Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio

Jun 29 2020

Just a simple timeline, right?

Posted on June 29, 2020July 2, 2020 by atboge

I came into this fellowship with a great deal of optimism regarding what I could accomplish—utterly unaware of the actual work it would take to pull off a digital humanities project. This summer, I’ll be working with Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio staff member Nikki White to create a digital (but that is a given, I suppose) non-linear/non-chronological timeline of the history of reparations in the United States. This project augments research I’m currently conducting on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay “The Case for Reparations,” published in June 2014 in The Atlantic Magazine. In his piece, Coates jumps around the timeline of reparations while making his argument (starts in 1923, moves to 1968, jumps back to 1783, forward to 1989, back to 1619). My goal is to create a digital timeline that mirrors the temporal movements he makes in the essay and also functions as an educational tool to engage with Coates’ work. In addition, the project will hopefully provide an opportunity to think through how to represent histories of anti-Black violence that are not beholden to linear/“progress” time-paradigms, which often feed into problematic post-racial logics that create clear divisions between the past and present. Kevin Williamson, in his essay “The Case against Reparations,” published in the National Review, best exemplifies this temporal sentiment when he states: “the people to whom reparations were owed are long dead.” In other words, the past is in the past and no longer accessible, nor need be addressed, in the present.

Considering there is an abundance of easy-to-use and ready-made timeline platforms on the internet, I thought the task seemed simple enough. I was completely wrong. In theory, the notion of a non-chronological timeline is relatively straightforward on its face. We need a timeline platform to sequence the events in the timeline in a custom order that I feed the platform (i.e., 1923, 1968, 1783, 1989, 1619), instead of in chronological order. The biggest issue Nikki and I have run into is that almost all timeline platforms automatically sequence events in chronological order. Telling a platform to perform an alternate sequence is not as easy as it sounds. This isn’t surprising considering that when most people think of a timeline, they almost exclusively think of it as an ordered number of events in chronological order. We are trying to use Timeline.js’ publicly available platform to work with their code and invent a solution that borrows from their application. So, in a dramatic turn of events, I’m learning the basics of the coding language Javascript and will get the opportunity to have a hand in building this digital timeline from the ground up. Plus, while I’m learning some rudimentary coding techniques, I’m gathering archival and digital materials to use for each event on the timeline (such as the Contract Buyers League in Chicago or Belinda Royall’s petition for reparations in 1783). The research has taken on additional meaning given the ongoing struggle against police brutality, white supremacy, and anti-Black violence.

All in all, I’m learning quite a bit, and we’re only two weeks in. I’m nervous and excited for what the rest of the summer and fellowship experience hold. Fingers crossed we can find the right timeline platform; if not, I’ll be making one from scratch. Wish me luck!

– Andrew Boge

Jun 29 2020

Mapping Public University Access in Kosovo

Posted on June 29, 2020July 2, 2020 by Nicholas Stroup

Can higher education access and higher education quality be improved at the same time? How can we visualize this difficult trade-off?

For the Studio summer fellowship, my technological goal is to learn how to build a choropleth map that includes a time slider element. The reason I want to learn this skill is to tell the story of the rapid enrollment changes at public universities in Kosovo.

Initial gif Kosovo Map — The beginnings of the map project

At the start of the 2010s, as a measure to improve quality of higher education institutions, the Republic of Kosovo passed a regulation that effectively required that universities must employ three PhD-holders for each accredited degree program [1][2]. If a university could not maintain this requirement, the noncomplying program would lose accreditation and be prohibited from enrolling new students. For a country that founded its first university in 1970s, whose people experienced segregation and systematic exclusion from formal education in the 1980s, that faced war in the 1990s, and formally declared independence in the 2000s, there has not been much opportunity to build the quality national educational infrastructure required to mint new PhDs in Kosovo. As such, the three-PhD quality assurance requirement led to the dis-accreditation of degree programs around the country. While we have some idea of what this quality assurance policy has meant for the degree programs, what has this meant for students – or potential students – across Kosovo?

National Library of Kosovo — Biblioteka Kombëtare e Kosovës “Pjetër Bogdani”

As a student at Iowa, I feel a deep connection to Kosovo. Iowa and Kosovo have a Sister State relationship, Kosovo was the first country to open a foreign consulate in Iowa, and the connections between sectors in our two states offer a unique approach for post-conflict development work. Given the young population of Kosovo (the median age is 30.5) and the labor market issues young Kosovars face (youth unemployment rate presently at 49.4%), the work of understanding how higher education serves today’s students in Kosovo is an urgent matter [3][4]. Mobilizing the resources of the University of Iowa through this fellowship seems like a small way I can contribute to developing this understanding.

View over Prizren, Kosovo — The historic city of Prizren

In just the initial weeks of the project, with the skillful guidance of GIS Specialist Jay Bowen, I have already learned some technical vocabulary (like the word ‘choropleth’!) and acquired several digital tools to make a rudimentary map to help tell this story. Over the course of the upcoming weeks, I hope to polish this map into a format that can be useful for educational leaders in Kosovo seeking to improve both quality and access in the new nation.

-Nick Stroup

References

[1] Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. (2013). Administrative instruction: No. 0212013 for accreditation of higher education institutions in the republic of Kosova. MEST website: https://masht.rks-gov.net/uploads/2016/01/02-2013-ua-mbi-akreditimin-e-institucioneve.pdf

[2] National Qualification Authority. (2016). EQF referencing report of the Kosovo national qualification framework for general education, VET, and higher education. National Qualification Authority website: https://akkks.rks-gov.net/uploads/kosovo_eqf_referencing_report_2016.pdf

[3] Central Intelligence Agency. (2020). Kosovo. In The world factbook. CIA website: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kv.html

[4] Kosovo Agency of Statistics. (2020). Labor force survey in Kosovo, 2019. Kosovo Agency of Statistics website: https://ask.rks-gov.net/en/kosovo-agency-of-statistics/add-news/labor-force-survey-in-kosovo-2019

May 29 2020

A SLIS Capstone Experience Part II: The Final Steps of “The Mysterious Film Print-Block Collection” from Galena, IL by Traci Bruns

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Connor Hood

During the Spring 2020 semester, I researched and examined types of gender bias that could have been used in advertisements to promote and sell tickets Classic Hollywood films from the 1940’s to the 1950’s. For this research, I focused on a collection of film print blocks from Galena, IL, that were deteriorating due to poor storage conditions. The first step involved figuring out a research argument that I could present with the collection that needed preservation. With colleagues in my department (School of Library and Information Science) and my advisor I discussed multiple avenues I could take and decided to focus on potential gender bias found in the graphic designs used in the print blocks. Through my research and studying the images of the print blocks, I concluded that the ads did use multiple stereotypes of genders to promote these movies, and these tactics were similar to other ads that used gender bias.

Besides understanding gender bias in this media format, providing digital surrogates for each film block will not only help to preserve the print blocks, but will archive and provide future access to these objects. I worked on this process through the Digital Humanities Capstone Project with the help of Nikki White (the Omeka specialist) and Ethan DeGross (researcher and developer) of the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio. Both Nikki and Ethan suggested that I utilize the content management system, Omeka, for this collection and idea. The Omeka platform has been beneficial for organizing, archiving, and presenting the digital surrogates and applicable data. In further detail, this database is bonded to Dublin Core (DC), which is a schema using vocabulary terms. These terms can then be used to describe digital resources, such as images and surrogates for artwork objects, which ultimately help to make Omeka an ideal environment for the photographs I took of the print film blocks because these terms can help access the digital objects. Figure 1 to 3, shown below, display the front end of my website that I started for my research and archival collection. Titles are not evident because I still need to import my spreadsheet data.

The second step was to address the deterioration of film blocks caused the engraved and etched graphic designs in the zinc plates to fade. Due to their poor storage environment they needed a preservation plan. This plan evaluated the conditions of the print blocks, which incorporated a fun challenge to clean, resurface, and photograph each print block, and then editing each image. The third step to my project was applying my research to classify and categorize the gender bias representation displayed in the print-blocks. From my references, which are listed at the end of this blog, the peer-reviewed research articles by Morris, and Timke and O’Barr have been the most applicable in defining the classification that could be applied to this collection. The final steps involve bringing my collection and research to light through Omeka. Having this experience is giving me the opportunity to work in and learn multiple technical aspects that need to be understood to archive a digital collection.

In order to properly archive the object, I have been working in Excel and learning the process of building a spreadsheet. Soon, I will be undertaking the process of importing my spreadsheet into Omeka. Through this project I have not only had an opportunity to play in photoshop, but to develop a metadata schema, which includes figuring out which elements to use in Omeka and mapping the DC suggested terms to best describe my project. I was able to achieve this during the COVID pandemic and the online environment, by emailing Nikki because she was able to assist me on how I could translate my data into the fifteen standard DC fields through examples and recommendations she was able to provide from her professional experience. I supplemented my learning experience through information provided in Omeka, which noted that my field labels in my spreadsheet should match the fields used by DC; therefore, I changed the labels I was using in the spreadsheet to match the specific ones listed in Omeka. For example, I choose that the genre of each film would map to “DC Subject”, height dimensions and Length Dimensions to “DC Formats”, production company to “DC Publisher”, actors to “DC Contributor”, Producer and Director to “DC Creator/s”, promotional quotes to “DC Description1”, image description to “DC Description2”, gender bias editorial classification to “DC Description3”. These examples are shown below in Figures 4 to 7. I will add in the numbers assigned to each print block by owner to the DC Identifier after I can physically go double check what numbers the owner wrote on the back of the blocks.

Besides determining which fields to use for categorization and how to use them for this collection, I had a couple of other option to consider. I could either have each gender bias be its own collection and have eight different collections, or keep the print collection as one whole collection. As the collection stands, I have a total of three different types/classifications for females and three for males, and two other small groups, which represent no bias or a reversal of stereotypical gender roles. However, due to the smaller size of the whole collection and the fact that collections of objects are usually best grouped by some kind of inherent quality, such as shared provenance or format, I made the editorial decision to keep the collection as one and to not only use tags to account for the differences in the gender bias but included them as editorial comments in a description field. The editorial comments referencing the gender biases are listed in the tag and description2 fields, which are shown in Figure 6.

Furthermore, if I had selected the method with eight different collections, I would have had to do eight different spreadsheets and imports. Having eight different collections would add unneeded work to this smaller collection. I felt the best practice for this project would be to have my editorial commentary encoded in its item descriptions and tagging. I feel that having the editorial comments included in the metadata, that my research argument will be apparent in collection.

However, currently (as I alluded to earlier), I am still in the process of trying to learn how to import my spreadsheet as a CSV file because I am not able to save my spreadsheet as a CSV, as suggested by Omeka. I will be zooming in with Nikki to learn how to perform this technical aspect of Omeka. Although, I was able to go into the setting of Omeka and defined the following:

Original Format: Film print blocks from the 1940s to the 1950s, that came from Galena, IL, and found in storage.
Physical Dimensions: Each original film print block is its own physical size, and the dimensions, which are height and width in inches, are cataloged under the format field for each item.
Compression: JPEG
Producer: Traci Bruns, photographer
Director: Traci Bruns, image editor
Objective: To display various gender representations of Hollywood film print blocks from the 1940s to 1950s.

Moving beyond that, the next goal I have for this online digital collection is working on the controlled vocabulary aspects for the descriptions I created in the fields. I will incorporate ideas for that from the Getty vocabulary databases. These terms have been generated from the Getty Vocabulary Program, which was created through the Getty Research Institute. This specific vocabulary contains terms, names, and other information about the digital objects, and concepts relating to art, architecture, and material culture. I will use these terms in the data entry stage to help describe the archival materials and visual surrogates, which will help solve the challenge of describing the images within this digital archive. To manage the subjective aspects of descriptive metadata I plan on adding URLs in the metadata, which will link to similar material that will provide related images and ads of the films.

Lastly, I know I have a lot more work that needs to be done on this project, but am excited to learn more as I move forward. I hope to be able to find and connect to other digital gender studies and/or print blocks for films or other general newspaper ads to explore different avenues, share data, and to help ideas exist beyond traditional teaching or archival methods. Also, in conclusion, preservation and archival projects like the project I have been creating are even more relevant in today’s society as we have been transitioning to more virtual environments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital collections not only provide more access in general, but allow archival collections and ideas to reach to a broader audience. Furthermore, concepts within and through digital humanities formats provide other forms of pedagogical moments, which help to advance creativity and new ways of teaching and understanding our past and our world. More specifically, having this experience through Capstone and working on my own archival collection has provided a great foundation to work on other similar preservation projects and I will be able to apply what I learned to other digital platforms.

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References for the Gender Bias Classification:

Green, Denise N. “Fashion and Fearlessness in the Wharton Studio’s Silent Film Serials, 1914–1918.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 60, no. 1 (2019): 83-115. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/724745.

Morris, Pamela. “Overexposed: Issues of Public Gender Imaging.” Advertising & Society Review 6, no. 3 (2005) doi:10.1353/asr.2006.0003.

O’Barr, William M. “High Culture/Low Culture: Advertising in Literature, Art, Film, and Popular Culture.” Advertising & Society Review 7, no. 1 (2006) doi:10.1353/asr.2006.0020.

Timke, Edward, and William M. O’Barr. “Representations of Masculinity and Femininity in Advertising.” Advertising & Society Review 17, no. 3 (2017) doi:10.1353/asr.2017.0004.

Wood, Bethany. “Gentlemen Prefer Adaptations: Addressing Industry and Gender in Adaptation Studies.” Theatre Journal 66, no. 4 (2014): 559-579. doi:10.1353/tj.2014.0120.

-Traci Bruns

May 21 2020

The Interdisciplinary Avenues of Adjusting to the Circumstances

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Connor Hood

At the end of my Capstone experience and the certificate program I’m looking back at two
semesters where I got to experience what it means to be engaged in the Digital Humanities,
and even – with the second half of the spring semester being affected by the necessary
Covid19 arrangements – what it means to do a Digital Humanities research project
completely digitally.

In my first semester I largely found myself re-interrogating the kind of questions American
Studies asks in order to understand what different kind of questions I could ask in the Digital Humanities that would provide me with new avenues to my own research. I learned about the contemporary discourse in this discipline, about many inspiring DH projects and came to appreciate the significant value of having various experts at the Digital Studio at hand with whom I could talk through specific ideas, plans, concerns, and challenges related to my DH research process.

With the Covid-19 shutdown of campus, these resources were harder to make use of, since I
felt that some of my questions were so trifling, they were not worth cluttering Digital Studio
staff’s email accounts – especially not during these times. So, I found myself gradually less
pursuing actual results and outcomes for my project and increasingly starting to put more
effort and time into learning the digital tools that would enable me to run my DH project
more independently. Through online tutorials I trained myself in ArcGIS and started to learn Python for geospatial analysis. Going down this path brought as many moments of success, fascination and joy as well as moments of cluelessness and frustration. After months of trialand-error, I would say, I got to access the DH universe from a very interesting different angle where I would not have otherwise arrived at if somebody else had operated these programs for me. By interacting with these tools and watching other people systematically outlaying all the small tasks one could run with these programs, I gained a deeper understanding of what is possible and the computational spectrum I could situate my research questions in. I also discovered other useful programs and services that helped me work around more complex operations, for which I started to create a list to categorize all those tools for future projects.

Though, I cannot present any satisfactory results yet, I can say that due to the
circumstances, this Capstone experience has been a very interdisciplinary experience that
provided me with insights that I am sure will be especially valuable down the road.
I would also like to thank Tom and Leah and all the Studio staff for providing this welcoming, supportive and productive atmosphere that always felt exciting and inspiring to be in.
– Oanh Nguyen

May 14 2020

Doing Digital Work From My One-Bedroom Apartment

Posted on May 14, 2020 by ajloup

The second half of the semester has been difficult for a million different reasons. Many of us are relegated to small apartments or bedrooms, some of us have roommates, and many of us are far from our loved ones, which makes this transition to working from home even tougher. My mother, sister, and brother all work at the same grocery store chain in California and have been on the front lines of this pandemic. They have all had to work forty hours or more a week and for the duration of March and most of April they were told they could not wear masks because it scared the customers. I chose to mention this because while I am privileged enough to work from home, the people that I care most about, are not. As the situation got worse, I would spend hours on the phone with family members trying to get them protective gear, teach them how to do order pickups, and find ways to send them things like hand sanitizer and disinfectant spray. I would watch the news endlessly and make sure to keep updated on every bit of information coming out of California and Iowa, so that I could best protect them and myself. In the midst of all of this, I still needed to find time to grade student’s assignments, respond to emails, attend weekly classes, and complete my own work. The shutdown of the university happened so quickly. We were sent on spring break, then we received emails that spring break would be extended one week, then we were told the libraries were being closed, and before we knew it the entire school would be inaccessible for the duration of the semester and into the summer. Many of the plans I had made to finish my last semester of coursework had to change, and this included my capstone project at the Studio.
I had initially planned to have a complete version of my athletic statuary map done by the end of this semester. I have been working on this particular map for about a year now and it is meant to be a full collection of athletic statuary that people can access and search through pretty easily. This is my last semester of coursework here at the University of Iowa and as such I wanted to also have a professional website ready to go with the working statuary map as the crown jewel. This capstone was mostly on track and my projects were set to be completed on time, and then the entire university was shut down and all of those plans basically dissolved. Up until this point, I had really done everything that I knew how to do on the map, and I was in need of help and input from the staff at the Studio to finish it. Many of the changes I wanted to implement were things like cleaner pop-up windows, I needed to figure out how I wanted to handle statues that were all located at the same place, and I wanted to include a territory acknowledgement that would show up whenever the map was accessed. After I realized I would not have unfettered access to the staff at the Studio, I started to watch tutorials and train myself on how to fix some of these issues. The motivation and focus it took to do this was overwhelming. I found myself getting frustrated and angry with my slow internet connection and I was certain that at any point my 2012 MacBook would take her last breath. After what felt like months of trying to do this work on my own, I finally decided that I needed to reach out to Jay at the Studio and get some pointers to see if we could work through some of these things remotely. He suggested using a site called GitHub. This would be a space where we could collaborate remotely and work on my projects. He uploaded all of the files I had sent him while I tried to teach myself how to use the platform. We have had to start and stop this project so many times due to the sheer amount of work that I find myself doing in isolation. One day he and I exchange emails back and forth about the map and then I spend the next week crafting a presentation for another class and grading student papers, and by the time I have the energy to revisit my map, I have completely forgotten what we are working on. It has been really disheartening at times and at others it has just been too much to even think about.
I am the type of learner who does best when she is in the same space as the person teaching. I like to ask a lot of questions and I like to chat through my work and issues I am having, in person. This pandemic has made this type of learning experience impossible and in the span of only a few weeks, I have had to reorient the entire way I experience digital work. I have spent many hours during this half of the semester questioning my skills and wondering if I am even capable of this kind of work, and I think I have come to realize that my interest in digital humanities came out of a desire to visualize my research and from a place of exploration, rather than a place of mastery. In this time of isolation and unrest, I have come to reacquaint myself with these initial feelings and although I do not have some perfectly polished project to show off, I have a renewed sense of myself in relation to my work and that seems just as useful.

-Ashley Loup

May 06 2020

Introducing the Studio’s 2020 Summer Fellows

Posted on May 6, 2020May 6, 2020 by Connor Hood

The University of Iowa Graduate College and the UI Libraries Digital Scholarship & Publishing Studio are excited to announce that 14 graduate students have been selected for the 2020 Studio Summer Fellowship program. These individuals will soon take part in an 8-week course that provides mentored digital scholarship experience, as well as training in skills and tools they will use as they pursue innovative ways of thinking about and sharing their creative endeavors.

This year will be a new experience for us all as we navigate life through the COVID-19 pandemic, pushing many of us to work from our homes and physically isolated from others. We’re confident, with the help of technology this will still provide us the opportunity to collaborate with these students and their projects. Below you can read more about the fellows and a description of their proposed projects.

Myat Aung, PhD Student, Art History

Myat Aung plans to use this fellowship to create a 3D model of a water display in Rome commonly known as the “Auditorium of Maecenas” to explore its architectural and visual elements, spatial sequences, and sensorial experiences. She will then do a comparative analysis between this model and one she made previously of the fountain in the Villa San Marco located along the Bay of Naples to contextualize the relationships between the two.

Andrew Boge, PhD Student, Communication Studies

Andrew Boge’s goal is to create a non-linear digital timeline and archive that catalogues major moments within the reparations debate and histories of anti-Black violence in the United States.

Laurel Carlson, PhD Student, American Studies

This summer, Laurel Carlson will be working on a project that explores the gendered and racialized politics of the Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars. This project will include a website with data visualization and video essays that could be used as a way to educate a general audience but also as pedagogical tools for a gender studies or media studies audience.

Dominic Dongilli, PhD Student, American Studies and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies

Dominic Dongilli’s fellowship supports his digital exhibition project The Midwest Is Easy to See. This interactive exhibit will explore the spatial poetics and affective geographies of American Midwestern cultures by re-situating the “place” of art exhibition within the actual physical spaces of the American Midwest.

Leticia Fernandez-Fontecha, MFA Student, Spanish Creative Writing

As a Studio Fellow, she plans to develop a new approach to illness narratives through an investigation of the intersection of pain and exile. Here, the specific focus will be the artistic development of the Cuban artist Ana Mendieta, during her stay in Iowa City as a graduate student and teacher, and how she communicated the pain of exile and displacement in her ritual performances. The main goal of the project is to create a website called After the Illness which would include information about the work developed during the project and about its progress. This platform will give more visibility to a topic that is central to Iowa City identity, that of exile and the consequences of exile, and also make this information more accessible to the public.

Amelia Gramling, MFA Student, English

By pairing the antithetical industries of coal mining and tourism, Amelia Gramling will investigate how both work to create a relationship between the residents of Kentucky and the land they inhabit that is directly antagonistic to the health, safety, and longevity of the people and the environment.

Max Lieberman, PhD Student, Anthropology

Max Lieberman’s current research focus concerns the bison herds of Yellowstone National Park. This summer, he will be working to map migration patterns of the Yellowstone bison herds using GIS software, seeking a better understanding of when and where bison are migrating onto public and private land surrounding the national park.

Yuija Lyu, PhD Student, Sociology

During this fellowship, Yujia Lyu will conduct machine-learning-based text analysis on newspaper articles that include the use of “sense of control” to explore the media discourse of personal control and its change over the years. The project will produce interactive network visualization of themes and concepts related to personal control using Python.

Jennifer Marks, PhD Student, History

Over the summer, Jennifer Marks will build a digital map of animal-powered transportation networks in Chicago during the 1872 Equine Influenza Epizootic. She hopes to use this map to better understand how animal laborers circulated through the urban environment and in doing so, spread disease, shaped transit technology, and altered animal welfare beliefs.

Ruvarashe Masocha, PhD Student, History

Ruvarashe Masocha plans spending the fellowship to create a map that juxtaposes migration patterns in colonial Southern Africa against the existing economic, political and social dynamics between 1914 and 1950. The overall goal is to present the labor migrants not just as a resource, but as human beings who made conscious decisions that affect the regions’ social integration up to date.

Hansini Munasinghe, PhD Student, Sociology

This summer, Hansini Munasinghe will compile data and create visualizations about visa statuses issued within the US immigration system. This project will serve as the foundation of her dissertation, which examines how restrictions imposed by visa statuses shape the lives of immigrants and their families.

Kofi Opam, MFA Student, English

Kofi Opam plans to use this summer fellowship to create a short VR video essay that conveys the visceral nature of racism when it is directed at a person of color experiencing a health emergency. This would allow Opam to learn skills to create fully-immersive digital essays, portable stories that can be played across platforms.

Nicholas Stroup, PhD Student, Higher Education and Student Affairs

Nicholas Stroup will use the Studio Summer Fellowship to launch a digital visualization of enrollment changes at public universities in the Republic of Kosovo from 2012-2019. This tool will help tell the story of the rapid growth of Kosovo’s higher education infrastructure and the subsequent accreditation challenges that have threatened access to high-quality postsecondary education.

Jihye Park, PhD Student, Sociology

During this fellowship, JJ Park will work on her research regarding gender differences in the U.S. incarceration since the 1970s. To be more specific, her study will examine the roles of political conservatism, economic downturns, and welfare changes in male and female incarceration rates over time across the 50 states.

Apr 09 2020

Reflections on My Capstone Project Amid a Pandemic

Posted on April 9, 2020 by tnguyen38

For my Digital Humanities Capstone Project in the spring semester 2020, I’m investigating the topic of loneliness in cities. In particular, I’m interested in the question: “How friendly is a city for a lonely person?“ As loneliness spiked in urban areas in the past decade, experts and the media started talking about the loneliness epidemic. Little did I know into what times the world had been heading at that phase of the semester. I’m writing this blog post while a different pandemic has brought life as we know it to a halt. In these times, the typical type of city I’m concerned with in my project – metropolitan, walkable, dense developed – is now forced to operate counter to its functioning principle providing us with images beyond what we were able to envision. Amenities a city thrive on are closed, flaneuring is no longer allowed, and social-distancing is the new urban mantra for the time being.

With the virus, loneliness seems to have become all-pervasive as citizens are mandated to stay home and reduce social activities. Social issues once visible in the urban conglomerate are now muted into the private sphere. In the wake of these circumstances, my question has gained additional perspectives. I’m currently discussing my initial question by looking at the issue of visibility. In particular the visibility of loneliness and the lonely person in the city. If there were no places where these social issues could bide and reside and demand visibility through public friction, how then do we know how to talk about them How do we know how many people in the city feel lonely? What loneliness looks like? And where it’s located? Actually, what public spaces could a lonely person occupy to stay visible and thus, relevant as a participant of the Urban in the city? How can we measure a city’s “lonely-friendliness“? Where are the places we can trace this down? And how can we visualize this to have a better grasp of the magnitude?

I want to investigate these questions by evaluating what Ray Oldenburg calls third places – Cafés, Restaurants, and Parks. With a set of criteria, I seek to collect data to define what it needs for a lonely person to visit those places and spend time there.

In the beginning of this capstone experience, I talked to some people at the Digital Studio about tools that I could use to collect and structure data, me and Ashley also started to meet with Jay Bowen, the GIS specialist at the Studio, to get started on learning ArcGIS. However, with the UI canceling all non-essential face-to-face meetings on campus, learning ArcGIS via the Virtual Desktop service has turned out to be a challenge itself; but also collecting data in situ has become for an indefinite time impossible.

So instead, I’ve started to learn Python to map what I think would be interesting to see spatially, as Python does not require complex software and tutorials can easily be found online.

The capstone journey has been quite thought-provoking under COVID-19 conditions and I’m excited to see where this will take the project.

Apr 09 2020

Digital Diaries: Perfecting the Map and Professionalizing the Website

Posted on April 9, 2020 by ajloup

I first came to the Studio in the summer of 2019. I had taken one graduate seminar where I got to create some of my own digital projects, and I wanted to learn more. After getting to craft my very own mapping project over the summer, I ended up taking two more courses that had digital components. In these classes I further developed my DH skills and got to present a map for the first time. It was such a fun project to work on and it was great to get feedback from those in the class who did not have the same DH experience. They were able to offer suggestions on things such as the readability of the map, whether it was user friendly, and what elements of my research were best communicated through the visual of the map.
These are the experiences and projects that I brought with me to the capstone course this semester. When I first signed up for the capstone course, I knew there were a few things I hoped to accomplish. I wanted to keep working on my public facing mapping project, I wanted to create a professional website, and I wanted to learn a little bit about the ArcGIS program. I have been working on this particular map for around 8 months and I had felt like I had done all of the things I could do on my own. I crafted a list of the things that I wanted to add or change about this map that ranged from adding a land acknowledgment that would recognize the indigenous folks who inhabit North America as well as their claims to this land, I wanted to better format the pop-up windows that displayed photographs, and I wanted to figure out a way to include short narratives in each pop up that did not overwhelm the actual point on the map. In addition to this, I wanted to create and launch my own professional website. The academic job market is not the easiest market, so I figured by creating my own website I could house my completed digital projects, emphasize my teaching experience, and highlight my publications. Although many of these things can be found on m C.V., I felt as though a professional website could showcase many of these things better than a two-page document. I had a few ideas of things I wanted to highlight on this website, and I made sure to write those down and add to the list whenever anything new came to mind. Lastly, I wanted to learn about the ArcGIS mapping program. The map I had started over summer did not require me to use ArcGIS, and the former ArcGIS expert had just taken a position elsewhere. When I heard that the Studio had hired a new person who specialized in the program, I knew that I could not pass up this opportunity to work with him.
This blog post is coming at a unique time because we are all currently in our respective places and spaces, with the rest of the semester being held online. This development has definitely altered the ways in which I am able and hoping to approach my work. With some of these changes in mind, I have decided to focus solely on my mapping project and professional website. My map is something that I have put a ton of time and love into and I would really like to have a satisfying version complete in the coming weeks. I am lucky in regard to my professional website because when I first started working on it, I asked a Studio staff member if they would remain on my Wix account to help with any issues I might have. I could simply send him an email and he could advise me on what to do, while also having it in front of him. The website is nearly complete, and I am just waiting to finish my map so that I can imbed it. These two projects are linked in a lot of ways, so that it why I have chosen to really prioritize them both. It has been tough to not have the same access to the Studio and the same drop in meetings with the staff. It has always been easier for me to communicate what sorts of things I want to change or work on, in person, so this has been especially tough.

-Ashley Loup

Mar 12 2020

Welcome to a SLIS Capstone Experience: A Mysterious Collection: Film Print-Block from Galena, Ill

Posted on March 12, 2020March 12, 2020 by bru

Welcome to a SLIS Capstone Experience:

Mysterious Collection: Film Print-Block from Galena, Ill

Coming into this project, I was faced with a significant challenge: I did not have a large data-set or previous research coming into my Capstone experience. I knew however that I wanted to work on a project that was based on visualization and digitization—a blending of art and metadata that can help to create new territories of intellectual explorations, understandings, and/or unforeseen connections, ideas, and theories. I was aware that students usually come into this course with a larger passion project that they have been able to develop over time to create a singular facet of their interest and gain new insight/s. Although I had a lot of ideas, some of which I will briefly discuss, I had no firm direction. After thinking about my interests and passions to formulate a digital humanities project plan, I did online investigations to see what had already been done in those areas. I ran by some of my thoughts with friends, and classmates for their feedback. After that, I had to figure out an appropriate path forward and reached out for professional advice. I not only emailed my ideas out to the Capstone committee, but I also emailed my ideas to my advisor. In the end, I was left with four ideas from which to select my project.

My initial idea was inspired by my friend’s 1930s-40s film print-block collection, which I believe are from Galena, IL. There are probably 100 of them, but they needed to be cleaned up and I was not sure what connections I could make with them. My advisor suggested that I check out the book, Looking Past the Screen, and I might be able to get a research idea from that. I, also, thought about researching to see if there are any other digital platforms of other film print-block collections to see if my friend’s collection could be connected to others. What fascinated me about this idea was that it was mysterious, could contain hidden secrets, and involve graphic design. But before I did further investigation, I thought I should get feedback about this idea and consider other potential ideas.

A second major idea I had was inspired by another course I took where I became intrigued about media literacy and the potential for incorporating K-12 media literacy through state legislation. I discovered that there are some states that passed K-12 media literacy bills and that there are also media literacy programs in K-12 outside of the U.S. My thought was to see if I could find out how beneficial those legislations are in the US and/or internationally through recent assessments on students enrolled in school systems that have already passed legislation. My hope was that the potential beneficial factors of media literacy legislation could be displayed through assessments or reports on students’ media evaluation skills. I thought that it might be interesting to visualize this data through a map generated in ArcGIS. For this project, my plan was to reach out to researchers whose focus is on information and literacy in public education or on false information in the media in order to build my data set. However, there was a significant issue that I could not overcome—media literacy legislations are fairly recent, and the limitations in potential data would not display a thorough understanding of the methodologies they used, and how to interpret the findings. In a nutshell, my idea was too early and would be better achieved after more data is available.

A couple of other ideas that occurred to me were possibly researching and mapping drone activities over Iraq and the Middle East, or U.S. illegal bombings of whole villages in a couple of areas near Cambodia and/or Laos (over a 20 year period), to show how many civilians died in each village of the focused area (perhaps getting data from the U.N.). I wanted to then find the current economic standings of the bombed area and compare that to current economic conditions to neighboring areas that weren’t bombed (e.g. the southern tip of Cambodia to Bangkok). I wanted to investigate how bombings negatively impacted the economic factors of an area through time. For these two ideas, I thought it would be very interesting to study and I would learn a lot and contribute to many different fields of study, however, I had not researched either of these topics prior, and my fear was that doing the additional research would not allow enough time to focus on the digital experience.

I was not sure if any of my ideas would have potential from a digital humanities perspective, but by reaching out, I was relieved to learn that they all did. After receiving feedback on my ideas, I was able to limit my choices down to two. One idea would incorporate cataloging and organizing the film print-block collection, and then possibly investigating the potential for interoperability with other collections, or building a narrative exhibit through genre, representation, a map, and/or timeline. My second option was mapping a historical comparison of a couple of bombed villages during the Vietnam war to their current economical standing to similar areas that were not bombed. And for this idea, I knew that a potential issue would be the time involvement factor and locating the economic data, and then creating a timeline of what I could work on each week and set goals after all the research.

From this point, what helped me decide on my ultimate choice was a recommendation that I got from my advisor and mentor. Both my mentor and advisor suggested that I think about how my Capstone experience could help me build skills and methodologies that I would want to develop and learn. Due to the fact that I am interested in archives and special collections or working in other gallery settings, such as museums or art libraries, I researched archival jobs to see some of the required job responsibilities in hopes to be able to design an experience that could enhance my resume. The job applications I researched into had aspects dealing with digitization require digital asset management, system management, processing, and preserving and accessing archival materials, as well as providing guidance in electronic records disposition and digital workflows. The job ad stated that an applicant should embrace digital editing tools, such as photoshop. There were other applicable job responsibilities that I was considering, which include tracking and managing master, service, derivative, exhibition versions of collections’ images, and digital documentation of collections, as well as arranging, describing, and establishing file-naming standards, and creating metadata.

I do feel that any of my ideas could be adapted to create an experience that could incorporate several of those responsibilities, contingent on if I could get the information that I would need. However, I feel that my initial idea to have an adventure with the print-block collection and learning to work with a client’s needs would best match the job-market and provide applicable hands-on skills. Through this experience, I want to be able to let other students without a body of data know that they too can create a project that can further their personal development and incorporate something they are passionate about.

Due to bad storage conditions, i.e. an attic and garage, the blocks were extremely dirty and stained with a tar residue. Also, this specific collection of print-blocks has already started to deteriorate. Therefore, they took a lot of restoration and needed a particular-cleaning process, which I researched how to do. The subject of my digital surrogates is from film ads that were created on zinc plated print-block, which are mounted on wood. One of the goals of this collection is from an archival value and is meant to help preserve the print blocks for future use and access.

Next, I will be including an example of what will be in my Omeka collection, which is shown in figure 1 below. This surrogate is taken of a film print-block from 1946, which came from an inherited collection of print-blocks from Galena, IL. All the print-blocks in this collection were used to create newspaper advertisements for the films they represent, and the subject displayed in the surrogate is one of those print-blocks. The ads were made by a process called letterpress printing, which is formed by the technique of relief printing with a printing press. Therefore, for this image, all the light and dark colors that are shown are reversed from the image the print block creates. The graphic design I will be studying is displayed in the art and technique from the engraving and etching in the zinc plate. The printing is done with a platen press that can show relationships between the type/forme, the pressure, the ink, and the paper. Presented in the photo-etching is the female star’s face (and her flowing hairstyle), who is also the main headliner for this specific film. The words in the actual print-block would be back-words to create a readable mirrored image for the print ad. The fact that the title is engraved would have it printed in black with a lighter blocked background for the newspaper ad.

To create these surrogates, there will be several editing steps taken of the original image to generate a similar version. For the first edit, the color of the digital image will likely be shifted, and they will be cropped. Another part of the editing process will include the reversal of the digital image surrogate, which will then allow the ad to be readable. The idea is to have the image display in a similar manner as the ad would have appeared in the newspaper and seen by its audience.

I will also go through the print-block collection and categorize them by genre and bias gender representation. To select a manageable amount of the print-blocks to work with, I learned from Archives and Media, that I could manage my time by keeping track of how long each part of the process takes to figure out how many print-blocks from each genre I should select. Another tip I considered that could help measure out my expectations on what is workable in 16 weeks, was to develop a timeframe for my workflow and a potential concept for the film print-blocks. Additionally, I have already modified my timeframe based on other people’s schedules and unforeseen complications, such as technical issues. My modified timeframe is below:

Here is my finalized Capstone Experience Idea and Workflow Timeframe Plan:

Topic: Building a 1930-40s print-block collection that could possibly represent aspects of gender bias.

Purpose: Creating an exhibit for the film print-blocks and examining how graphic art used in film advertisement might have elements of gender bias.

OUTLINE OF PLAN

Weeks 1-8: Building the Collection:

Week 1-5: Researching

Step 1: Researching scholarly articles to discuss different design elements that can be displayed in graphic film ads or movie posters! This might include such elements as:

a. Examining the graphics and drawings.

b. Looking for clues from different types of gender eye gaze.

c. Gender stereotypes:

1. Are women made to appear miserable due to domineering men or as the innocent girl next door type?

2. Are men made to appear domineering or controlling?

3. Are women just a prop and not a main part of the design?

4. Are men shown to be more active?

5. Are women’s bodies display more than men’s?

As an aside: I realize that some of this might be subjective because some may see images as not harmful or offensive, but more as generic self-created personalities with ranging emotions (i.e. thought of as a more of a projection of female power?). Therefore, I will be using articles by professionals in the field, that I researched in InfoHawk, to provide some elements and theories to back up decisions! My thought is to use the scholars’ articles to generate different classifications examples and base those examples on the scholar’s theories.

Step 2: Creating an archival consult and contract.

Step 3: Having that filled out and setting up a day to take photographs.

Week 6-9:

Step 4: Cleaning, photographing selected print-blocks, & taking measurements

Step 5: Research on Wood Blocks

a. Collecting contextual Information by using IMBD

1. Production company

2. Date of Movie

3. Description of Graphics

4. Size of print-block

5. Artist of ad, if available (?)

6. Maybe find out where the films were shown (?)

b. Categorizing the print-blocks based on potential gender bias, or lack of bias

c. Other ideas to think about

1. What might this collection tell us (?)

2. Are there comparable collections (?)

3. What can be reproduced or found vs what cannot be (?)

Step 6: Learning Excel and Building a Spreadsheet

Step 7: Learning Photoshop

Week 10-12: Creating Metadata Schema

Steps yet to be decided, but perhaps:

Step: 8: Working on the controlled vocabulary

Step 9: Figuring out which elements to use in Omeka

Step 10: Which collected metadata should be included

Step 10: Deciding what aspects of the Omeka platform to use

Week 13-16:

Step 11: Learning how to set up an exhibit for my collection.

Step 12: Entering the data

Step 13: Presenting my data and exhibit

In Conclusion

Lastly, I wanted to mention that a problem that exists with images, art, special collections, and/or rare books that I have stumbled upon in the process of my research. That challenge is being able to fully describe the object/s in a way that someone else can visualize what you might be seeing. In figure 1 is an example surrogate of one of the film print-blocks that I will be working with and how this problem can manifest. The exact layout and features, and its potential gender bias, are difficult to describe and then use metadata, such as controlled vocabulary, to access the conceptual objects in a database that may be restricted. When it comes to images, descriptive metadata is often subjective; therefore, to solve this some archivists are including URLs in their metadata to similar material that helps provide additional information. Another part of my plan is to provide some brief textual dialog about what this digital image represents, along with the collection’s brief history, which will help to provide the contents and context. I will be working on this process and trying to contextualize my digital objects. Next Steps in the upcoming weeks include going through all 120 images I have taken, editing, categorizing, and researching further information and metadata. My end goal is to build an Omeka collection that represents aspects of gender bias that was used to sell and promote the films through the creation of the graphic design. Although, I am open to other ideas that may come to light as I research each specific film. A final bonus is that as I go through the collection, I will be learning about the films, cultural elements my parents and grandparents were exposed to, and ideologies of the recent past, as well as investigating a medium that had a lot of potential impact on society.

Figure 1: Surrogate Example of a Film Print-Block

Mar 03 2020

DIY History Reaches 100K Pages Transcribed!

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Connor Hood

DIY History began as an online experiment in Spring 2011 with the Civil War Diaries and Letters Transcription Project, and quickly became a trove of local, national, and international artifacts made available and searchable online. As we celebrate 100,000 pages transcribed, let’s look back on some of DIY History’s history!

After its initial success and increasing public interest, DIY History grew to include collections of WWI & WWII Letters and Diaries, Early Iowa Lives, Social Justice, Keith-Albee Managers’ Reports, Hevelin Fanzines, and many more with the continued goal of making historic materials more accessible. Through “crowdsourcing,” or engaging volunteers to contribute transcription, tags, and comments, these mass quantities of digitized artifacts became searchable, allowing researchers to quickly seek out specific information, and general users to browse and enjoy the materials more easily.

In case you’re wondering what that 100,000th page transcribed was, you can find it right here! The image is part of the larger Jackson Hyde Photograph Collection. Hyde was born in 1915 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and would later enter into military service in 1942. Over time he was trained as a radio operator in the 210th Armored Infantry Battalion, 10th Armored (Tiger) Division, U.S. Army. In 1944 he was sent overseas to fight in World War II and was killed in action the following year. Following his death, Hyde was awarded the Bronze Star for his heroic service and the Purple Heart for the wounds resulting in his death. His life’s photographs have been preserved in our digital library and transcribed for future researchers in DIY History.

DIY History’s continued success is due, in no small part, to the public; the volunteers who contribute their time to transcribe documents have made DIY History what it is today. So, thank you to all who “Do It Yourself” in helping us reach this incredible milestone!