19 February Journal: The Labor of Digital Humanities

By Tom Lewek | Published: February 19, 2017

The breadth and depth of the list of workshops for this year’s NYC DH Week articulates one of the first questions this class addressed last semester: “digital humanities: singular or plural?” Not only were the workshops on established fields like digital editions but there were also ones on emerging fields like physical computing and (in the age of the surveillance state and now Trump) information security. The digital humanities do seem increasingly plural. Kathleen Fitzpatrick addressed this question herself in the 2012 edition of Debates in the Digital Humanities when she argued that we can best navigate the “creative tension[s]” in the field by letting the field “remain plural” (Fitzpatrick).

More importantly, however, for the purposes of this semester’s class, NYC DH Week displayed an overwhelming amount of skills to learn, or decide not to learn, in order to work within the field. While revising my proposal, for example, I tried to limit the deliverables to those that required proficiency in skills with which I’m most comfortable like project management and front-end development. This proved almost impossible—any nontrivial digital humanities project requires the individual devising it to delve into unknown territories (databases and outreach campaigns in my case). This, in turn, introduces us, as graduate students, to a collaborative type of academic labor that remains both ad hoc and committed to a singular goal. It is collaborative because no one individual can master all the skills required to deliver a project. It is ad hoc because the individuals collaborating on the project must decide who will learn which required skill to which level of proficiency. Yet it also remains committed to the singular goal of the project itself. This labor ultimately breaks with the scholar-in-the-library vision we often associate with the humanities, and it seems to demonstrate the plural nature of the digital humanities themselves.

Work Cited

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. “The Humanities, Done Digitally.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, U of Minnesota P, 2012, http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/30.

Posted in spring17 | Comments closed

Revised Zine Union Catalog Proposal

By Jenna Freedman | Published: February 19, 2017

Based on class discussion blog comments, I have revised this proposal. The primary changes are additional information on Collective Access (see the link in the appendix), an explanation of the different catalog types, thoughts on sustainability, and tweaking of language to emphasize points and to frame the project’s uniqueness more positively.

Overview[1]

For several years, zine librarians across North America have been collaborating to build a union catalog for zines. A “union catalog” is a resource where libraries can share cataloging and holdings information, the prime example being WorldCat, which has thousands of member libraries. A union catalog enables researchers to discover zine holdings by searching a single catalog, as well as making it possible for librarians to copy catalog records and facilitates lending across libraries. The zine union catalog (ZUC) would serve people working in English, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Media Studies, History, Library and Information Science, Popular Culture, Psychology, Rhetoric, Sociology, and other fields. Here are the key points in executive summary bullets:

  • A cross­-repository resource for zine research, providing access to metadata about as many zines, and in as many ways (linked open data, links to digital content, etc.) as possible.
  • A collaborative platform for cataloging zines and their creators, by persons both within and external to the library profession.
  • A hub for zine research, where partners can seek inspiration and collaboration.
  • A promotional and educational resource for the zine genre.
  • A tool capable of supporting projects to incorporate digitized (and born digital) zine (and zine­ related) material into other platforms such as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

I propose building this catalog in the open source tool Collective Access. Collective Access (CA), unlike a similar tool Omeka, allows core fields (name, geographic location, historical event or era, etc.) to be tied to their own unique records (or tables), rather functioning solely as linkable fields, which are thereby vulnerable to degradation. CA is developed in New York City and has an active user group here. Another advantage to using CA is that the Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) is built in it, so we would have a place to start from. Further, I am closely connected to the QZAP developers, as well as the lead on another CA project LaMama Archives Digital Collections, so I would have easy access to people who have already made mistakes and solved problems who would share their experiences with us.

This catalog can be started with datasets from disparate zine libraries and zine library collections including ABC No Rio—a homegrown system built twenty years ago, Barnard College—MARC records, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh–LibraryThing, Denver Zine Library—a spreadsheet, QZAP–xZINECOREx, and possibly others. The project benefits from having a close-knit, committed, and warm community of zine librarians, in which I am deeply embedded. Members of the project team will benefit from working with an existing client for the project, a client comprised of brilliant, creative people from around the country with a range of skills, who are accustomed to working within a social justice framework and in an atmosphere of hospitality.

ZUC is a library catalog, in addition to an archive and exhibit space. Its holdings are multiples, and the emphasis is on cooperation between libraries to provide physical, as well as digital access to materials. Scholars from many humanities, as well as social sciences fields, will enjoy the fruits of our labor.

 

Why It Matters

Zines are self-produced and self-published literature that often feature counter­cultural, political, and artistic content. They are produced in small runs, and are often distributed directly by the author or through “distros” (i.e., specialized distributors of alternative publications). As such, zines provide a first­hand, personal, and documentary account of movements in social, political, and art history and provide evidence of knowledge production and dissemination within alternative communities. They are used by humanities scholars as primary source documents on a variety of topics, and are regarded as a critical record of third wave feminism and the riot grrrl movement, punk rock and the punk aesthetic, popular culture and fandom, and local history in urban centers.

Because zines exist in a counter­-cultural space, historically they have been collected and circulated by independent zine libraries. Over the last fifteen years, public libraries, special collections, and academic research libraries have begun collecting zines as scholarly resources and as part of leisure reading collections. This hybrid environment of zine collections translates into dispersed, erratic mechanisms for access. Zine descriptions and metadata, and thus discovery of zines, is scattered across library catalogs, archival finding aids, standalone databases, spreadsheets, and online platforms such as LibraryThing. This situation poses impediments to finding and using zines in aggregate for research, teaching, and learning in the humanities, but the Zine Union Catalog (ZUC) seeks to aggregate metadata from these disparate sources.

 

Deliverables

The end product of this project is a searchable catalog, to which libraries can upload their holdings. If we are ambitious, further goals are to automate the upload process. We will also create an API so that zine librarians and researchers can download the data and build on what we have done. The class will benefit from being able to start, not from scratch, but from work that has already been established by a motivated user group.

Sharing what we learn about how to crosswalk disparate datasets will be of value to other digital humanists, so providing detailed, yet readable documentation will be an essential part of this project. That information will go on the website that houses the catalog. That website could be something new or it could be on the zinelibraries.info site.

Data will be managed using GitHub, in an already existing repository, or a new one. The final ZUC will be presented at the CUNY Graduate Center on May 17.

 

Additional Possibilities

If members are interested, it is likely we could get a paper on the project published in a peer reviewed library and information science journal (preferably Open Access!).

Before Trump’s ascension, I would have called this an eminently fundable project. If the Knight Foundation or Mellon’s funding remains stable, I am confident that we could advance the prototype we build in class. This union catalog is unique in that it pulls bibliographic data from disparate sources. Library funding agencies seem interested in developing cooperative projects like this one, as well as on Linked Open Data projects, which I hope will be the next step for the ZUC, along with adding holdings from additional libraries.

WorldCat is run by member organization, OCLC. I foresee a cooperative managing ZUC, sustained by member libraries with a sliding scale dues structure covering the cost of server space and other costs.

 

Timeline

I see this as something that will be tweaked or even trashed once the team is assembled and a project manager designated, but here is a sketch.

February 22

Project initiation: Assign roles, discuss project concerns and ideas, remap this timeline, and establish workflows.

March 1

Discuss functional requirements and assign tasks.

March 8

Install Collective Access (QZAP profile) on a server (developer with a second/pair programmer)

Get familiar with CA tools and fora for each role.

March 15

Each team member presents a dataset. Discuss attributes to determine another dataset to add, transforming and ingesting data into the ZUC.

Designer leads a discussion on interface issues. 

March 22

Work on individual library holdings, de-duping records, and normalizing entities and tracking their relationship with zines. Designer presents wireframes.

March 29

Work on individual library holdings, de-duping records, and normalizing entities and tracking their relationship with zines.

April 5

Work on individual library holdings, de-duping records, and normalizing entities and tracking their relationship with zines. Preview of user interface.

April 12 – no class

April 19

Alpha launch: status report and attempt at bringing in records from other sources. Reassess.

April 26

Address issues discovered in alpha launch. Final design review.

May 3

Beta test or continue to address issues from alpha launch.

May 10 – dress rehearsal

May 17 – presentation

May 24

 

Roles

Project Manager – Leads the project and keeps it on track. Requires at least surface knowledge of coding, design, user experience, metadata, and library cataloging. This person will work with the team to establish and stick to a timeline, adapting it as needed. Personal strengths should include big picture thinking, collaborative leadership, an ability to stay focused and not get lost in details, and a cool head.

Lead Developer – Primary responsibility for technology planning and implementation. The developer should have a critical approach to technology, as well as skills in MySQL, PHP, XML, and jQuery. They should be able to communicate technical jargon to the client and take user needs seriously. Personal strengths should include being like the GC Digital Fellows: supportive, patient, and empathetic.

Client (Product Owner) – Keeps the project grounded in user needs, prevents it from becoming what seems cool or doable to the development team. The client has knowledge of zine libraries around the world, their needs and strengths. They will also be responsible for keeping the project ethical and responsible, according to the Zine Librarians Code of Ethics. Personal strengths include being able to flip between the client role and that of a team member, as they will need to contribute to each aspect of the project. They will need to be able to articulate user needs in a way that makes sense to each member of the team.

Lead Designer – Responsible for the look and feel of the catalog and architecture of the website. They will also need to have some PHP, XML, and CSS chops. Personal strengths should include creativity but also pragmatism—the need to balance the ultimate vision with what’s possible in the short term.

Lead Metadata Specialist – Takes charge of schema and authorities. This person should have knowledge of current and developing library cataloging standards and the principles of linked open data and BIBFRAME. Personal strengths include tight attention to detail.

Community Manager and Documentarian – Deals with internal and external communication: help text, shared working notes, social media, and grantwriting. This person should be organized and precise with their language. Personal strengths include creativity, flexibility, and excellent writing skills.

 

Resources

Have

($20/month, for which the Zine Union Catalog working group has currently raised $140, but I’d just as soon not use this right now if possible)

Digital fellows and GC workshops

Need

CUNY server space?

PHP, XML, MySQL, CSS, and jQuery skills

Appendix

Collective Access vs. Omeka

Functional Requirements Spreadsheet

Knight Prototype Grant Proposal –  In 2016 the Zine Libraries Zine Union Catalog working group was a finalist for this grant. We were not successful because what we were asking for was a planning grant, rather than funding to build a prototype, and thus were out of scope.

NEH HCRR Grant Proposal – In 2016 the Zine Libraries Zine Union Catalog wrote this grant, but the hosting institution pulled it due to a local restructuring. Thanks, University of Texas.

Scholar support letters from Kate Eichhorn, New School; Frank Farmer, University of Kansas, and Aiesha Turman, St. Joseph High School and Ph.D. Candidate Union Institute and University.

Zine Union Catalog working group notes

Zine Union Catalog notes on ZineLibraries.info

xZINECOREx GitHub repository – includes workflows and datasets

xZINECOREx zine (pdf) by Milo Miller

 

[1] Some of the language in this proposal is from grants that I co-wrote with others. I was the lead writer on a Knight grant and a contributor to an NEH grant. I’m just saying that so it’s clear that the proposal is the result of a collaborative effort. Since I didn’t write a proposal for my final project, I don’t feel that it’s on me to present 100% original content here. I hope that’s all right!

Posted in spring17, Student Post, ZUC | Tagged | Comments closed

Revised Proposal: Edit Swap

By Gregory Rocco | Published: February 16, 2017

Posting original blog post, both edited and amended to include the system description in the “Proposed Approach” section, the “Environmental Scan” section, and the appendix.

 

What is It?

An online editing platform where users request edits for their papers and edit other user’s papers with an incentivized currency system.

As the digital age rapidly advances and facilitates the evolution of sharing scholarship and academic discussion, online editing has yet to be perfected. It remains in development through various platforms that seem to neglect a means of sustainability. However, this isn’t intentional abandonment, it is a lack of a developed platform to facilitate user interaction and growth. As the humanities grow to incorporate digital methodologies, simple editing and review at the discretion of other scholars in its various disciplines require a new platform. This project will construct and establish a new approach to online editing – one that accounts for previous attempts at the formula while accounting for needs across more than a single institution.

This project looks to challenge the voluntary model of paper editing and provide a new platform in which editing is incentivized, while retaining academic merit. This project looks to eliminate the need for pay to edit services, and it provides remote academics, busy academics, or even scholars with disabilities to have their work edited by credible sources without the need for transit to an institution. It doesn’t completely eliminate institutional investment, but rather acts as an alternative potentially in conjunction with the mentioned method.

The humanities at its core stand to be representative of the entire human experience. As the humanities trends toward technology, it’s important that technology is utilized to the largest degree in accordance with the humanities. New methods of facilitating not only the humanities’ core discussions but its basic building blocks of papers and editing is essential, as it is the true foundation of the entire experience.

Narrative

A plethora of paid services currently exist on the web to facilitate the editing of academic papers, theses, and dissertations. Of course, most institutions offer resource centers featuring these services, but a remote academic may not necessarily be able to access them. The aforementioned web services are typically expensive, and some cannot even guarantee that the work will be viewed by an academic in a field relevant to your paper. This work isn’t looking to necessarily replace university editing centers, but rather act as a supplement to the process through facilitating remote discussions and editing exchanges. A platform currently does not exist in which academics can submit their work for editing in exchange for their own editorial services, which this project aims to provide.

Systems that currently look to achieve this goal operate under a gift economy. The problem of a system that operates under a gift economy is its sustainability due to required participation in a user to user relationship. This gift economy system might seem generous initially, but the rate at which feedback is generated might drop, debilitating the platform in the process as an open tool. In facilitated settings, these platforms might have success, but for natural individualized feedback outside of the classroom, there must exist a degree of incentive. What this project looks to promote is a barter economy across all of the various disciplines in the humanities. Editing would remain within a particular discipline, but the platform would incorporate spaces for papers from any field of study in the humanities to create an open accessibility environment. This platform’s goal is not to replace the peer review system, but rather facilitate stylistic and structural critiques of academic writing across the humanities by fellow academics.

Environmental Scan

The development of this project stemmed from an evaluation of editing services available to academics and the discussion of the future of peer review. One of the many concerns of aspiring academics is the existence of a place in which their work can be scrutinized for further review, and is convenient to suit their schedule and the potential recipients of their writing. This platform offers a unique approach to the traditional editing process through digital means.

This project looks to challenge the pay-for-edit services that exist and build upon already existing editing platforms. Social Paper and The Public Philosophy Journal facilitate academic discussion and editing through their respective platforms. However, they are both proprietary and limited in functionality when searching for an editing platform with consistency and accessibility.

Social Paper was one of the first ambitious examples of a facilitated online editing platform. It used The Graduate Center’s Academic Commons system, allowed public papers to be edited by the entire Commons user base, private papers to be edited by specific users or groups, and a modified version of CommentPress for feedback. The system is helpful for classes or groups that encourage a level of participation and feedback but doesn’t assist scholars outside of that structure. Also, the platform is contained within the Commons system, creating a degree of difficulty for any scholar not integrated within it.

Similar to Social Paper, The Public Philosophy Journal is a system designed to provide feedback and inspire discussions by allowing an open forum for ongoing projects. The project operates under a “current” system in which content is curated and originates on other websites. On items within this “current,” users can comment on, rate, and mark the piece as a “must read.” However, this space looks less toward editing and more toward general feedback. Another pitfall is a lack of user information or developed profiles, leaving anyone open to critique from anyone on the internet. It is also a proprietary platform geared towards philosophy, which closes the door to any other humanities discipline.

Edit Swap looks to take the basis of those two systems, create a new shared economy to keep the platform populated and open it up to any scholar in the humanities disciplines. It will use the same backend as Social Paper to allow users to make edits while containing it within a user to user incentivized relationship. Hopefully, through the incentivized method provided, user activity will continually increase, furthering both academia through editing and academic discussion in response to a plethora of topics in the content of submitted papers.

Proposed Approach

Users will initially sign up for the platform by providing academic credentials and affiliations. The credentials will exist as a part of their profile and they cannot sign up for the platform without developing a profile inclusive to their accolades, associated institutions, and publish works. The profile will be viewable through a searchable index and will be featured when looking to request edits, or when looking to edit a paper. Their profile will also feature feedback from other users that they are involved with in regards to either editing or requesting edits.

The work involves the balance between two roles of an academic in relation to editing: a requestor and an editor. The currency system within the platform operates through a credit system built on editing papers. Every page submitted by a requestor within a paper will require a credit while each page edited by an editor will gain a credit if accepted. A requestor can add the number of requested editors for a paper based on the amount of credits they possess. For example, a requestor with twenty credits can request two editors for a ten-page paper.

Page count will be held to certain word-count standards by the platform to ensure that no user attempts to place more for editing than allowable. The paper will be set with a deadline window, and once edited, the requestor will be able to accept or reject the edits. If accepted, the editor will receive the proper amount of credits, but if rejected, the editor must edit again to either be accepted for full credit, or rejected for partial credit. The administration of the platform will assume no liability for the decisions of the requestors, but a feedback system will factor into the decision of whether or not an editor would like to work with a requestor and vice versa.

Major Roles and Responsibilities

Project Manager

The project manager will be responsible for coordinating with the team to ensure that the project is delivered in accordance with the provided grant. The manager will also set dates and timelines not just for the development of the project, but the testing and execution of it as well.

Social Media Outreach

The social media outreach coordinator will be directly in charge of the promotion of the final product through a variety of outlets, as well as be responsible for answering questio

ns about the development of the platform. The social media outreach coordinator will be familiar with Facebook and Twitter ad campaigns, and also has knowledge of Google AdWords.

WordPress Developer

The WordPress developer will be well versed in HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, PHP, jQuery and Ruby. The WordPress developer will be in charge of setting up the initial user system, and backend of the WordPress. The developer will also be in charge of establishing the database to host not only user connections but the paper maintenance system as well. The developer will use jQuery to modify existing plugins to tailor them to the needs of the project site.

Graphic Designer

The graphic designer will be in charge of developing the front end of the website inclusive to logos, branding, and themes. The graphic designer will know how to operate Photoshop, Illustrator, Quark, Dreamweaver and HTML specifically to coordinate with the WordPress developer.

 

Appendix A: A flow chart of the Edit Swap process

edit swap

 

Posted in spring17, Student Post, Uncategorized | Comments closed

Revised Project Proposal: Encoding as Close Reading

By Tom Lewek | Published: February 15, 2017

My revised proposal is now available on GitHub.

During revision, it became clear that practicing digital humanities both requires iteration and underscores how more traditional humanistic practices (e.g. individual research, writing, and publishing) rely on iteration but often erase traces of it. Before going any further, it’s probably helpful to define “iteration” in this context as the cycle of producing, critiquing, revising, and reproducing work. Designers, for example, might cycle through numerous mockups of a magazine spread, adjusting art, color, copy, typography, or even overall page layout in each mockup. Programmers, to provide another example, might cycle through various prototypes of a sign-up form, adjusting information architecture, business rules and logic, or even design in each release. Iteration, in other words, aims for continuous improvement even as it acknowledges that there will be numerous false starts over the life of a project.

Last week’s class highlighted how such iteration will define much of the work we perform this semester. Answering questions from Jojo, about file types, or Eddie, about experimental poetry difficult to encode (he mentioned Susan Howe), encouraged me to refine my ideas in helpful ways. And Jason’s interest in, and knowledge of, the subject area covered in my proposal forced me to pare down the project’s scope. As the semester progresses, I expect that comments and questions from students, TAs, and Professor Rhody will have similar effects. Many of these revisions will be captured in the project’s code, and student journals will chart our shifting perceptions of our own projects. This emphasis on process, though, ultimately seems consistent with some of the currents of the digital humanities we studied during the fall semester—namely, the examination of how humanists actually produce scholarship. In fact, practicing digital humanities often involves foregrounding the debates, uncertainties, and changes that arise during the production of scholarship—iteration remains central to the work. At the same time, however, more traditional productions of scholarship are more iterative than we realize: an article or book undergoes developmental editing, copyediting, design, typesetting, and proofreading, which all help hone and present its argument. And yet those iterations recede from view when we read a typeset PDF of a journal article on JSTOR or a printed monograph—we cannot access the changes from which the final publication emerges. While this semester will primarily encourage us to build something, it may also encourage us to foreground the numerous iterations behind every act of building.

Posted in spring17, Uncategorized | Comments closed

Evalutaion of our DH project proposals: an idea

By Iuri Moscardi | Published: February 15, 2017

During the last weeks, we have read and discussed a lot of different aspects concerning the evaluation of Digital Humanities project proposals: relevance and pertinence about specific academic disciplines or fields of study; collaboration; consulting with experts; and so on.

From my point of view, there is one specific factor we should keep in strong consideration: the real, concrete intersection between two different forms of objects. On one side, indeed, we have something we are used to consider not (or not at all) digital, such as – looking to the project proposals of my classmates posted on the site – a zine catalogue, a series of events, academic papers, records about crimes, poems; on the other, we are all trying to take advantage of digital tools to circulate these non digital objects in a wider environment. And we are doing this, in this specific way, because we are sure that these objects deserve to be known and discussed by a number of people greater than their normal audience.

So, I think that we should consider, when we evaluate our projects, the degree of this interaction: I would assign a higher score to projects that mix in a more dynamic way the two natures of the objects, digital and non digital. In my opinion, a project that does not limit to apply digital tools to non digital data, but creates a dynamic intersection with, for instance, automatic processes is more valuable than other ones. We should, in other words, consider digital tools not only as passive receivers of our commands. And I think the projects of my classmates could be classified following their different approaches to this interactivity.

Another doubt I have is about the role of experts in the evaluation of our projects. Even if the relevance of their advises in undeniable, I think that the tight schedule we are force to follow would not allow us to wait too long for them. Maybe, we could ask the Digital Fellows of the GC to work as our experts group, also with the support of all the people invited to our classes during last semester.

Posted in spring17, Student Post | Comments closed

NYCDH Week: Sensing Urban Noise

By Gregory Rocco | Published: February 14, 2017

 

For NYCDH Week, I attended Tae Hong Park’s Sensing Urban Noise presentation on his CityGram project in collaboration with IBM. The project was primarily focused on urban soundscapes and the importance of place. For Tae Hong Park, the importance of a space has to do with the fact that there are memories and emotional attachments to them. The burning question was, how do we capture the life of these places through sound? With the help of Intel, the project has taken off by collecting data attributes from a few places, most notably outside NYU. The sound is captured through small minicomputers and attached microphones. His one-off phrase for the project was “The Dynamic mapping of “Non-Ocular Environmental Energies.””

 

The main goal of the project is for users to get involved, set up the API on a minicomputer of their own, and start capturing sound. He wants to build something similar to the purpleair project (purpleair.org) and have a map of soundscapes in the city.

 

A huge red flag that came up for me was the question of privacy. If you’re capturing sound in a public area (which can be linked to a form of P.I.), what are the privacy concerns for the project and how do you mitigate/deal with them? Mr. Park explained that all the computations of this sound data are handled by each individual minicomputer. The data that is sent back is non-alterable and can’t be used to recreate the sound that was actually occurring in the place of capture. The IBM representative also chimed in (which I was hoping for because of their recent massive involvement in big data collection practices) and he explained that IBM’s main collection project (BlueHorizon) is segmented, where workloads can’t talk to each other unless you want them to be able to, therefore rendering the data as encrypted as possible.
After the initial presentation, they demonstrated one of their products called Supercollider which dealt with manipulating sound through various scripts. Unfortunately, Eddy and I couldn’t use because it was only developed for Mac OS so far.

Posted in spring17, Student Post, Uncategorized | Comments closed

Journal 2/7: Why platforms make good projects

By Eduard Boguslavsky | Published: February 13, 2017

When I went to the lighting talks on the first day of NYCDH Week, most projects were of the platform and tool building variety. I was very impressed by these projects, but it was Professor Brier accepting his award and discussing his work quantifying coal strikes had such an immediate effect on me. Clearly, I am fascinated by evidence of larger forces acting on events. While contributions to tools, platforms, and other forms of humanities analysis offers a necessary work for the academic community. Like the development of statistical models and other quantitative devices employed by the social and hard sciences, these projects allow future scholars to pursue their hypotheses and other work. Further, building these projects with others in mind means we will seek universality and customization, rather than fitting the work to a particular end.

In class, I found the evaluation process fruitful. There were interesting project proposals. It was clear that clarity and detail are very valuable. My own proposal felt underdeveloped, but still got many useful questions. One realization I had is just how much information I had absorbed on the subject of lynching that others may not know.

A DH project of the argumentative variety requires extensive knowledge of a topic. It is also often a two-step process, requiring first the accumulation and of data, then the design or use of an analytic tool. Given that interest in DH, and not a specific discipline or topic is what unifies the class, such projects are not ideal. (Though I can’t help but think that there are enough Modernists and folks who are interested in 20th century poetry.)

Another thought I had is that unless a project is really developed and all but perfect in design, we can expect to make considerable changes once a team is assembled to work on it, despite the tight schedule. This makes a tool or platform project more attractive, because it requires less extensive learning or catch up from the team.

I attended the “Sensing Urban Noise” workshop at NYU. I was introduced to a few concepts there, notable Blue Horizon and SuperCollider. The former is a method (somewhat beyond my understanding-level) for distributing code to edge devices (such as, in this case, Raspberry Pis) and collecting their output. This allows for, in the case of this project (I believe a part of CityGram), devices to record the soundscape of a place, and send information about it without transmitting raw data (an obvious security concern). SuperCollider is a programming language for creating sound and music. This is a bit over my head, but I certainly found the presentation interesting. I was thinking a very practical application of this project is to record decibel measurements over time in a particular place. Many New Yorkers (myself included) live and sleep in rooms with too much noise, whether because of traffic, construction, or neighbors. The other application, and one that was discussed, is the creation of digital art.

Posted in spring17, Student Post | Tagged | Comments closed

DH Week Workshop: Design-Based Thinking for Humanists

By Jenna Freedman | Published: February 13, 2017

I think I would have loved this workshop, if Niko hadn’t gotten involved. I signed up for Design-Based Thinking for Humanists for my DH Week workshop assignment. It appealed to me because I am not a designer, but having recently employed one at work, I’ve learned how magical what they do is. I’d like to be able to zoom out on a project and “design think.” I’m often more of a detail person and maybe too literal. I’ve tried to train myself to be a more visual thinker, and though I can be of a conceptual mindset I do have a hard time picturing things.

I have to admit there were some other appeals to this workshop, including timing. Thursday was the only day I could have participated in DH Week without doing some major reshuffling. The workshop leader, Deanna Sessions, is someone I’d heard of in library land–and maybe even met? I suppose it could be myopic, but I like learning from people who share my perspective, though Sessions is now focused specifically on Ed Tech. I liked that Sessions planned to be both practical and creative in her approach. Those are my aspirations, too. I see she’s also a CUNY grad, and through this program, I’m falling for CUNY. When I can, I also prefer to attend workshops led by women, because patriarchy and microaggressions.

Anyway, I was unable to complete this week’s assignment, but I thought I would share a little about how I chose the workshop I would liked to have attended.

Posted in spring17, Student Post | Comments closed

Thoughts on Evaluation Criteria

By Danabelle Ignes | Published: February 7, 2017

I am sharing a set of evaluation criteria and questions. I feel like it is a very necessary caveat I am not coming from a place of authority or expertise. Instead, I’m going to share criteria highlighted in this week’s readings and last week’s discussion led by Dr. Rhody of a proposal’s format, content, considerations, and evaluation that I think will be applicable to our evaluations of projects at this early stage and in preparation for the rest of the semester.

The following are productive questions contained in Geofrey Rockwell’s “Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work.”  I think will be pertinent in considering project proposals at this early stage of development.

-Is it accessible to the community of study?

-Will experts be consulted?

-Does it interact with other related scholarship and/or DH projects?

-Is there a well considered long-term accessibility plan?

Qualities to be considered for evaluation that I would like to paraphrase and keep in mind from Todd Presner’s, “How to Evaluate Digital Scholarship”

-Consideration of crediting and roles

-Integration of research, teaching, and service

-Peer review (does our class count?)

-Impact

-Development cycle

-Experimentation and risk taking

While reading through the NEH guideline, I can’t stop thinking about the rumors that Donald Trump plans to cut the NEH’s budget… Nevertheless, the model for application process provided by the NEH illuminates the levels of scrutiny digital humanities project proposals must endure in order to earn funding. Their process model reveals an early consideration of applicants’ qualifications and expertise. As I am considering this class a form of training to build expertise on dh practices, at this early stage, I will not be considering this factor so strongly in my vote. At the same time, based on last semester’s presentations, I am sure that proposal writers’ expertise and interest on the topics explored only serve to strengthen and inform project design.

I am going to keep in mind conceptualization and feasibility. Additional questions I will be asking are: How fluid/rigid are roles going to be? Is the timeline feasible? Is there room to amend the timeline to account for unexpected discoveries or problems? Is the project contributing to a particular body of scholarship? Is the project contributing to digital humanities practitioners at large?

Posted in spring17, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments closed

A Six Point Criteria for Assessing Digital Projects

By Lauren Kehoe | Published: February 7, 2017

I want to suggest a six point method for evaluating digital projects:

1. Contribution to the humanities
2. Collaboration
3. Cross/interdisciplinary networks-within and beyond the academy
4. Content & design
5. Openness and reflection of the process
6. Adaptability, transformation, and sustainability

First, the project must clearly articulate what the contribution and significance to the humanities will be made. Is a clear question being asked, and answered, by the project? Does the work provide new modes for understanding pre-existing scholarship? Does the work expose new methods for engaging with/organizing/classifying text, images, data, etc.? What new methodologies are developed through the digital project? Todd Presner (2012), in the Journal of Digital Humanities, posits the following questions as a way to determine a project’s contribution to a given field or fields:
● How is the work engaged with a problem specific to a scholarly discipline or group of disciplines?
● How does the work reframe that problem or contribute a new way of understanding the problem?
● How does the work advance an argument through both the content and the way the content is presented?
● How is the design of the platform an argument?
To demonstrate the significance of the project, an acknowledgment of similar projects is necessary. What has already been done and how is this project different? Will it build upon or diverge from pre-existing work? Are there models that have been followed or inspired this project?

As pointed out across all of the readings, collaboration (and building upon what has come before) is an integral component of all digital work. Acknowledgment of the many traditional, and non-traditional, roles and collaborators should be clearly articulated and documented. Not every person involved in the project will have the same level of involvement at the same time, but it is essential to recognize the efforts of all participants, regardless of the way they contributed. A digital project requires diversity of skill sets to succeed. Nowviskie (2011) states that digital production requires close and meaningful human relationships/partnerships amongst faculty and programmers, system admins, students & postdocs, creators and owners of content, designers, publishers, archivists, digital preservationists and other cultural heritage professionals. This is just one list of possible collaborators to a digital project.

Next, collaboration builds networks amongst the project participants, but the project could be networked in several other ways. It can be:
● Inter and/or cross disciplinary
● Link to other projects both digital and traditional
● Expand upon scholarly work already being done and create opportunities for new modes of scholarship
● Create connections with audiences both inside and outside of the academy (allow for contributions, feedback, and criticism)
● Provide a mechanism for easily linking to content from the digital project in other environments

The content and design of the project require a substantial consideration. What is the quality of the content and how/where was it acquired? How is the content visually represented? Is it interactive? Does it follow professional standards and is proper credit provided? If images are used, does it provide high resolution versions? What metadata standards are used? Is the text content edited properly and understandable? What design considerations were used? Was there a web designer consulted and is the project easy to navigate through? Is it visually appealing and engaging? Were usability tests employed to determine needed improvements?

A main ethos of DH is openness, so an important factor of assessment is how transparent is the project? Is it accessible? Does it provide substantial documentation and a narrative of its evolution? Does the narrative reflect on challenges, the process of creating the project, and ongoing plans for the project? How can users contribute to the project and adapt/learn from/modify it? Does it use open platforms to construct it and avoid proprietary applications if possible?

Lastly, the assessment of a digital project should address the adaptability, transformation, and sustainability of the project. Can the project be made and remade? How do the project participants foresee the project evolving over time and what mechanisms are in place to facilitate adaption? How sustainable is the project and who will be responsible for the ongoing development and maintenance of the project? How can the project predict and avoid obsolescence? How will other audiences and scholars use and adapt this project?

Most of the discussions in this week’s readings on assessment used tenure and promotion as a real application for assessment. However, the nature of these digits projects goes beyond that process and should be assessed based on an open engagement with all audience members (inside and outside of the academy) that will be using and assessing the projects.

Posted in spring17, Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments closed

  • Archives

  • Welcome to Digital Praxis 2016-2017

    Encouraging students think about the impact advancements in digital technology have on the future of scholarship from the moment they enter the Graduate Center, the Digital Praxis Seminar is a year-long sequence of two three-credit courses that familiarize students with a variety of digital tools and methods through lectures offered by high-profile scholars and technologists, hands-on workshops, and collaborative projects. Students enrolled in the two-course sequence will complete their first year at the GC having been introduced to a broad range of ways to critically evaluate and incorporate digital technologies in their academic research and teaching. In addition, they will have explored a particular area of digital scholarship and/or pedagogy of interest to them, produced a digital project in collaboration with fellow students, and established a digital portfolio that can be used to display their work. The two connected three-credit courses will be offered during the Fall and Spring semesters as MALS classes for master’s students and Interdisciplinary Studies courses for doctoral students.

    The syllabus for the course can be found at cuny.is/dps17.

  • Categories

Skip to toolbar