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“Open To The Public”: Cultural Institutions,
Digital Labor, And Local Networks
@JimMc_Grath [email protected]
Brown University
Jim McGrath
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEHow can humanities scholars employ digital tools
to talk with different publics?
How can emerging technologies help us better
demonstrate the value of our work?
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEHow do investments in digital projects transform
the kinds of academic labor that scholars do at
their institutions?
How do digital projects force us to think
differently about our research interests, our
departments, our cultural institutions, our
communities, and our methods of publication
and communication?
●
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat does “scholarship” look like? Who is doing it,
where is it published, how is it used and
disseminated?
How do universities, cultural institutions,
community organizations, and other publics
productively use digital tools / resources and
collaborate on digital projects?
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat professional identities and trajectories are
available to people interested in “public digital
humanities”?
How are digital objects created, contextualized,
curated, and circulated in academic and non-
academic contexts?
How can we plan for short and long-term use-
cases?
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE
“Oh, I’m open to the public. Pretty, pretty open to the public.”
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat do we expect public-facing digital projects
and digital scholarship to look like, to “do”?
How do academics address the expectations of
collaborators and audiences?
What resources / tools / labor / $$$ do we have?
Why do so many digital humanities projects look
like digital humanities projects?
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat do we expect dissertations, book chapters,
and journal articles to look like, to “do”?
How do academics address the expectations of
collaborators and audiences?
What resources / tools / labor / $$$ do we have?
Why do so many scholarly monographs look like
scholarly monographs?
PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE
May 2013-August 2015*
2006-present (Jim: 2015-present)
● Our Marathon (Case Study)
● What We Talk About When We Talk About Public Humanities In A Digital Age
“The Productive Unease of 21st-Century Digital Scholarship” (Julia Flanders; DHQ; 2009)
1. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the significance of
medium.
2. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the institutional
structures of scholarly communication.
3. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the significance of
representation in forming models of the world.
“Money and Time” (Miriam Posner; miriamposner.com; March 2016)
If we want to produce truly challenging
scholarship and keep our best scholars from
burning out, we need to pressure our institutions
to, frankly, pay up. You can optimize, streamline,
lifehack, and crowdsource almost everything you
do — but good scholarship still takes money and
time.
“Untitled” (Patricia Lockwood; @tricialockwood; March 2013)
2013 Boston Marathon Bombings
Build a lasting community memorial
Tell a wide range of stories
Preserve the historical record
37
9,321
307items
oral histories
memesphotographs
letters sent to City of Boston
2,886
4,849
9community partners
Our Partners
#BostonBetter
“Dear Boston”
SHARE YOUR STORY
WATERTOWN FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
What We Learned From Our Marathon● Participating in dialogue with communities
about value of archival projects
● Making the value of community-generated
metadata explicit and visible
● Highlighting the roles digital media play in
shaping and revising our cultural memory of
recent history
What We Learned From Our Marathon● Collaborations with external partners essential
● Collaborations with Library / Archives essential
● Preservation of items vs. interfaces
● Digital projects take time, money, and labor
● The need to take an active role in shaping the
value of the project to various audiences and
in a variety of contexts
What We Learned From Our Marathon● “Why are English PhD students doing this?”
● “No Story Too Small”
● Using (and customizing) Omeka
● Model for crowdsourcing?
● Digital Archives, Curation, Metadata
● Direct and public engagement between
cultural institutions and communities about
recent events
What We Learned From Our Marathon● Community Partners are Project Stakeholders
● How are partners defining the value of their
collaboration and their goals?
● Community Partners are not Free Labor
● Librarians and Archivists are not Free Labor
● How are you telling stories about your human
subjects? Ethical dimensions of doing so?
What We Talk About When We Talk About
Public Humanities in a Digital Age
● Two-Year M.A. Program● Courses taught by American Studies
Faculty, Adjuncts, Postdocs, (among others)● Students collaborate with Brown, local,
national, and global partners on a wide range of projects
● Digital components have been a part of many recent projects
● I’m the first Postdoc in “Digital Public Humanities”
● “Public Digital Humanities”?
● digital storytelling● digital curation● digital archives● digital tours● educational outreach / initiatives● Public intellectual activity on the
web (professional web sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.)
Recent Course Discussions● Using data to create visualizations for a
variety of audiences / publics● Accessibility issues (particularly in global
contexts)● Interface design (visible and invisible
interfaces and UX)● Crowdsourcing that is not gamified data
entry● “A Domain of One’s Own”● The ethics of digital scholarship (Moya
Bailey)
Recent JNBC Activities● Physical exhibits with digital components
(Stamp Collections; Umbrella Movement)● Contributions to “Mapping Violence” project
(Monica Martinez; American Studies)● Visualizations of Harvard Art Museums’
metadata (using its API)● Preliminary stages of Asian-American family
photo archive (digitization / digital storytelling)
● Crowdsourcing● Digital Tours (web-based, mobile, and
tablet)
Questions● How to navigate access to digital tools,
technology in particular collaborations?● How to discuss best practices re: digitization
and digital storytelling / curation?● How to meet communities in spaces they
use already in digital contexts?● “Small data” (Brian Croxall)● How to manage expectations of “digital
collaborator” (what we’re expected to know / do)
● Where to begin?
Final Thoughts● DH Projects that look like the rest of the
web?● DH Projects that work with available
resources● Where is there room for “exploratory work”
in these contexts?● You don’t have to build a database, an
archive, digital stories, tools, tours, simultaneously
● How do we assign value to this work and the people who know how to do it?
Final Thoughts● How “Open to the Public” is your project?● Consider multiple sites of engagement for
particular audiences● Consider the benefits of a range of entry
points (Search, Browse, Visualize, Map)● Multiple uses of digital assets● Collaborators should share assets and
methodologies (“How’d you do that?”)● “User Stories”: Test site navigation, use
cases (and consider spec writing)● The afterlives of digital projects
[email protected]@JimMc_Grath#acla16Special thanks: my students in #dhJNBC at Brown, Alicia Peaker, Julia Flanders, and Larry David
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