Monthly Archives: November 2016

Weekly Updates

Finish as Complete. Finish as Polish

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One of the topics we talked about in last week’s class was working with “focus” and what “done” might mean in a Digital Humanities project.

Digital Humanists Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and Bill Kretzschmar have written about “finishing” a digital project.  They comment that “the verb ‘to finish’ can mean to complete or something more like to polish or perfect.”  Kirschenbaum goes on to point out what meanings “finish” can have in a discipline that celebrates a visible, ongoing process and being open-ended, being changeable: “We partake in what Julia Flanders has aptly called the culture of the perpetual prototype: the demo, the proof-of-concept, the alpha and beta version. Building things is fun….”  Fun, yes, but how do we recognize when we’re approaching a finished project.   When we just stop?  When we run out of time and data?  When we conclude, that is, when we evolve to a different understanding of the data?  When the data inspires us to ask new questions?  When the data brings us to a point that we become aware of an alternative audience or to a changed purpose for telling a narrative?

Your thoughtful weekly posts show this process of curating understanding and of working with “knowing”.   You’ve noted “tangible progress”, “warm, fuzzy feelings”, “disjointed research”, “dramatic twists”, “insights”, “thoughts”, etc.  Mark has wisely referred to your websites before as a “process portfolio”.

Week 10 Checklist

As we approach the end of the semester and this iteration of NAPLA, we’d like you to continue to “finish” by having these items polished by class on Thursday (see the note after the list):

  • Convert all URLs in your blog posts to links as well as those on your course project website.
  • Research should be approaching completion.
  • Scanned images should be approaching completion (scanned please, not shot from a 45 degree angle with a cell phone and uncropped).
  • Drafts of text for webpages should be approaching completion and be upload to course project websites.
  • Oral interviews should be approaching completion.
  • Upload the digital files of interviews to Soundcloud or Audacity and edit the files.
  • Post the audio file on your blog by Thursday morning.
  • Post ‘documentation” for your audio files in a consistent place (e.g., in the bibliography, in a smaller font under the posted audio file, etc.).  Who’s being interviewed, who conducted the interview, city/state for the interview, date/time, etc.  You’re creating an archive.
  • Audio file headers: what are your titles?  are you displaying selected quotes from the interviews?
  • Audio file images: what do you want your audience to look at as they listen to the file?  Head shot? Image of your college?  Sliding scanned images from a related yearbook?
  • Listen to some of the team’s interviews and take notes in preparation for debriefing and discussion of how the websites are taking shape.

Note after the list:  Okay, yes we usually ask that you have these posted by Thursday morning.  On the one hand, that’s great if you’ve got them there by Thursday morning at the latest.  On the other hand, I’ll be “in transit” (read: in airports) during Thursday’s class and it’s not likely that I’ll be joining you from 30,000 feet up in the air.  If you could have the better part of this week’s checklist done by Wednesday midnight (11.59 pm), that would be appreciated.  I can review your pages and have comments prepared for Mark to share with you during Thursday’s class.

As always, Mark and I are available to meet with you on Tuesday between 2 to 4 pm to discuss any aspects of your projects or the upcoming presentation of your NAPLA websites.

Work Cited

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G.  “Done: Finishing Projects in the Digital Humanities”.  DHQ (2009) 3:2.

Research Reflections

Research Reflection: Warm, Fuzzy Feelings

After a busy week of interviewing, editing, and curating, I’m happy to report that my slump is far behind me. I’m loving exploring new plugins, especially the gallery one I uploaded today (see my new “Archive Gallery” page on the site). I’m sticking to a minimalist theme so I can really embellish my pages without worrying about everything being too intense. Mark and I have decided that I’m going to continue this project into next semester. There are so many dreams and goals I have for this project, and I’m not ready to say goodbye come December.

My interview with Norma Walker is what inspired me the most so far. She graduated in 1951, and is full of stories and ideas. I’m not only creating this project to achieve a sort of academic goal and milestone. I’m working my hardest for Norma, for my grandmothers, and for all the women who contributed to the college’s story which I now get to continue in my own legacy here at Keene State.

Research Reflections

Tangible Progress

I think I’ve actually finished my research. After our class discussion on Thursday, I decided to limit my most in-depth research to 1948-1979. Within these years, Geneseo transitioned to a liberal arts college (1962) and later substantially revised the Common Core general education requirements(throughout 1976-79). These two events are of the most interest to me, and I’ve yet to decide how much information about the curriculum prior to 1948 I will include. I also found a flip-book plugin (WP Booklet) that I will experiment with next week after I start scanning the relevant pages from course catalogs, Faculty Senate minutes, etc.

Additionally, I decided to present the general history of Geneseo solely through a timeline, using TimelineJS. I think this is a more visually interesting way to display this information, and it gives me further encouragement to incorporate images. I currently have a draft of the text for the timeline completed, and on Monday, I’m meeting with the special collections librarian to go through images from the archives that I plan to incorporate into the timeline. I’ll also be looking for anything that could be used or incorporated into a header for the website.

This week we have two interviews scheduled, both with professors who frequently teach the Humanities. While our first interview was great (better than I expected), I would like to be a little more organized and have more scripted questions for these interviews–I expect little variation will be necessary between the two. I’ll also be scheduling firm times for two other interviews: one with a music professor who teaches several general education classes and is fairly new to Geneseo and the other with a student. I would also like to start preparing for these interviews this week (although they likely won’t happen until next week), since we are approaching these interviews from very different perspectives than the others.

I’d like to have a completed draft of the timeline and some form of the flip-book of gen. ed. requirements up on the website by class on Thursday. I’m imagining some amount of text will accompany the flip-book, but I will base that on how the flip-book comes out. As reflected in the title of this post, I feel like I’ve been making actual progress this week and that’s really encouraging. I will also be perfectly happy if I never have to go through Faculty Senate minutes ever again.

Research Reflections

Tangible Progress

I think I’ve actually finished my research. After our class discussion on Thursday, I decided to limit my most in-depth research to 1948-1979. Within these years, Geneseo transitioned to a liberal arts college (1962) and later substantially revised the Common Core general education requirements(throughout 1976-79). These two events are of the most interest to me, and I’ve yet to decide how much information about the curriculum prior to 1948 I will include. I also found a flip-book plugin (WP Booklet) that I will experiment with next week after I start scanning the relevant pages from course catalogs, Faculty Senate minutes, etc.

Additionally, I decided to present the general history of Geneseo solely through a timeline, using TimelineJS. I think this is a more visually interesting way to display this information, and it gives me further encouragement to incorporate images. I currently have a draft of the text for the timeline completed, and on Monday, I’m meeting with the special collections librarian to go through images from the archives that I plan to incorporate into the timeline. I’ll also be looking for anything that could be used or incorporated into a header for the website.

This week we have two interviews scheduled, both with professors who frequently teach the Humanities. While our first interview was great (better than I expected), I would like to be a little more organized and have more scripted questions for these interviews–I expect little variation will be necessary between the two. I’ll also be scheduling firm times for two other interviews: one with a music professor who teaches several general education classes and is fairly new to Geneseo and the other with a student. I would also like to start preparing for these interviews this week (although they likely won’t happen until next week), since we are approaching these interviews from very different perspectives than the others.

I’d like to have a completed draft of the timeline and some form of the flip-book of gen. ed. requirements up on the website by class on Thursday. I’m imagining some amount of text will accompany the flip-book, but I will base that on how the flip-book comes out. As reflected in the title of this post, I feel like I’ve been making actual progress this week and that’s really encouraging. I will also be perfectly happy if I never have to go through Faculty Senate minutes ever again.

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A Dramatic Twist

Today, Julia and I were finally able to conduct our first interview.  We met with Darin Waters in his office at one and proceeded to try our hand at gathering oral histories.  Almost immediately we encountered a problem, as the microphone we checked out from the library wasn’t working.  Instead of delaying, we decided to make due with the microphone on Julia’s phone.  I was worried at how the audio would turn out, but it was honestly much better than I expected.  As for the interview itself, Dr. Waters was an incredibly good interviewee, and I’m very pleased we were finally able to schedule this.  While a little hesitant at first, he quickly opened up and provided us with an incredible amount of knowledge about his life, the future of the campus, the Asheville community, and how the school interacts with it.  Something that I’m still processing is his response to one of Julia’s question of “How much interaction did you have with UNCA growing up in Asheville?” to which he replied “Almost none whatsoever.”  This was the aforementioned twist, as this completely rocked the narrative I had been mentally building of the history of our campus.  I had always assumed UNCA to be similar to how the campus is now, with a heavy community involvement.  To further that, many of the sources I read on the history of the campus seemed to confirm that, but it was very interesting to hear it from Dr. Waters’ perspective.  It has really made me consider how I view the narrative process and made me understand the importance of having diverse sources and oral histories.  Our meeting with Dr. Waters has really eased my mind about the subsequent interviews.  As a final note, I’d encourage anyone with an interest in Appalachian history to look into the Isaiah Rice photo collection.  It is a compilation of over a thousand pictures from Dr. Waters’ grandfather from his life in Asheville, and very much fits the scope of our class.

 

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The Interview Process

This week, my partner Casey and I completed our first interview with Dr. Darin Waters in UNC Asheville’s history department. Despite some technical issues with the mic (having to resort to recording the audio on an iPhone) we had a very fruitful discussion. Waters delved into not only his position as a professor at UNC Asheville, but also his relationship with the university while growing up in Asheville from the 1970s and onward. He also discussed the benefits of the dynamic of a liberal arts college both for students and for professors, as well as how the structure affected how he taught. He compared working in UNC Asheville to working at UNC Chapel Hill, a traditional research university. Overall, Waters gave my partner and me great insight in both the perspective of a UNCA professor and as a resident of the city our school is based in.

Two interviews we have lined up for next week are with Gene Hyde and Colin Reeve, the archivist in our Special Collections archive. I’d asked Gene, who is also my boss, about being interviewed; his relationship with the history of our university and with the communal interest in our university’s archival materials seemed pertinent to our project. He agreed, and also suggested I interview Colin as well, as he played a role in curating and digitizing a large part of our collections specifically related to the university.

We are also considering interviewing Greg Dillingham, Distance Learning Services Manager at UNC Asheville. Having worked directly with digital courses in ou university, his perspective with working with students in digital courses seemed relevant to the discussion of digital learning and the liberal arts. Anne Ogg, the instructional designer in Ramsey Library, helps students working with digital tools such as TimelineJS. She has been teaching courses to classes about how to create digital projects in several departments, and is also an individual we are considering contacting about an interview.