About This Project
Hello! My name is Helena Reveal and I am from Nashville, Tennessee. I am a graduate of the Ohio State University, where I earned an honors BA in Public Policy with a second major in Spanish and almost a minor in American Sign Laguage. I am currently attending Simmons University, working towards a Master's in Library Information Sciences. I was a Girl Scout, and this website was my Gold Award project, though it has expanded much beyond that. This site provides easier access to books which 1) allow readers to find stories that have characters with the same identities as themselves and 2) allow readers to find stories that have characters who are different in their identities. To learn more about MoreDiverse’s current goals and to better understand how the goals of this site have changed over time, check out the History tab.
A MoreScore is a single number, from 0 to 6, that gives users a quick indication of the scope of diversity in a story. It's an oversimplification, but it's a nudge in the right direction. The MoreScore breaks down into three components:
| Points | Ethnicity | Gender | Sexuality |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | white | cisgender male | straight |
| 1 | undisclosed | cisgender female, transgender male | undisclosed |
| 2 | non-white | non-binary person, transgender female | non-straight |
The term "intersectionality" was coined by Columbia University Law Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. She proposed intersectionality as a tool to illustrate the problems of thinking about race and gender as mutually exclusive categories. At MoreDiverse.com we use intersectionality to help understand the many different facets of identity. Currently, we index protagonists by race, sexuality, and gender. There is more we could do, but it's a good place to start.
Restdb is database as a service for web applications. Database management and HTML5 development are done in a web-based environment.
Materialize CSS implements Google's Material Design standards in CSS making it easy follow best practices for interface design!
The Google Books API provides us with ISBN numbers, plot summaries, page counts, and book cover images. This is a public API.
The Lexile score is a way to measure text complexity. A license to access the Lexile score database was generously donated by MetaMetrics Inc.
The templateing engine handlebars.js is used in Restdb to write HTML code using data stored in the databse. It's like mailmerge but for websites.
Chartjs is a canvas based javascript graphing library. We use it to create the graphs on our data page. It's simple to learn and easy to customize.
MoreDiverse has expanded to the wider scope of Young Adult literature, not just alternatives for required reading. We are now focused on helping tweens and teens find books with diverse protagonists across many genres and themes!
MoreDiverse began as my Girl Scount Gold Award project. The Gold Award is the highest award given to Girl Scouts. The original goal of the project was to make it easier for students to find more diverse alterntives to the books the were requried to read in high school. The site was developed in cooperation with my high school librarian and a data scientist.