Workshop Review: From Paper to Website

A small workshop held by GCDI, From Paper to Website, was informative and helpful – especially with the upcoming final project. Taught by Silvia Rivera Alfaro, the workshop was inspired by her own experience creating a website (Ni Unos Mas: A Collective Identity in Rebeca Lane’s Rap) for one of her graduate papers. The workshop discussed translating a paper into a website, making it both digestible and accessible, regardless of the audience. Throughout, Alfaro wanted us participants to remember three core questions:

  1. What is text and what are the different types of texts?
  2. What choices do I need to consider to effectively translate an academic paper into a website?
  3. What could be the benefits of a research paper being translated into a website?

In the first half of the workshop, we discussed the structure of an academic paper, and how to translate that structure into a website. This included considering the audience, the tools we are providing, how we want that tool to be used, the interactivity of the page, etc. In the second half, it became more hands-on. Because there were only myself and two other participants, we got to work individually – we analyzed an academic article and tried to visualize the article as a website. During the last 10 minutes, we shared our work and explained our thought process. 

Ultimately, the workshop was tight-knit and fun. I’m happy to have gone because it’s making me consider more conditions for my DH project and how I want to share that with the world.

Project Proposal: Building a Community of Discourse around AI in Archaeology

I propose a DH project that pulls together voices and resources focusing on the use of AI in archaeology.  My guiding questions could be: What is the current  thinking about using AI in archaeology?  What are its uses, potential applications, and inherent and possible dangers?  How has AI changed the field already, and what might the future look like?   

This project would hopefully serve as a community forum to voice opinions, comment on others’ opinions and experiences, and, collectively, share knowledge that is truly constantly evolving.  The audience for this project are stakeholders in the field (archaeologists, researchers, cultural heritage and indigenous groups) and connected organizations and persons (museums, universities, cultural institutions, libraries, historians, curriculum developers, educators).  Today, news, discussions, scholarly research and general opinions about using AI in archaeology are more scattered across media outlets than consolidated, and this seems to constrain thinking to only specialized audiences in their given disciplines.

A Manifold site would support the many kinds of media that are currently circulating about this topic.  The use of AI in archaeology has changed the field dramatically in the relatively short time it has become widely available, and there are books, articles, blogs, videos, visualizations, social media posts, podcasts, open access research studies, and virtual meetings devoted to this topic appearing seemingly daily.  I was recently fortunate to be able to sit in on one very specialized–and closed–Zoom meeting about uses of AI and satellite data in archaeology. (A friend invited me.)  Throughout the two-day symposium, I wondered what others would add to the knowledge being shared by the speakers, as the implications and concerns of this technology are significant and different for many stakeholders.

There is a strong interdisciplinary and collaborative potential with this project, not just within the field, but one that includes a wide range of scientists and scholars, international art law experts, environmental groups, and social justice organizations, to name a few.  That is the project’s goal: to create a diverse, influential community that brings together highly invested parties in a discussion about the implications of using this powerful new technology in the important science of understanding human history through its material culture.

Reading Response #1

This week’s readings were an excellent practical and philosophical introduction to new modes of scholarly communication. Overall, a theme I noticed is a call towards overturning traditional academic and publisher power dynamics. Fitzpatrick (2021) brings to the table a more public and open discourse with the “public” both inside and outside academia to reach greater audiences and have wider impact with one’s scholarship. I’ve often grappled with the notion of great ideas staying within ivory towers, that may have little impact outside academia’s walls. New forms of sharing and publishing ideas in a more open and democratic fashion can break down these walls, while also improving the internal academic discourse on subjects that more align with the wider public’s needs and interests. Fitzpatrick found that blogs vastly improved their reach with their ideas, much more than work done in silos for dissertations and scholarly publication. Further, inviting more members of the public into a modified peer-review process helped their own academic pursuits, while perhaps enhancing other’s forays into their own research, whether they were affiliated with an academic institution or not. 

Although blogs as we knew them seem to have had their hey-day in terms of reach, I do know that Substack (which is heavily blog-based, along with other modalities) has had a significant amount of pull with academic authors while also potentially providing subscription based revenue directly to the original content creator. With the increasing insignificance of the platform formerly known as Twitter, some of those that had cultivated a following for their ideas have moved onto different platforms such as Substack to continue the conversation. The challenge to keep up with changing platforms continues however. 

Speaking of compensation, Suber’s (2012) OA book introduction argues that because academics receive a salary from their academic institute, and they have traditionally not been compensated for their writing, that they are prime for the OA movement. This is true, but I feel this argument leaves out that those in academia are often under-compensated for their labor, particularly those lower in rank, who conversely, are the most in need of getting published. That is not to make an argument against OA, but to highlight that disparity and to provide an update touched on in Risam and Gil’s (2022) paper. Since OA has made a bit of splash, the traditional academic publishers have taken notice and have created their own OA models. Big names like ElSevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley/Springer, Sage, etc. promote the “good” of OA, but not at the expense of their profit. Instead, many offer models to pay to play. In as such, the author, or the academic institution must pay a fee (usually quite substantial) in order for that article to be published in OA format. The draw being that since these are the traditional academic publishers, they typically host more “prestigious” journals, which academic institutions favor when considering a faculty members promotion or tenure. Then on top of that- the academic institutions’ Library is still paying exorbitant amounts in order to have access to the non-OA content from those publishers in a subscription based model whose prices increase each year. 

The implications of these increasingly complex models is beyond the scope of this blog post, but it does further illuminate the glowing potential of “green” OA in university commons and the Manifold publishing platform. Our very own professors and JoJo (2022) are putting up the good fight in not only creating polished and democratic forms of publishing, but are also adding interactive elements to enhance the “eBook” experience. From working in the K-12 sphere in the 2010s, and being exposed as a Librarian to academic textbooks, I have seen an increase in the big publishers including these interactive and multimedia elements to their official textbooks. However, these come at a huge expense that is often not sustainable for most K-12 schools or individual college students to support since they require each individual student to purchase an access code for these textbooks. Manifold can start to break down these barriers as we continue to push for the normalization of OER texts in Higher Ed, that will hopefully have a trickle down effect for K-12 and general publishing over time. 

Project Proposal: NYC Families

I’d like to center my project around resources for NYC families who are being investigated by law enforcement and may receive a visit from Child Protective Services (CPS).

Audience: Families looking for emergent resources when dealing with law enforcement/child protective services

Format: A map of the five boroughs that can include resources specifically for families in contact with CPS like

  • Family Court Lawyers
  • 24 Hour Shelters
  • Family Rights Advocacy Groups

I like the format of Moving Home 2016 (arcgis.com). I’d like to be able to provide resources in the form of text and provide a map.

Reasoning for Project: Emergent unexpected run-ins with law enforcement may signal CPS to visit a family. I would like to create a platform that can put a family at ease from temporary relocation to what to expect from the initial CPS phone call/visit and what their rights are.

Additional Data: I’d like to research the relationship between NYPD and CPS:

  • What type 911 responses are followed up by a visit from CPS
  • Are certain families more likely to receive a visit
  • How long is the gap between meeting with law enforcement and meeting with CPS
  • How long does CPS remain involved

If possible, I’d like to include the current conversation to include CPS workers in non-emergent 911 call responses

  • Is the city moving towards that type of response
  • If not, what type of advocacy work is taking place to allow for that

Possible Project: Mapping Digital Activism Through Blackness and Solidarity

My research interests lie in digital activism and social movements; activists have increasingly turned to digital platforms to mobilize the public around various causes. Using X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and more recently, TikTok, many viewers become more aware of social movements through their screens. I am currently conducting an independent research project, The Education of Digital Activists (IRB approved) that inquires about how digital activists in college (or those who have graduated within the last 5 years) who have been exposed to critical social theory understand their own privileged, their relationship to social issues, and it impacts on their digital activism. Through my interviews, I’ve noticed that all my interviewees have been activists of color. However, through broader and general social media use, the faces of many digital activists’ movements/accounts feel white. 

A working title, Mapping Digital Activism Through Blackness and Solidarity focuses on mapping digital activist movements of color, specifically those belonging to black digital activists, and the movements they support. For reference, Black-Palestinian solidarity has been a relationship that has existed for decades, referencing the relationship between black people within and outside of America and Palestinians have had with one another through a belief in the “joint struggle”. My project aims to bring visibility to different digital activist movements of color globally, possibly showing their activity on a map.

I’m thinking of creating a website; maps would be displayed using OpenStreetMap. University of Minnesota’s project ‘Mapping Prejudice’ (https://mappingprejudice.umn.edu/) includes a sort of animated time-lapse feature that I enjoy. I intend to have a similar sort of animation feature within my own project. For this, I anticipate that QGIS may be used to create a shapefile(s) containing a multitude of points for each activist movement chosen. Moreover, I have heard of activist datasets that may fit my needs and so I will search for them. However, my overall goal is to create the datasets myself. 

I’m open to exploring other options for the mapping, as well as any available datasets or avenues to narrow down my interests here.

Access, Engagement and Minimal Computing

This week’s readings really spoke to questions of what’s important in the practice of developing the digital humanities.  Suber’s chapter on Open Access (OA) makes a strong case about how OA helps forward academic scholarship.  Suber notes that some have raised concerns about the potential of OA to invite plagiarism, misattribution, and misuse of a researcher’s publication. But Suber believes the benefits outweigh the risks: OA provides researchers with the “widest readership,” whereas traditional scholarship may appear only in specialized journals accessible only to other scholars. OA increases the chances of a researcher’s work becoming truly influential through this universal sharing.  Also, OA removes the pressure to create marketable scholarship, which can inhibit researchers who focus on more niche areas of study less attractive to publishers. I related well to this particular point, as my avocational interest in archaeology has sometimes led me to hit paywalls and other access barriers, likely because a focus is too niche to be available commercially.  

Fitzpatrick adds relatable comments on OA too, describing the anxiety, in the early days of the internet, of sharing their writing to an open online audience, but later celebrating the larger community that grew around it.  Fitzpatrick admits that stakes of publicly sharing ideas are much higher today, particularly for women and people of color, as more hateful and racist voices have found their way into the public mix.  Still, Fitzpatrick argues that the true value of OA is in its public service of providing access, but that creators need to keep innovating to find new ways of engaging all digital consumers. I couldn’t agree more; as a teacher and in educational administration, I worked hard to increase student and teacher access to learning outside the curriculum, and technology was often the medium through which this happened, or it was the focus of actual learning. 

Gold, Michael and Karlin describe how the digital humanities makes this possible. They note how Manifold integrates technologies in a way that helps bridge connections between the traditional manuscript and the online digital platform to become a unique and engaging resource combining the best of both with the benefits of interactivity and universal access.  Again, looking back on my work in education, I can see engagement with ideas truly taking off with even young students when they are able to connect ideas and sources with Manifold and other platforms to learn and to share their understandings. Finally, the concept of “minimal computing” provides a practical check for digital creators, according to Risam and Gil.  Obsessing over the “latest and greatest” in software, online platforms, and more when working in the digital humanities may be overlooking what is truly “necessary and sufficient” for creating meaningful projects.  They offer four questions for digital creators to ask themselves to help “resist the deficit model” and focus on what’s really important, and frame their point with real-life examples that show how limitations can actually drive creativity and problem solving. Also, Risam and Gil note how sometimes, issues of access that arise (connectivity, background knowledge, etc.) can find solutions when developers take a minimalist approach.  I connected with the ideas in this article, again thinking back to my career in education, because I so often needed to find ways to “make it work” with limited budgets, older equipment and with staff professional development, as there frequently was not enough time or energy for teachers to learn entirely new systems; thus, creative solutions often emerged.  And I definitely can see how prioritizing the “tried and true” over the “latest and greatest” can help digital humanities developers cut through hype and put ideas front and center.

Open Access/Minimal Computing/Digital Scholarship

My understanding of Open Access was best described by the Budapest Open Access Initiative as quoted by Peter Suber: “An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment. . . . The new technology is the internet.” Scholars are in a unique position in which revenue loss is not an issue in open access publication and that the nature of their work is to produce public knowledge. 

While reading Fitzpatrick’s ‘Working in Public’, two keywords emerged for me: Visibility and Community.  Fitzpatrick makes sure to note the significant risks that come along with the visibility of making one’s work public and open access. These risks compound when the author is writing about topics such as social justice and when their identity is subject to discrimination or oppression. When speaking on public scholarship, Fitzpatrick writes “members of our chosen communities enter into our projects not just as readers but as participants, as stakeholders, and as partners.”  This reminded me of last week’s reading on the Possibly Impossible Research Project. In that project, the students and teacher moved away from such traditional roles and became more like collaborators in the quest for knowledge. Working in public also involves a breakdown of these rigid roles, allowing for the scholar and the audience to create more of a community.  

In ‘Hybrid Publishing’, it was interesting to learn that community is what drives Manifold’s development and flexibility. For example, certain features were a direct response to Manifold being used by communities in classroom settings.  

When reading “Minimal Computing”, I thought to my own community of this class. During praxis assignment presentations, I have often heard my classmates make decisions that align with the process of minimal computing. The main constraint in these scenarios is time. My classmates (and myself) first make the decision of what is needed to complete their project. Then, we need to decide what to prioritize in order to complete the project on time.