De/composing constellations: reflections on the development of a collaborative multimedia ethnographic research tool

Constellations 2.5 is a collaborative multimedia research tool. It allows a community of researchers to catalog video footage, images, audio footage, text, and World Wide Web references in a shared database, where each piece of data is represented as a "star." All of the users in the database can annotate and analyze this common set of stars by grouping related stars into collections called "constellations," and tagging stars and constellations with key words. Each key word is associated with a numerical rating which describes the relationship between the tag and the piece of data. This paper presents a detailed description and analysis of Constellations from the point of view of one of its principal designers and programmers. In it, I describe the theories which have influenced its development of Constellations, the history of the design and programming, and the features and workings of the program. I also present a critical analysis of the program and discuss possibilities for its further development. The descriptions, historical accounts, and analyses presented in this paper are meant to contribute to and encourage reflection on the ways in which emerging information technologies are influencing and reforming both the processes by which we generate information and the kinds of information we generate.Education, Faculty ofCurriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department ofGraduat