Paula F. Green

Nodes and Edges!! Who knew!? Everything about the digital aspect of analyzing social (and other) relationships was new to me. As a novice, I carefully read through Scott Weingart’s “Demystifying Networks” article where he introduces the basic technical aspects of network analysis in an approachable manner.[1] From explaining modalities to cautioning about methodology appropriation and algorithm limits, Weingart covers a lot of ground while encouraging beginners in the digital humanities to take risks and explore the possibilities within the constraints of current software. As he says, “Nothing worth discovering has ever been found in safe waters.”[2] The Weingart article lays a foundation for understanding how network analysis functions, but the…

The readings for this module covered a lot of ground including differentiating between “digitizing” art history and doing “digital art history.” While digital access to materials is constantly improving, Pamela Fletcher points out that interpretative digital history has a lot of room to grow. She includes a quote by Paul Jaskot that sums up the situation nicely, “The question is not what art history can do with the digital; the question is what are the important art historical questions that can be addressed with the help of digital tools?” Fletcher goes on to discuss several groundbreaking digital art history projects as examples of where the field can go and grow,…

Should original audience and intent be a factor in digitization? Who should have access to digitized materials? How are some algorithms impacting search bias? This week’s module dealt with some incredibly tough questions and problems regarding digital ethics. Although succinct, Michelle Moravec’s article, “What would you do? Historians’ ethics and digitized archives” pointedly asks historians to think about the context, original intent, and if digitization would cause harm.[1] Moravec argues that it’s important to think “about our responsibilities as the users of these digitized archival material(s), when what we write is online, and when our reuse of digitized materials may at the least violate copyright and the worst cause harm…

Even though this was a topic without a class, I got a lot from the readings and technical activities. I’m not a teacher and don’t have a lot of experience building lesson plans or learning outcomes, but I found the process of designing digital humanities activities to be interesting. The Craig and Kelley readings gave an overview of two projects which showed the importance of measuring learning outcomes. The Battershill and Ross book also had some very important points relating to the success of incorporating digital humanities into a class. They emphasize the importance of clearly and specifically stating course objectives, while also remaining flexible to class needs. [1] They…

Oregon Trail!  Podcasts! Twine! This week’s module included so many components and topics that are near-and-dear to my heart and through all of it weaves the topic of storytelling. In our class discussion we were asked, “how are history and storytelling different and complimentary?” I would argue that storytelling is a component of presenting history and is especially important for engaging the public.  Incorporating narrative and storytelling elements into research often makes a work more readable and accessible to those outside of academia. I attempted to do that when I wrote about “The Great Virginia Flood of 1870.”[1]  Although it could always be improved upon, my writing appears to have…

Scholarly article behind a paywall? Society6 took down your Disney fanart? Your crowd-funded Star Trek film is a no go because of the use of the Klingon language? Whether we think of it consciously or not, copyright law shapes our access to media, academic research, and some of our interactions with the world.  I really appreciated this week’s discussion about copyright and open access. It’s so important to understand the law, along with corporate gatekeeping and money-making associated with academic knowledge and creative works. To start, copyright law is so nuanced. I deal with aspects of it on a daily basis with my job and know a lot about a…

This week started to scratch the surface regarding the current state of GIS (Geographical Information System) mapping and creating spatial visualizations using historic data. There’s a world of possibility that historians (and/or historical geographers) are starting to unlock and explore. Ian Gregory and Paul Ell pointedly note that, “GIS allows geographical data to be used in ways that are far more powerful than any other approach permits.”[2] GIS expanded this historian’s toolkit and introduced a way to “radically re-examine” the way that space is used and thought about. Written in 2000 by Loren Sibert, “Using GIS to Document, Visualize, and Interpret Tokyo’s Spatial History,” presents a detailed description of the…

Thinking about the rest of the semester, along with the plethora of group project unknowns feels a bit like standing on a precipice being overwhelmed by the surrounding horizon. This week’s readings and technical activities were about minimizing the vastness of things that could go wrong by introducing tools to make project management easier and more organized, along with strategies for managing data and the importance of future curation and access. The articles, video, and technical exercises provided some foundational background about how larger projects are often successfully organized. Behind the scenes there could be a Venn diagram with circles for group logistics, roles, & communication strategies; data collection &…

“What do we keep, when do we let it go, and, who has the authority, expertise, and resources to digitize materials?” These are some of the questions that came up during the breakout session, which sparked an excellent discussion. We don’t often think about the environmental impact of data storage, or the hidden costs of electronic access. In some ways it’s a tradeoff between the physical resources of print (deforestation) and sharing documentation through the literal shipment of materials (gas, packing materials, and transportation labor). There are conflicting statistics about how much better an eBook may (or may not) be. However, we can’t escape the reality that the world’s digital…

Digital History: Source Availability, Retention, & the Shifting Possibilities of Scholarship Well, well, well, what have we here? Just 588 billion archived websites, 28 million books and texts, 14 million audio recordings (including 220 thousand live concerts), 6 million videos(including 2 million television shows), 3.5 million images, and 580 thousand software programs[1], including some classic video games, like the Oregon Trail.  Amidst the hum of the Internet Archive’s server rooms in San Francisco resides this vast quantity of digitally archived resources, a source collection that is unparalleled in human history. The incredible amount digitally born and digitized historic source materials is enough to make one’s head spin. In fact, the…