HIST 381: Digital History

Eric Schooley
HIST381
Dr. Leslie Madsen-Brooks
18 September, 2012

New Media and Ambiguity:
An Interview with Dr. Patrick Murray-John: Digital Humanist

Most of the stress this assignment caused me was from the intimidating prospect of contacting a professional, who would be a stranger to me, in hopes of securing some of their valuable time. So, when you offered up Dr. Patrick Murray-John and his time on a silver platter, I jumped at the chance; it was dumb luck that he happened to be just the type of humanist I wanted to talk to: someone closer to the programming side of things with their fingers in a lot of pies. However, this meant that I had little to no idea what Dr. Murray-John does, except that he works for the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

Patrick, as I’ve come to know him, has many roles at CHNM. This seems to be the case with most good digital historians, and key to his success. His primary role is management of the Omeka development team at the Center (Omeka is a free, open source web-publishing platform for the display of collections and exhibitions). This means he spends a lot of time trying to tie related, but somehow separated, information into a cohesive idea, but not just in his own projects. Like all digital curation, the idea is to source it to as many scholars as possible, so he must facilitate themes from other, similar projects like WordPress. A large part of Patrick’s work in Omeka also involve what he calls the “Omeka Commons,” which, if I understand correctly, is a system designed to aggregate data from a variety of Omeka sources. At this point I should make a confession, a good deal of the technical terms Dr. Murray-John used, along with the names and uses of programs, was beyond me. This is a good thing, though: it gives a list of things to go learn! As I mentioned, a major goal of Digital Humanities is to help other humanists preserve and present their own work, so in the noblest vein of curation, all of the tolls and plug-ins Patrick creates are available to anyone building an Omeka site. So, I see quite a bit of his work finding its way into my projects in the near future.

Like I said, a lot of this stuff is over my head, but that’s exactly why I wanted to talk to someone like Patrick, he can lend me valuable insight into which areas I should be focusing and some things I can do to make life easier for anybody involved in these future undertakings. For the efficiency of a team and the quality of the work, the advice is what you might hear if asking any professional about choosing the people they work with. Dr. Murray-John says, “Choose your team carefully. Look for people with overlapping interests. Respect them, and how their interests and expertise can contribute to the project.” Seriously, I’ve heard almost the exact phrase from people putting together a film crew, or a band, or a construction project, or even deciding who rides with whom on a road trip. Anything repeated this often, across this many demographics, must have some truth to it! Here’s a paraphrasing of some other tips I gleaned from his responses: Be honest, about what you know and what you don’t; Don’t be afraid to ask for help to better understand a tool or concept, remember the people you’re dealing with are humanists (read: “talkers”); It’s important to respect the programmers, they know how perform necessary work that I do not. On the other hand, I also know stuff they don’t, so don’t be a doormat either.

Patrick recommended quite a few programs to start experimenting with, but I don’t yet understand any of them well enough to describe them now, that sounds like fodder for a later blog post anyhow. The gist of the advice I can pass along from Dr. Murray-John is to become as familiar with the “production” side of things as you comfortably can, this will not only allow you to better communicate with the programmers, it will help you to appreciate the complex and laborious work they do to help transmit your ideas. Would it kill you to take these guys out for drink every now and then?

The main purpose, and simultaneously the biggest payoff, to choosing a team wisely, then learning as much from each other as possible in a group setting is this: the line between “humanist” and “technologist” is becoming more and more blurred. Digital Humanities isn’t just wearing away long-held distinctions between information sets, molding them into tools to generate new ideas and foster understanding, Digital Humanities is also eroding the distinctions between people. We would not be fools to expect similar outcomes we’ve seen with data happening with the people who curate it. When we no longer adhere to titles on business cards and diplomas, we can get closer to the truth of our world and, more importantly, each other.

I interviewed Mies Martin for my digital humanist interview. Mies Martin is a Digital Resource Librarian at a small engineering university in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I definitely wish that I would have started earlier on this assignment and been able to dig deeper into some of Mies answers but unfortunately my phone is not working at the moment and e-mail does have its limitations. I was able to contact him over twitter and from there we e-mailed some questions and answers back and forth.

Do you consider yourself a digital humanist?

I do not consider myself a digital humanist.

Why or why not?

I do not consider myself a Digital Humanist in part because I’m still unclear what a digital humanist is.  Is a digital humanist simply someone who works in the humanities and principally uses digital tools (Databases, search engines, etc.)?  So that would mean humanists who do not use digital technology are not digital, can we really imagine someone who does not use these tool in some way?  Is a digital humanist someone who interacts with digital collections?  What are a digital collections?  eBooks, eJournals, anything on any database (ProQuest, Web of Science, Google Scholar, etc.,) is digital collection in some way?  Similar to the phrase “Knowledge Management”, “Digital Humanist” by definition is somewhat vague.  To me it illustrates a need to try to express something different, some sort of change by simply adding the word digital.  I would suggest that in fact we do not have the language to express this emerging world of scholarship.  We are  stuck with 19th century terminology trapped within a disciplinarity that belongs to another time.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

I’m on-line and connected between 8-10 hours a day.  Either doing research for my personal work or my work work in the library.  Developing teaching tools, help pages and providing general support for accessing electronic content.

What has been the biggest project you have worked on?

Prior to working at Michigan Technological University I worked as a contract worker working on a project for one of the big 3 in Detroit, where we work to develop a digital archive of their photographic collection.   I was able to work with and learn from a wonderful collection of professionals who gave me insights to how to apply the skills of librarianship to a very practical and real situation.  By the time I left the project we had scanned and indexed over 250,000 images.

Where do you see the digital humanities going in the near future?

A good question which I wish I knew the answer to.  If we were using tea leafs as a guide (which is probably as good as any other possible guide) I would suggest looking toward what is happening within the scholarly publishing world.  Like the music industry the publishing industry is on the verge of massive changes.  No one really knows how these changes will play out but it will be really interesting to watch.  In addition to changes in publishing, I think we will see developments of communities of practice.  As our notions of expertise, authorship, the text, etc. continue to change they will reshape the boundaries between the general public/user and the scholar.  These digital collections will become available to the many and as a result this will allow them to participate in ways not possible before.

Where would you like to see it go?

I’m hopeful that we continue to see the development of open access in terms of content and software.  This will require commitment from all corners.  The pressure to ties these emerging tools and collections within publishers will do nothing more than recreate the cable tv for the web.  I’ve been fortunate enough to come across the work of Kathleen Fitzpatrick: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/,  Lisa Spiro: http://www.nitle.org/about/bios/spiro.php,  and Christorpher Long: http://www.nitle.org/about/bios/spiro.php and I would be better off to some extent to defer to their work.  I have to say that I look to them and others as guidance on the idea of what digital humanist is and where it is headed.

What do you think the biggest challenge is that the digital humanities face?

The biggest challenge is cultural, not technological.   We live in a world and time where possessing and managing what you know is more important than sharing what you know.  Our underlying values of knowledge as something to use to get ahead as apposed to participate.  As a culture knowledge is seen as something to own, to possess.  How will this cultural view play with a more open, communal sense of knowledge?  As I alluded to above, the language we have to express this new emerging world is old school and it needs to be reinvented for a new world, without all the Digital, E-, post, etc.

I can definitely understand more of where Mies is coming from with his answers after doing some of the readings for class. I think it is very interesting that he does not consider himself a digital humanist. Not to say he is wrong and that he is in fact a digital humanist but I remember reading about how hard it is at this time for digital humanist to exactly be defined. I am extremely happy I was able to interview someone that had knowledge about digital humanities but didn’t claim the title, I thought it was more interesting that way.

Working in the library’s special collections and archives sometimes has its perks. For example, I get to meet some fascinating writers, artists, and professors from around the country. One such person is Jeremiah Day, an artist working in Amsterdam. Day is a graduate of the UCLA art department. His prior work includes a performance called “Of all the possible things,” as part of the If I Cant Dance I don’t want To Be Part of Your Revolution visual arts project in Amsterdam. Day mixes human movement and performance with photos, paintings and sometimes video. You can read, and see, more about If I Can’t Dance here.

Day visited my office in the archive to do research in the Senator Frank Church collection a few months ago. He was gathering resources for his current exhibit, which will include many digital clips of campaign commercials and other video from the Church collection. When our class was given the assignment to interview a digital humanist, I knew right away that I wanted to see if Day was available. Thankfully he was, and he accepted my request, however the due date of this assignment was only a few days after his due date for his film. Nevertheless, he took some time to answer my questions via email.

Day’s work will be on presented in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam as part of the “Beyond Imagination” exhibit which, according to their website, artists find “ways in which boundaries are now blurred between reality and imagination, authenticity and role-playing, especially in relation to developments in politics, finance and media.” Day’s contribution is called Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness (2012), a name shared with Idaho’s largest wilderness area. Day’s work will consist of a video and a live performance piece performed on October 13th.

When I asked Day how he prepared for this exhibit, he said “There are a lot of facets to the process that led me to the work on Frank Church, but I guess two stand out – cultivating and maintaining the instinct that paying attention to political events and developments is somehow in and of itself consequential.  And second of all the commitment to follow one’s intuitive line of thinking even when it doesn’t make sense at first analysis.” Day also points out that critical reading and writing are important educational skills to have to do his kind of work.

One of the questions we tried to answer in class was how do digital humanists use resources, and I found Day’s use of the Frank Church video collection to be insightful on this question. His work was unlike anything I had seen in my five years assisting researchers. Day’s comments reminded me of the importance of keeping context when doing research. During his visit, he went through dozens of reels of 16mm film and countless audio tapes; spending hours sifting through material. If it wasn’t for Day’s ability to watch for the threads of continuity, and not get distracted by all of the inconsequential media, I’m sure he would have left empty handed. Day made good use of our online finding aid before making the global trek to our archive. He knew exactly what he wanted to see, weeks before ever seeing our office. That said, he also had a very open mind once he was in research mode, and found new avenues of research.

As a full-time artist, Jeremiah’s typical day is much like you would expect. He said it includes “Coffee – take care of the baby – emails, procrastination – some kind of work.  Right now that’s video editing.  Some kind of exercise, dinner, tv, more emails, bed.” He of course is able to do this because of his ability to earn grant funding – a crucial part of a digital humanists career.

I asked Day what it takes to pursue a career in his field. He said, “Learn how to present oneself assertively.   Either in the form of writing grants, or making exhibitions, even as simple as having a meeting with someone whose help you need – putting the work and oneself out there clearly is the name of the game if you want to make a living in the arts.” I am truly appreciative of Jeremiah Day’s willingness to discuss his work with me. Hopefully, some of his live performance or video will be made available online, for us all to experience.

On September 17^th I conducted a phone interview with Brad (forgot to get his last name) from the Bryant Museum is Tuscaloosa. I really liked interviewing Brad because I love sports and he is a digital humanist who preserves the football history for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Brad attended Alabama and got his bachelor’s degree there, he was a history major. His preparation is his love for the Alabama Football team, he loves what he does and called it a dream job coming into work and going over Alabama Football footage and photographs. When talking about his technical training needed he said the only thing he really needed was the fact that he was good with computer science. He needs that skill because sometimes he has to dig deep and find the footage and photos needed for the job. The only job he had on the way to becoming a digital humanist was that he was in a work study program for ten years, then he got this job. The typical day for Brad was what he called a lot of fun. He said that each day varies a lot but for the main part he just looks up and finds any kind of footage that has to do with the Alabama football program a lot of times he gets requests from the newspapers to find certain things that they are looking for. Other things he does is requests from the athletic department and family members to find photo’s or videos of the players that are asked for. Brad does a lot of projects in his spare times but one of his recent accomplishments was that he and the Bryant Museum have published two books in the past year to year and a half. He was really proud of that and went on for a while of how that was a big step in his career. His advice for people who are interested in sports (like me) and want to be a possible digital humanist for a sports team is to volunteer. He said the sooner you volunteer especially when you are young the more important that is in the long run. If you do that it gets you a lot of experience and can get your foot in the door and people will start to notice you. That was his biggest advice given during the interview and made a lot of sense because you can’t just get a job like this out of nowhere, with no experience.

Brad didn’t really have much else to say besides all of the above. We talked for about a half an hour and he just talked about how he really loved what he did and it was a dream come true to do what he was doing. He was born and raised in Alabama and bleeds Crimson. He also talked about how staying close to the football program that he was so in tuned to his whole entire life and him being able to help family members of the football team and the athletic department was a true blessing to him. He felt that he was doing a great service to his team and was excited to help and be a part of the Alabama tradition.

Overall when this assignment was assigned I thought it was going to be tough and not too much fun. But Leslie helped me out by finding this guy and it sparked a big interest for me. I would love to do something like this when I get older and retire from my job. It can definitely be a side job/hobby throughout my life and I would love to volunteer somewhere where I can work in sports and do something that I love.

The link to the website and article that I used for this assignment is :

http://www.myfoxal.com/story/19005677/bryant-museum-spending-a-pretty-penny-to-preserve-football-history

Digital Humanist Interview with Lindsey Barnes of the National WWII Museum

By S. Corey Clyne

On the 6^th of June 2000, in company of 3 friends, I made the trip from California to New Orleans, Louisiana for the grand opening of what was then called the National D-Day Museum. We attended the celebration as “living historians” or “Reenactors”. We participated in the several of the opening festivities and were allowed a preview of the museum ahead of the general public. During my visit I was impressed with the interface of digital data in the interpretation of the D-Day events. At several points patrons can sit in sound booths and select oral histories from four different witnesses; American, British, German soldiers or a French civilian. These oral history booths tied in with the themes of the exhibits and interactive maps.

Having been so moved by my experience at the D-Day Museum I have made it a point to follow the museum through their growth with the use of social media and the museum’s website. The museum has grown considerably and now is called The National World War II Museum and interprets the entire war. In addition to Facebook and Twitter the website has adapted a blog were different curators post pictures of artifacts and highlight anniversaries of battles, 1940’s cultural keynotes and educational materials. Critical to the digital presence of the museum is it’s Senior Archivist and Digital Project Manager, Lindsey Barnes. I chose her for an interview subject due to my curiosity of how digital humanities are affecting museums.  Mrs. Barnes answered my questions and presented me with a copy of her resume. She is well experienced and is building the museum’s digital presence equal to the memory of the soldiers of World War Two.

1.     What academic training do you credit for getting you to this point in your career?

I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History and a Graduate Degree in Library and Information Science. I very much feel that my MLIS offered the training I most needed to work in the digital humanities. Through it I learned about access to humanity collections though intensely studying and identifying the importance of metadata for access. The organizational skills and the understanding of access through metadata studies throughout my MLIS have very much helped me to work within different institutions with different types of collections successfully.

2.     Were there any particular job titles that helped you get to where you are in your career?

I had a graduate assistantship at the State Library of Louisiana scanning and later cataloging for a large IMLS funded grant. The first position was a Scanning Technician, the second a Cataloging Technician. Learning both the technical standards and cataloging and vocabulary standards were very important lessons in my career path. Making sure that I involved myself in as many different types of projects as possible was important to my career as well because I learned many different skill sets, never focusing on only one. That has been very helpful in my career as one always has to evolve and change with the times and the institution’s direction.

3.      What other projects have you been involved with?

Digitizing and cataloging of the Louisiana Historical Photographs Collection of the State Library of Louisiana; Cataloging a collection of artists’ books at the Savannah College of Art and Design; creating cataloging standards for our collections database at the National WWII Museum.

4.     Do you consider yourself a digital Humanist?

I consider myself a digital humanist because I am shaping the way that the humanities can be accessed online and through research here at the Museum. I don’t usually provide the content but I do make sure it is accessible. For someone like me with an MLIS I feel the best way I can contribute to the digital humanities is by created consistently quality records around our collections and publishing them online to provide people with the most consistent and intuitive access through metadata.

5.  How did the museum decide to feature a blog on its website?

And how do you monitor the traffic?

Since we are just now starting to work on getting our collections online, the blog was the easiest way to feature our artifacts and provide content to our online visitors. The blog is written by staff members across our curatorial, research (oral history), interactive and educational departments.  An Interactive department staff member monitors the blog along with the Museum’s Facebook page.

6.     I see that different curators post on the blog, can you tell me how that is decided? Are their dedicated curators just for that blog?

There are no dedicated curators that just provide online content. They all work on blogs while also working on physical exhibits at the Museum, among many other things. Topics are decided by the curators – usually based on their interests and an anniversary date that they can post the day of. The blog posts are mostly based on anniversaries actually but they are not limited to that.

7.     In a progressive museum like yours what skill sets do you find most helpful in your position?

The skill set I find most helpful is being flexible and relying on the knowledge you gain from working on many types of projects. In my previous position of just ‘Archivist’ here at the Museum along with archiving and setting up standards for doing that here, I also co-curated an exhibit, co-authored a book based on that exhibit, wrote grants, supported digitization efforts for existing grants, and even helped to clean weapons! Having at least a little experience in many different aspects of museum work, along with a willingness to try new things and work with different people on different projects has made all the difference in my career.

Blog of Dr. Timothy Powell, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, Phone Conversation September 12, 2012

My phone conversation with Dr. Timothy Powell, Senior Research Scientist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology was fascinating.

“First of all,” Dr. Powell said, “can I ask you a question?  How did you hear about me?”  After explaining to him about my professor, Dr. Leslie Brooks, and the interview was for an assignment for Digital History, he seemed to relax as our interview turned into a conversation.

Dr. Powell started off the conversation by asking about the program at Boise State.  In some circles, he explained, the field is known as digital humanities vs. digital history.  He reflected on the University of Pennsylvania where he has worked for six years.  The university does not have such a program.  Here he is, a digital humanist professor, but no students to teach digital humanities to.  He does teach and with his position with the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, he writes grants for digital humanities.  He commended Boise State for having such a program as MAHR, Master of Applied Historical Research, because it is such a new and growing field.  When he was in grad school, there was no such program.

“Let’s start off with you briefly telling me your preparation to become a digital historian.”  I said.

Dr. Powell reflects back to his time at grad school, the University of Georgia.  “It was the late 80s, early 90s.  The emphasis at that time was multiculturalism.”  The dissertation that he was working on during this time was on the differences of culture which became a book in 2000, Ruthless Democracy – Multicultural Interpretation of the Native American Renaissance.  Since there were no digital humanitarian courses, he became what he calls a “hands on person” when it came to the field.   During grad school, he worked on a digital humanities project through the Library Service Grant, “The Southeastern Indian Project”.

He then started working with the Native American communities, asking people in the Cherokee tribe what kind of things can be digitalize?  Dr. Powell realized that with digital technology, information can be shared more effectively and easily such as digitalizing material for Native American communities.

“It was at that time,” Dr. Powell reflected, “my career changed directions – a scholar of public history.”

With his position at the University of Pennsylvania, Museum of Anthropology and Archeology, Dr. Powell is a busy man.   As he previously stated, there is not a digital humanities program at the university, however, he does teach Native American Literature and Native American Religion as well as write grants.  It is his work with the museum that keeps him the busiest.  The museum is active with the Native American Patriot Act.  They consult with Native American people and ask them questions regarding the artifacts that are in the museum’s possession.  Then the museum digitalizes the artifacts then the public can have access to Native American culture.

Currently, Dr. Powell explains, he and the museum’s staff are working on a Native American project called “Digital Archives for Recordings for Endangered Language.”  He goes on to explain this project in depth.

“There are three parts to the project.  There are 3,000 hours of Native American languages.  The first part of this project is to digitalize the Native American Language.”

To me, this part is very cool because I explain to him that my dad did the exact same thing with my grandmother.  Before she died, my dad made audio recordings of my grandmother telling her stories and singing her songs in Shoshone Indian.  Dr. Powell indicated that this was very nice and told me that obviously my dad was on the cusp himself with this endeavor to protect the Native American language.

The second part is working in partnership with four Native American tribes: Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina; Ojibwe in Manitoulin Island, Canada; Penobscot Nation in Maine; and Tuscarora Nation in New York.  He has had collaboration with the Cherokee and Ojibwe tribe for twelve years.  Dr. Powell travels twice a year to work with these tribes.  The information that he gathers can be multisensitive for the culture, therefore, the museum restricts production of the material by “creating protocols.”

“So how do you work with the tribes?” I ask.

The museum is in partnership with the tribes to work with those who are selected for the Native American Library Fellowship.

“Let me explain about this fellowship.  It’s different from most fellowships because one would have to have PH.D, but with this fellowship, the tribes select those who they think are knowledgeable about the artifacts.  Those who are chosen are paid to come to Philadelphia and they digitalize the material.”  Dr. Powell explains that this is the third part of the project. Once those who are chosen get to the museum, he then starts working with them to digitalize the artifacts.  Not only the artifacts, he goes on to explain, but the oral history.

“An example of this,” Dr. Powell said, “would be the Ojibwe Native Americans telling their stories.  Here you get to the essence of Native Americans.  This technology allows the students to hear the stories told by Native Americans.”

Dr. Powell hopes that Native American Literature is seen and read in new ways.

For my digital humanist interview I spoke with Dr. Julia Flanders, director of the Women Writers Project and part of the Center for Digital Scholarship at the Brown University Library. First I would like to mention what a delightful interviewee she is! Dr. Flanders responded to my initial email promptly and was very friendly and casual throughout our Skype conversation, which helped lower my nerves about interviewing a fancy digital humanist! The interview quickly evolved into an enlightening conversation about digital humanities and the opportunities within the field.

Dr. Flanders revealed to me that she entered into the digital humanities by “accident”. As a graduate student at Brown she was presented with an opportunity to work on the Women Writers Project, a project taking the writings of pre-Victorian women “out of the archives” and making them accessible (digitally) to a wider audience. It was through her work on this project, which she now oversees, that she entered into the realm of digital humanities. She enjoys the project—moreover the digital aspect of it—because of the careful consideration and questions on editing it has raised; the question of how to edit early modern women’s writings for a digital space intrigues her and drives her work in the field.

One aspect of her career that she is particularly grateful for is the relaxed collegial atmosphere she feels is the essence of the digital humanities. She finds the work more enjoyable than traditional academia. A comment of hers that really stuck with me is when she stated,

“In my professional profile I do everything from grant writing and technical work, to teaching and serving on committees and serving on standards bodies and editing journals and all kinds of things. It’s very much a mix of things that are interesting that all kind of hang together and give me autonomy. If I want a different balance of these things in my career I can find it (within digital humanities).”

The picture she painted of her career as a digital humanist inspired me and made me hopeful that a similar career—although more along the lines of History than English—may be possible for me.

As far as any training or education required of her to enter the digital humanities, I got the sense that she was on the horizon of the field when she began working in it (around 1992). Therefore, she had no guideline or course of study required of her as there is today. She did mention that in order to get the position she has she did have to have a certain set of skills, for her it is text encrypting as well as a broad knowledge of traditional humanities. However, she said these skills could be different depending on what kind of digital humanities a person is interested in working in. For example, someone may need to learn data modeling versus text encrypting for a specific career, it just depends on what type of digital discipline he or she is interested in pursuing.

An important question for me was whether or not she experienced getting wrapped up in the “digital-ness” of the field and losing sight of the traditional humanities side of it. She answered with a confident “no”, stating that she felt the two (digital technology and humanities) really synced together well. The only problem she has had in her field is finding enough hours in the day to do her work! She also stated that the most interesting questions posed in her field are those that align with the more traditional humanities side, and that digital technology offers help in answering them.

Overall I got the sense that Dr. Flanders truly loves her career in digital humanities, as a profession and a discipline. As I stated above, she gave me inspiration and made me hopeful of my (possible) future in digital history!