TRIKE: Revised Project Plan

By Natasha Ochshorn | Published: February 10, 2019

TRIKE Project Plan

  • Team Members and roles  
    • Nancy Foasberg: content strategy and development, editor, OER perspective.
    • Rob Garfield: technical development, pedagogical perspective.
    • Hannah House: content strategy and development, content project manager, data critique perspective.
    • Natasha Ochshorn: content strategy and development, philosophy of DH perspective, communications.
    • Sabina Pringle: outreach, technical project management and development.
  • Abstract
    TRIKE (Transformational Repository for Instruction, Knowledge, and Explication) is an open educational resource providing infrastructure for the sharing of datasets and data transformations alongside humanistic interrogation of the decisions made in selecting and working with that data. As a resource, it is being created primarily for use in courses in the digital humanities, providing pedagogical scaffolding in the form of thematic and textually linked data-based experiments that will model how data-work fits into the humanitarian’s toolbox. Additionally, we envision this modeling will have broader applications benefiting humanities research outside of the classroom by providing any interested researcher with contextualizing information about the decisions made when working with data. We propose development of a prototype website that we hope will be used by faculty partners and their students in Fall 2019. We will evaluate the prototype against predetermined measures of success to determine next steps for a new, funded scope to expand the prototype’s capabilities and reach.

 

 

  • Environmental scan
    Humanitarian Datasets have proliferated, however, while an environmental scan revealed several projects addressing one or more of the modes we plan to work in, few projects marry datasets, methodological instruction, and data criticality, despite calls for this kind of work.
    The prototype we propose expands beyond existing resources because it : a) provides access to a varied set of datasets at multiple stages, b) comments on the datasets to illuminate both the constructed nature of all data and the specific choices that were made when handling these datasets, and c) provides nuanced, methodological instruction based in concrete datasets while acknowledging that multiple methodologies may be appropriate for any given data.

    Existing instructional datasets
    Alan Liu’s DH Toychest provides curated lists of digital humanities tools and tutorials for various approaches to data alongside a “starting set” of demo corpora, but does not provide “work-in-progress” snapshots of datasets. The Perseids Project structures datasets for reuse and provides lesson plans for instructors, but is methodologically and disciplinarily specific.

    Existing methodological tutorials
    Collections of methodological tutorials can be found at sites including: Tooling up for Digital Humanities, devdh.org, Digital Art History 101, and Nodegoat.  These resources vary in breadth and focus, and provide advice and tutorials for novice DHers, but do not provide sample datasets.

    Other projects include data with suggestions of how it might be used. Jonathan Reeve’s Corpus DB provides both data and some Python scripts with which it can be manipulated. The M.O.N.K. Project offers public domain collections and the schemas that go along with them. Making the History of 1989 provides lesson plans and modules alongside primary sources. None represent the choices made by researchers as they work with a corpus.

    Existing data collections
    Electronic, humanities-relevant data collections, both open and toll-access, are plentiful, but vary in the amount of user support and access to data that they provide.

    Many of the largest collections provide some instruction for researchers, including the Digital Public Library of America’s “DPLA Pro”, Europeana’s “Europeana Pro”, “Chronicling America”, the New York Public Library digital collections and associated API, and the Open Science Framework. Toll-access resources such as JSTOR and primary source databases offered by GALE and Alexander Street Press may also serve as data sources; JSTOR in particular helps to enable this with JSTOR Data for Research. Institutions such as Michigan State University also curate datasets, but do not provide access to the general public (Higgins, Kudzia, and Rodriguez). Other potential data sources include NYC Open Data, HathiTrust, Wikidata, the Vera Institute of Justice, and others.

    TRIKE works on a much smaller scale than the resources listed above, but will be much more explicit in its relationship to both pedagogy and methodology.

    While instructional datasets, methodological tutorials, and data collections all exist, we did not find a tool that uses a variety of types of real data to demonstrate the process of data preparation and provide tutorials for their instructional use.  TRIKE will be a unique resource and will help to fulfill an important need.

 

 

  • What technologies will be used?
    Our site will be developed in WordPress and hosted on the Commons to leverage the existing support base and community around both.

    • Data files and documentation will be made available on GitHub
    • Other Technologies to be determined by the datasets we choose
      • Definite:
        • data prep, analysis and processing: Python
      • Potential:
        • Mapping: Carto
        • Visualization Tools: Tableau
        • Topic Modeling: NLTK or gensim
        • Image analysis
        • Gephi, Cytoscape, or another tool for network analysis

 

 

    • which of these are known?
        • Rob, Sabina, and Nancy have experience with WordPress
        • Sabina has experience with Manifold
        • Nancy has experience with Omeka
        • Hannah, Rob, Nancy and Sabina are studying Python
        • Hannah and Sabina have experience with Tableau
        • Hannah has experience with Carto and Cytoscape
    • which need to be learned?
        • We will need to explore available themes and plugins for WordPress on Commons to find the ones best suited to the organizational framework of our project
        • We are all pretty new to Slack, so are experiencing a learning curve there as well
        • We will also likely need to learn more about whichever of the analysis tools we choose to use
    • what’s plan to learn them? what support is needed?
        • Python Users Group (if applicable)
        • Consultations with the Digital Fellows and Andie
        • Consultations with Jonathan Reeve and Patrick Smyth
        • Online Tutorials and other documentation
        • NYCDH week workshops, particularly on Omeka and gensim
  • How will the project be managed?
      • Slack with Google Drive (and Giphy) integrations
  • Milestones
Posted in Group Project Reports | Authors: | 4 Responses

NYCDH Week Reflection: How can software workshops be more productive?

By Hannah House | Published: February 10, 2019

There is a conundrum with workshops that seek to teach new software tools which I’d already noticed last semester in GC workshops, and that is the time required to get the software running on people’s machines. Sometimes the installation requires using the command line and editing sensitive system files, which not every computer user is necessarily savvy enough to do safely. Even savvy computer users can make serious errors.

In one workshop I won’t name (and I love the person who was running it, I wish he’d had more time to actually teach the software) a full 1.5 of the 2 hours was spent trying to install the needed programs on every attendees computers. Another participant at the workshop was helping troubleshoot installation issues and – in a moment of blind and misplaced trust – I let him take over my computer. He wasn’t able to get the program up and running but nothing seemed terribly wrong until I tried to launch Terminal a few hours after the workshop had ended. My Terminal immediately started issuing error messages. 

Long story short, after some digging I discovered that my cavalier “helper” had made some incorrect edits to my bash_profile system file. He hadn’t backed up the file before editing it either. Thankfully, I was able to access a Time Machine backup once I got home to replace the messed up system file with the working previous version. Luckily I’m pretty good with the command line and troubleshooting my own technical issues and I had my own backup handy. Otherwise I would have been left up the creek, as they say, with a crippling system-level computer problem.

I took off work and spent 4 hours on this workshop, including travel time, and I didn’t come out with much to show for it because there just wasn’t time to cover the actual topic. What I got instead were serious computer problems that ate up yet more of my time getting fixed.

What different approaches could be encouraged by DH week organizers to make better use of time and cover more material in the workshops? These is no single answer, but I have some ideas to share.

  1. Perhaps more software workshops should be offered in two parts; an initial session in which knowledgable people help those who need it with installation and a separate session that requires the software already be installed so that it can wholly focus on teaching how to use the software. Those good with computers could install themselves in advance (see #3 below) and only attend the second part of the workshop.
  1. Or perhaps there can be recurring general installation help workshops throughout the week that people who want help could attend for support installing any number of tools that will be the focus of DH week workshops.
  1. Sending out software installation instructions in advance or posting them with the workshop description might save time and prevent on the fly mishaps. I would prefer to install software myself before any workshop in the future.
  1. The person who messed up my computer wasn’t the official workshop presenter, but he did seem endorsed and encouraged to be “fixing” the problems for other attendees. Maybe a refresher on good practices, like backing up important files before editing them, could be circulated to all workshop runners as a helpful reference before the start of DH week. Or maybe this could be sent to attendees. Actually, why not send it to everybody.
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NYCDH Reflection: A Call for More Workshops for Workers

By Sabina Pringle (she/ella) | Published: February 10, 2019

I have little to say about the NYC Digital Humanities week because I was unable to attend, due to the fact that I have three full-time jobs which require me to be in offices and classrooms Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

I have more to say about not having gone. As a student in the Digital Humanities MA Program at CUNY Graduate Center, this series of talks and workshops was of great interest to me. I was distressed to find that 37 of NYCDH’s 39 workshops had been scheduled Monday to Friday between 10am and 5pm. The other two – one at Columbia’s Butler Library and another at CUNY Graduate Center – had been scheduled at 6:30pm. Unfortunately, the two evening sessions were on the two evenings I have class. Wait! – I’m not asking NYCDH to tailor its schedule to my individual needs. I’m asking NYCDH to offer workshops and talks every evening of the week from 6:30 to 10:30pm, to meet the needs of people like me. A great many MA students, who don’t get the same funding as PhD students, have jobs. Many are adjuncts, wherefore talks, panels and workshops benefit not only them but also those whom they teach.[1]

I asked one of the NYCDH organizers why almost all of the NYCDH events had been scheduled between 10am and 5pm. I explained that it’s difficult for people with day jobs to attend. The organizer told me that it’s not easy to secure spaces where lectures and workshops can take place after 5pm. In New York City. Yes.

Many practitioners of Digital Humanities are keenly aware that the field must strive to be more inclusive of people from different economic, ethnic, racial and social backgrounds. In Digital Humanities: the Expanded Field (2016), Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold critique the idea, which had been embraced by ADHO in 2011 and by DH Debates in 2012, that digital humanities could be described as a big tent, arguing that not everyone fits in the tent. In 2016, Klein and Gold proposed instead “the model of an expanded field […] that aims to foreclose the question of “who’s in and who’s out” by allowing the “differently structured possibilities” of the digital humanities to emerge.”[2]

To be expansive and inclusive, NYCDH should make more lectures and workshops available to students, adjuncts and other digital humanists who have full time or multiple part time jobs. Institutional support for students who can request days off work but cannot do without the income would be another way to help those students attend.

[1] The problem of economic exclusion in academia is brilliantly discussed in The Absent Presence: Today’s Faculty by Brian Croxall, a visiting assistant professor of English at Clemson University who delivered a paper in absentia at the MLA conference in 2009 because he could not afford to go.

[2] Lauren F. Klein and Matthew K. Gold, “Digital Humanities: the Expanded Field.” DH Debates, 2016.

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NYCDH Week Reflection: 360 Photo and Video Storytelling

By Sandy Mui (she/her/hers) | Published: February 10, 2019

On Tuesday, February 5, I attended the NYCDH Week workshop “Hands-on with 360 Photo and Video Storytelling” at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The instructor was Matt MacVey, who specializes in 360 video and immersive media at the J-School.

This was actually a great workshop that I was fortunate to fit into my schedule this week. As a journalist/journalism student, I’ve always been in awe of immersive journalism and anything that helps enhance storytelling, really, so it was an absolute privilege to experience 360 photo and video firsthand.

My biggest takeaway from the workshop was that it’s actually relatively easy and not too expensive to get started in 360 photo and video! Matt said the cheapest camera that does 360 photo and video goes for about $100, and another one he showed us can go upwards of $500-$600. I forgot the specific camera we worked with, but one camera Matt talked about a lot was the Samsung Gear 360 — the 2017 version goes for $85 on Amazon. What you’ll also need, of course, is a monopod, which after a quick Google Search, doesn’t seem to go for more than $20.

What’s most important, if you’re working with a 360 camera, is where you place the camera. This impacts the overall “shot” that you’re capturing in terms of what can actually be seen in the shot, and how “far” people/objects look in the “shot.”

For 360 photos specifically, you can actually take them with your phone using the Google Street View app. It takes some getting used to at first, but the images that can be produced from it are actually quite remarkable. Here’s one that Matt took at the Detroit Institute of Arts (I had issues embedding it, so below is a screenshot, and here’s also a link to view it interactively on Google Maps):

360 videos are where it gets more complicated, since this requires a lot more technique and is likely used by news organizations for enhanced storytelling. Using Google Cardboards, Matt had us view a 360 video produced by The New York Times, “10 Shots Across the Border,” which was about a Mexican 16-year-old who was killed by the United States Border Patrol. We had a brief discussion afterwards about how watching the video through the cardboard “almost made us feel like we’re there,” and something as simple as the height of the fence could be better perceived through the cardboard (rather than if we read or heard about how tall the fence was).

After this workshop, I’m considering working with 360 photo and video this semester for my capstone class, since I have to produce two stories for the class, and my professor encourages students to experiment with tools/techniques that they’re not necessarily familiar with. It’ll come down to what exactly the story I’d like to produce is about though, since using 360 photo/video has to make sense with the concept (and shouldn’t be added in as a tool just for the sake of it). Something for me to think about!

If anyone’s interested, Matt was kind enough to share his slides from the workshop. You can access it here.

Some other resources Matt shared:

Related newsletters that Matt recommended:

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NYCDH Week Reflection on IMDb as a Dataset for Digital Humanities Workshop

By Carolyn A. McDonough | Published: February 10, 2019

I attended the IMDb as a Dataset for Digital Humanities workshop on Wed. Feb. 6 (Nancy Foasberg was in attendance also).

The presenters were friendly and knowledgeable, and their combined expertise areas were Media Studies (Cindy Conaway) and Computer Science (Diane Shichtman).

An early valuable takeaway from the workshop for me was their definition of Digital Humanities, which was/is: “the intersection of humanities’ and social science methods with tools of computer science.”

Cindy and Diane then asked us if we knew Microsoft Access and SQL, and if any of us had ever used IMDb as a data source and/or downloaded data from it. They then listed the content found on IMDb as a “data source” of “media items” (their term) which are: movies, shows, video games, TV series, video short films, audio books (some).

Their biggest caveat in downloading data from IMDb is that you will get a “static subset” and as the IMDb content is constantly changing, this could be a problem in the long-term analysis of a large dataset project.

They then listed some projects using IMDb: The Oracle of Bacon, “Adult Films”, UCLA Race Film, Deb Vanderhoeven, Fan Use, Seinfeld (their project).

With that they launched into their demo, which Cindy introduced as “there are people who are more ‘Bacon-y’ than [the actor] Kevin Bacon now…” as in the well-known trivia “game” of “six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon”.

Cindy reported that Seinfeld has 32,500 people associated with him via this six degrees “parlor game” ratio.

I was wondering where she was headed with this information which struck me as rather superficial.

Their knowledge of IMDb as a dataset and its shortcomings (of which there are many) combined with computer science and SQL are all excellent.

But I wasn’t “getting” the point of their “research” which I say in quotes because, as much as I love Seinfeld as a fan, I was unclear about the purpose of their work.

So I asked, “what is your objective in using IMDb as a dataset via Seinfeld?” Cindy’s response was that the purpsoe was something on the order of writing a book titled something like “Seinfeld by the Numbers” (a la the existing book “Seinfeldia”). Hmmm…

I was then quite stunned that they’ve gotten serious funding from the NEH for this project and have traveled to conferences such as DH 2018 presenting this project. Cindy has a kindly personality and she was excitedly reporting that “because [their project] is Digital Humanities, it can be anything…!”

This made me realize how valuable and disciplined the GC’s MA in DH and ITP Programs are because, as students in these programs, we must defend the DH-y-ness of our projects for department and project approval.

Having shaped and re-shaped my ITP Project toward DH-y-ness, and now doing the same for DH Praxis group project Lost Art Collective, I do believe Cindy and Diane would be hard pressed to get their Seinfeld project approved by GC DH and ITP professors.

To use Seinfeld itself as a model, for those familiar with the show, Jerry Seinfeld is known to have pitched the show to NBC as a “show about nothing” and even re-created this on the show as a plot line. So, forgive me, but I perceive this project is about “nothing” and yet, it is getting grant $ and conference credits for being DH-y.

Their closing rhetorical questions were helpful and important:

Is the data meaningful? Does it have everything — is it complete? Is it accurate — is it correct? Is the data that IS there meaningful? Does is represent what we think it represents? (validity) Is it consistent? (reliability)

But I couldn’t get over the hurdle that they approach a database such as IMDb — even though it technically falls under the domain of Media Studies and according to them also DH — with such an un-academic content pursuit, especially given its technical shortcomings (such as the shoddy solution of merely numbering same names as 1, 2, 3, etc., so that Paul Newman the actor is listed as Paul Newman 1) and IMDb’s not-so-nice tech management style (which they’ve had personal experience with).

I daresay Jerry, Elaine, George, Kramer and Newman would find this, forgive me, laughable…?

They didn’t offer the Power Point they projected, and have not emailed it to participants yet, but I’m quite sure they would provide it upon request.

Using IMDb as a Dataset for Digital Humanities

Cindy Conaway, an associate professor in Media Studies and Communication and Diane Shichtman an associate professor in Information Systems at SUNY Empire State College will discuss using the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and its advantages and challenges as a dataset for Digital Humanities. In many ways IMDb is an excellent source for Digital Humanities projects and gives media studies scholars a new way to use Digital Humanities. The organization makes it free to download a great deal of its very robust data. However much of IMDb’s data is inconsistent, incomplete, and often wrong or misleading. The downloadable information is also limited to certain categories. This presentation will also discuss the challenges of interdisciplinary work, and how changes in IMDb’s process over several years, and differing views available to scholars can also create issues as we have found in our project tracing connections using the show Seinfeld.

 

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Immigrant Newspapers: Digital Collection of 1860-1890 New York City — Project Plan

By Sandy Mui (she/her/hers) | Published: February 9, 2019

Team Members and roles

  • Jennifer Cheng: Developer
  • Sandy Mui: Developer
  • S.C. “Luci” Lucier: Project manager and Outreach
  • Antonios Liamis: Design/UX

Abstract

New York is home to a thriving media sector of hundreds of community and ethnic publications, a large portion of which serve immigrant communities in their respective languages. Taking the historical route, we propose a digital collection in which the parameters are narrowed down to newspapers founded between 1860-1890, and that target about five different immigrant populations. We believe this project would showcase a sliver of immigrant history through the lens of the news media – a perspective that is often overlooked. Through the newspapers that served newcomers in their native language, one can trace immigrant waves and population patterns. For example, German immigration to New York peaked in the 19th century, which can be noted through the abundance of German-language newspapers at the time.

This project would target anyone interested in the history of New York, especially if that interest encompassed immigration and journalism, as well as members of the general public who may have gained a recent interest in immigration groups in light of the current political climate.  In a relatively small way, this site strives to combat some of the hostile contemporary rhetoric directed toward immigrants by providing a reminder of how immigrants have been an integral part of U.S. history and especially New York City history. Contrary to the belief of some, immigrant communities — even back then — lived and thrived in their own enclaves where they spoke and interacted in their own languages. By showcasing these newspapers, this effort would affirm that even in the 1800s, immigrants relied on the familiar — and an important and natural piece of that familiarity included news in their native tongue.

Environmental scan

  • what problem does this solve?

We see this project as a small contribution to the field of digital humanities because it compiles information about historical newspapers, which served to inform and educate a unique group of readers: immigrants living in a new country that had unfamiliar cultures and languages, making survival all the more difficult. There is great value in gathering and exploring the journalistic practices and products of immigrant groups in New York City. Currently, there is no resource that’s solely devoted to displaying information about immigrant newspapers. Our database will centrally organize these newspaper “archives” and findings in a way that provides insight to the groups, the environment, and the time period as a whole. As the website is focused in period, group, and location, greater attention can be placed on seeking images and additional information, as well as ways of presenting the profiles and visualization in a visually-appealing and user-friendly manner.

  • what lacuna does it fill?

There are a few different resources that document or archive newspapers of this time, but they do not all contain the same information centrally. The breadth of documents and information are also not represented well in current platforms. These types of websites are sometimes quite difficult to use when both browsing casually or searching for something specific. Given the vast amount of information in the existing databases, it can be a bit cumbersome at times to find location or community-specific periodicals. An additional feature of this project would be a search tool that finds NYC-centric newspapers based on country of origin, time, place, etc. and also serves as a means of organizing the index portion of the site.

  • what similar projects are there? (and any plans for discovery in the next week)

Numerous databases exist that collect and document historical newspapers in NYC and the rest of the U.S., with one of the most prominent ones being Chronicling America, an initiative of the National Digital Newspaper Program (which is a joint effort between NEH and the Library of Congress). The online database lets users search for U.S.-based newspapers, both past and present, and offers digitized versions of select historical publications. Other similar databases exist such as Readex, 19th Century US Newspapers and the catalogue at the Center for Research Libraries and on ProQuest. Access to these particular sites, for the most part, is given through libraries. Our project would use these databases as resources from which to compile the names and details of the immigrant newspapers in NYC.

Our goal of discovery within the next week is to explore similar sites and develop ideas for specific features that we want as part of our compilation. Ideally, we would provide the user an experience that is more than just an archive of information, such as an interactive map of publication houses or some other visualization of data mined from content. We will be working with around five different subcultures, so there is a great potential for data visualization and highlighting of information, showcased within different elements of the site.

What technologies will be used?

  • which of these are known?

Through a database of these newspapers that will be compiled in the beginning stages of the project, we hope to deliver a website that contains the digital collection of newspaper profiles and a collection of visualizations that present trends and historical information found within the newspaper data and beyond. Our team does not have much experience with complex tools and technologies that exist for creating websites, but the developers (Sandy and Jennifer) have intermediate to advanced knowledge of WordPress and HTML/CSS.

  • which need to be learned?

Outside of general WordPress and HTML/CSS, for the website, our team may also look into Omeka (a free, open-source content management system for online digital collections) or Javascript (a programming language). Our team also does not have much experience with interactive data visualizations, but one possible option we could draw inspiration from is ArtMaps, as mentioned above. This would be useful as an extra module of the webpage. The reader will be able to play with the interactive map after navigating the “archival” collections. Obviously, discovering and settling on our chosen data resources is our highest priority since it will determine specific design choices, technologies, and layouts of web pages.

  • what’s plan to learn them? what support is needed?

We likely will do most of our learning for these technologies online and through our own experimentation/practice with these technologies. However, it may be helpful to attend workshops at the Graduate Center that are offered through the ITP Skills Labs or Digital Fellows. Oftentimes, these workshops are related to website creation and data visualization, which are two quintessential components of our project. And we may reach out to the Digital Fellows during office hours.

How will the project be managed?

This group will be communicating using both Slack, Airtable and Google Docs/Sheets. We will be utilizing these platforms to research and gather information centrally, set and meet deadlines, and discuss content decision-making. The information for the database of newspapers will be collected in Airtable.

Milestones 

  • Week 3—Week 7 (February 12—March 12): Finish compiling newspaper database
  • Week 7—Week 9 (March 12—March 26): Website mock-up #1
  • Week 9—Week 11 (March 26—April 9): Website mock-up #2
  • Week 11—Week 12 (April 9—April 16): Finalize logo
  • Week 12—Week 13 (April 16—April 23): Finish data visualizations
  • Week 13—Week 14 (April 23—April 30): Finish website with all finalized elements (database, logo, data visualizations, etc.)
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DH Week Reflections, after Possibly Too Many Workshops

By Nancy Foasberg | Published: February 9, 2019

Because I’m on sabbatical, I decided to do my best to take full advantage of DH week, so I ran around the city attending as many workshops as I could! Please note that this is exhausting — but worthwhile. Here’s what I attended:

General and/or Theoretical:

  • Kickoff Event (Meredith Broussard keynote and panel consisting of Jenna Freedman, Juber Ayala, Alex Gil and Wendy Hayden)
  • Fair Use in the Digital Humanities (Jill Cirasella)
  • Information and Democracy Edit-a-thon

Pedagogy:

Text Analysis and Network Analysis:

Communication:

  • Intro to Omeka (Kimon Keramidas)
  • Advanced Omeka (Kimon Keramidas)

Now that I look at this list… that’s a whole lot, and I probably shouldn’t try to write out all my thoughts on every workshop here. So, I’ll start with my general thoughts on DH Week 2019.

I love the multi-institutional character of DH Week. As someone who didn’t grow up in a city, this is what’s really amazing about New York — the fact that there are so many potential colleagues here, doing interesting work all across the city in multiple institutions. There are often events and collaborative opportunities within CUNY, especially as a librarian, but visiting campuses outside CUNY and talking with people there is much more rare, so I’m excited that this is possible and would love to see more events of this kind.

However, there are definite drawbacks. The obvious one is geography — attending back to back workshops in different parts of the city is quite difficult, especially with the afternoon workshops, which often ended at the same time another one was starting. I found this choice a little odd, but I suppose people probably aren’t supposed to attend as many events as I wanted to.

But the other problem, and one I think we all need to make sure we’re thinking about not just for DH Week, is accommodating attendees from outside the institution. To create a good experience for people not affiliated with an institution, the planners of an event need to do a lot! When I walk in as someone from another institution, this is what I hope for:

  1. Access privileges
  2. Wifi access
  3. Good signage, in case someone isn’t already familiar with the campus
  4. Consistent advertising about when and where the event is
  5. No assumptions about what the attendees have access to or already know

And it turns out this is really hard! I ran into problems with at least one of the above at almost every non-CUNY workshop,* and I’m not saying this to criticize the organizers of the events, because I’m thinking about events I’ve hosted at Queens College and I’m not sure I did a great job either. Universities are built to accommodate the people affiliated with them — which is not to say they SHOULD be, but it’s something I’ve started to realize a little more thoroughly here.

But I also think that the guest wifi in particular says a lot about whether the institution is more interested in accommodating visitors or keeping out intruders. I was at a lot of NYU workshops, and the workshops were really great and the presenters were lovely, but the guest wifi login was a well-kept secret that the presenters didn’t know. This is really extreme, but all the institutions had problems somewhere along this list.

That was kind of a critical way to open my reflection! But I love DH Week and how it’s grown. I really love the breadth of topics, and that they are pitched at different experience levels, despite the challenges this poses. “Advanced Topics in Word Embeddings” was a great example of this; the workshop was advertised as requiring a certain level of expertise, but the presenter, Jonathan Reeve, was also really careful about checking everyone’s level of comfort and expertise throughout the workshop — I actually got a lot out of that, despite being new to the topic AND having a couple of technical issues. It was also really great being able to attend a workshop along with a combination of faculty and graduate students from across multiple disciplines as well as multiple institutions, and I’m always happy to see more opportunities to bring these disparate groups together.

~

Without going into detail on each of workshop, let me give some of the highlights for me:

Meredith Broussard talking about how we should be careful with the metaphors we use to talk about technology. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think it’s really important. The level of anthropomorphism (or in some cases, almost animism) with which we often talk about technology obscures the labor that went into it and the choices that are inherent in its design, but it also encourages learned helplessness (or, it discourages engagement and curiousity). I loved her critique of the black box idea (it’s a way of not explaning things that should probably be explained), and especially her insistence that math is not better than people.

Alex Gil making a point I hadn’t previously understood about the importance of community archives: they allow the community to make sense of itself without being passed through the lens of whiteness that is the inevitable result of the work of a mostly-white profession. Jenna Freedman was of course quite correct to point out that it’s possible to build another kind of librarianship, as they’ve very intentionally done at Barnard, but Alex was correct that the state of the profession right now is too white and with too many incidents of racism, large and small. (Of course, this was also timely, coming very soon after a major librarian conference at which several racist incidents occurred.)

Getting to see how Jill teaches about fair use. I know a lot about fair use already (which isn’t to say I didn’t learn a couple things), but Jill is so good at teaching and I’m hoping to incorporate some of this into what I do next time I’m teaching a workshop about copyright-related issues!

The really thoughtful way that the workshop on Building a Support System in the DH Classroom pulled together various roles — librarians, educational technology, faculty, students — to model for us how an assignment might be built, and the questions that we need to ask when we do. We talked in that workshop about how it can be really difficult to collaborate across roles in this way, since institutions are largely not built for that (a problem both in this case and throughout DH), but it also gave us a starting point for thinking about assignments from these different perspectives.

Learning about the slightly mind-blowing nature of word embddings — for those who don’t know (as I didn’t before this workshop!) this means that you can map out where the words in a text belong in 300-dimensional space (!!) based on their context and use this spatial metaphor to identify parts of speech and other similarities betwen different types of words. I’m going to have to go through this whole thing again because it’s all new to me, but it’s … just really cool.

Getting to see how using SQL to pull data for a network analysis project actually works in practice.

Related to that, I’m now rethinking a little project I did with board games and networks just to demonstrate my understanding of some concepts to myself, and wondering if there are any circumstances under which it may have actual merit. This requires more thinking.

Learning about Python modules for network analysis! I’m super excited about this, AND I’m also very excited to learn that some of the digital fellows are starting to get into this, because I’m quite likely to ask them for help.

Seeing some of the work that can be done with social media, and getting a quick introduction to some of the tools that are out there for it. The workshop I went to focused on NVIVO, which I don’t believe we have here at CUNY, but now I know some of the limitations and some of the questions to ask. Apparently many of these tools have explicit licenses with social media companies, and the social media companies control what they end up downloading in ways that aren’t very transparent at all, so that’s good to know. She also made the point that a lot of this can be done with Python — the trick, of course, is figure out how to time it so that one doesn’t get banned. (I also learned how to take stuff out of such a tool, which is very valuable.)

Omeka! There’s a lot more that can be done with this, but I was happy to learn about a web publishing tool that foregrounds metadata in this way. It’s a little specialized, but the way it structures information and lets you put things in a specific context are both very exciting.

The Edit-a-Thon! Edit-a-thons are really, really fun, and I’d encourage everyone who’s even a little interested to go to one. It’s especially good if you’re intimidated by the thought of editing Wikipedia, because they usually include some component of walking newcomers through it, and there are volunteers there to help. Incidentally, there’s one at the GC on February 28, so please consider coming! Details here: Revolutionizing Wikipedia: A Queer and Feminist Edit-a-thon

Okay, I wrote a lot. In any case, DH Week was pretty great, but it always is.

*Since these problems don’t show up as clearly when it’s your home institution!

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Onward!

By Andie Silva (she/her) | Published: February 6, 2019

Thanks everyone for your energy and engagement last night. We have a very exciting and diverse range of project to look forward to! As a reminder, the college is closed next week so we do not meet as a class. I encourage you to make alternate arrangements and continue on the tasks listed in your work plan. Please feel free to message me and add me to communication spaces as needed! I will be posting feedback on proposals to our Group page tomorrow, and would like to see a revised proposal with the appropriate research, team member responsibilities, etc around the time we meet again (posted to this site, see schedule). In particular, it will be useful to work on a project narrative that you can eventually post on your front-facing web presence to generate audience interest. Some specifics for each group as you move forward:

Database of Immigrant News

  • Decide on scope ASAP: what time period are you looking at, and why? What immigrant community might best serve as your case study? How many publications and issues are you recording (representative issues, or a certain number of weeks)? 
  • Investigate intellectual property issues if you are planning on publishing any original content (see fair use workshop slides linked below)
  • Consider dealing with a small set of records at first to assess time expenditure (and before you decide on a platform)

Lost Art Collective

  • Agree on clear goals for target audience(s)
  • Articulate the specific contribution that digital technologies make to the gathering of this information
  • Decide on scope ASAP, preferably a single country and/or a single museum archive
  • Since it seems like there are many lists of lost art already, consider other contributions you could make to these communities: e.g. connecting them with lawmarkers, art historians, advocates, etc, or a mapping project of where things are and their historical movements over time

Project T.R.I.K.E.

  • As much as possible, consider diversity from different angles as you research and solicit data: not just different types of datasets, but datasets that offer representation, de-colonize existing archives, or are built by and for local communities
  • Are you considering GitHub rather than a formal website? What are the benefits/challenges to each?
  • How much direct involvement will the original compilers of the dataset have in preparation of the documentation you wish to use in the site for educational purposes?

Freedom Dreaming

  • Reach out to potential contributors to help populate the site and generate interest
  • Consider a data plan that archives contributions as they come in and saves materials off-site
  • Here’s a fair use workshop that just came out of NYCDH (https://t.co/B4xfRCLdbb) and the Creative Commons site
  • Consider (and research) policies for inappropriate content
  • Could there be a plan for k-12 and university partnerships?
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Raven Gomez Skillsets

By Raven Gomez | Published: February 5, 2019

Hello Class! I have my associates degree in Liberal Arts: Social Science and Humanities from LaGuardia Community College, and my B.A from Smith College in Urban Education. I am currently the HASTAC Scholars Coordinator with the Futures Initiative and assistant to the Digital Humanities Department with Anthony. I have experience working with game-based projects and within higher education reform within community colleges across the nation. Prior to matriculating to the GC, I spent my summer at Cuyahoga Community College  in Cleveland as a research assistant, working alongside enrollment services and the office of the President towards reforming the needs of students to improve recidivism rates and experiences for students of color during their time transitioning to the expectations of college.

Skills:

Outreach:

As mentioned in Anthony’s post, there was much outreach necessary to get the ball rolling on our current project proposal. As one might imagine, game-based projects are not always taken very seriously, (*gasp*) which has only sharpened my skills in “elevator pitching” game projects I’ve had experience working within the academy both here at the GC and at Smith College. Additionally I have experience in curating game-based pedagogy oriented syllabi. Last Spring a group of peers and I at Smith College successfully advocated to take a Special Studies course under the mentorship of faculty in the Media Studies and Computer Science Department where we were tasked to create our own curriculum and create a game in unity as the capstone study my senior year. Similar to the growing and evolving nature of DH, I have decent experience in creating new spaces for creative ideas within academic spaces to thrive within higher education. This may overlap with “Project Management”, but I pride myself on bringing passionate-minded individuals together towards the inherently collaborative process of making games!

Developer:

My programmer friends jokingly refer to me as a “baby coder” as I have beginner level skills in HTML, Python, GIS Mapping, and Github. I’m looking to grow these skills, and look forward to taking this semester’s Software Design Lab with Patrick Smyth. I’m happy to assist and also learn from more experienced programmers on collaborative projects, particularly within platforms such as Unity & Ren’Py. I am also currently enrolled in ITP Core 2, where I will be attended several game-based learning labs with Dr. Carlos Hernandez and Khadeidra Martin!

Project Manager:

As I began to mention above, I am fairly confident in my skills and have some experience managing game-based projects in the past. From 9/17-5/2018 I also worked as the Manager of the Smith College Video Game & Research Lab where I thrived in managing a technology-integrated space. This position required me to build my leadership skills in handling expensive, fragile equipment, assuring students felt comfortable in the space, tutoring/assisting students on their own research and game projects, and become well-oriented with many game-based equipment. It also required me to frequently work with professors in organizing times for students to play specific game titles for their classes which was a nice teaching assistant opportunity.

Designer/UX:

This is probably where I am most passionate. I have worked as a lead writer on several creative projects and also have experience with many game-based equipment, particularly with Virtual Reality headsets, HTC Vive and Playstation 4 VR headsets. My job required me to work with many students who have little no no experience with this type of tech, so I am familiar with working with others from all varying levels of exposure. I’ve created several Twine games, most recently last semester with Anthony where we co-wrote our last project.

Research:

Most of my research is based in urban education, particularly involving topics of race, gender, and sexuality within nontraditional cultural mediums. Most of my projects are based in broadening equity within spaces of higher education and am interested in similar-minded projects that attempt to radicalize current systems within the academy.

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Skillset – Patty Accarino

By Patricia Accarino | Published: February 4, 2019

I’d describe myself as a generalist who is curious and organized, and very good at research and  making connections – between people and ideas.  My undergraduate degree is in Art History and Psychology, and I have a graduate certificate in Arts Management.  My work experience has been in software development (as a business analyst) and more recently as a “head hunter” for executives in retail, fashion and CPG.

I’d like to learn more about creating digital products/websites and using social media for outreach….as well as learn any languages/tools relevant to Digital Humanities. I’m a quick learner.  From my years as a business analyst, I am very good at translating business/user needs to systems specifications, and I have a real interest in developing intuitive interfaces that are easy to navigate and understand (this is actually a pet peeve of mine).

Outreach and research: 

Strengths: researching people and organizations that are relevant to a project and reaching out to engage them;  assessing people’s experience and style for “fit”

Areas to develop: using social media sites and tools to engage other

Project Management:

Strengths:  very organized, developing project plans, follow up, defining deliverables and dependencies; anticipating and identifying roadblocks or potential obstacles; high sense of urgency; comfortable with deadlines

Areas to develop: using a specific project management tool

Design: 

Strengths: strong intuitive sense of design and aesthetics, understand basic design concepts and I have a great appreciation for U/X concepts

Areas to develop: a more formal experience with UX and GUI design

Development:
Strengths:   developing specifications; testing and finding “bugs”

Areas to develop:  I do not know how to “code” in any language but am willing to learn

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