Frequent visitors to the Psi Encyclopedia will see that its home page has been redesigned, and those who take an interest in such things might like to know the background to this.
As a journalist, I work in a field that takes for granted the need for images to enliven text – unlike scientists and academics, who use them in scholarly publications mainly to illustrate a point. Some feel that illustrations have no place in an academic resource, and detract from its seriousness. A student intent on acquiring knowledge shouldn’t need such frivolous distractions.
They may be right. But I believe even the most earnest of us find acres of uninterrupted text daunting, and welcome the occasional flash of colour. Visuals are arguably the dominant element in the media of our age: most people get their news from television rather than reading, and a recent trend in social media has been for statements to be made in short video clips rather than written posts.
Since a main objective of the Encyclopedia is to appeal to a new audience, people who have no notion that psi research even exists, it’s important to present it in a form they can readily relate to. We need to underscore the point that it’s about real people, real experiences. Pictures help achieve this.
So when I came to design the Psi Encyclopedia two years ago, I naturally felt it should have a strong visual element. But that was easier said than done: the kind of mental abstractions that psi research largely deals with make it desperately hard to illustrate. You can see how publishers struggle. A surprising number of the books on my shelves have front covers illustrated by one of three motifs – bent teaspoon, door on a beach or field, disembodied head. I’ve always found that somewhat embarrassing, a lack of imagination that reflects badly on psychical research as a subject. But when I found myself in the same position, I could see why people get stuck.
At a minimum, it seemed sensible to include an image in the introduction to entries. That can also be used to populate the Categories pages, which otherwise would just be a series of dry lists, and is easy enough for individuals like Frederic Myers. But it becomes progressively harder where no portrait photo is available, as often happens for instance in children’s past life memory cases, and where I sometimes resort to using images of their birthplace. Even with abstract topics, if I spend long enough, I can usually come up with something, however tangential. But time is short, and I often give up, with the result that there are quite a few gaps waiting to be filled when inspiration strikes.
The space in the right side panel is more flexible, as it can be filled with images of people and places when these are available, but can equally be left blank.
When it came to the home page, I thought interesting images could be placed there as a means to introduce the contents and link to entries. But two years ago, with just a handful of articles uploaded, we only had a few such images, and even fewer of decent quality. Independently, I’d thought of creating pictorial icons to act as category links, initially as thumbnails, so I decided to expand this approach and make them somewhat more elaborate than first intended. So we used that instead, giving us an original and professionally executed cover, if one that was also somewhat limited and not to everyone’s taste.
By now, three years into the project, we have almost 200 articles, and perhaps twice as many images from a variety of sources. So, as you see, we have been able to create a home page that has more variety and realism, and at the same time more fully reflects the Encyclopedia’s contents. Some of the pictures are unremarkable but do the job of illustrating the subject. Others have particular appeal (I especially like the Burne-Jones painting ‘Night’, which Annekatrin Puhle suggested to illustrate her piece on Lucid Dreaming). Ideally, new images will be uploaded from time to time, although time constraints will inevitably make that infrequent.
Eventually, we may also decide to extend the page down to accommodate more images. Meanwhile, the original illustrations continue to do duty as Category links on a separate page. In the future we may add to these, as new categories come into being.
We are also working on new features, for instance pop-up lists of articles by individual writers, so that readers of one article can see what else that contributor has written. Articles will also soon include a reference citation that researchers can copy and paste as required. There will of course be other additions as the need for them arises.