that can be embedded into blog posts or on a website

The timeline above includes a placeholder for a future post, and I'm sure I'll add other posts about my grandfather to it down the line.  It's easy to make changes; you just edit the Google spreadsheet.  I've added links to the relevant blog posts as captions for each image.


















© Amanda Pape - 2013 - click here to e-mail me.