NYCDH Week Reflection

Spurred by my enthusiasm for data visualization (thanks, Michelle McSweeney!) and an awareness of my gross underutilization of the vast resources of the New York Public Library, I opted to attend the Information Visualization Open House at the NYPL’s Center for Research in the Humanities. The event offered a lineup of speakers sharing ways that the Center’s holdings have contributed to DH pursuits. And, while I had expected to leave with ideas for ways to leverage their collection for both my graduate studies and my own classroom, I came away with something more important: an astute appreciation for the GC’s motto of “public education for the public good.” The presenters’ work really fell across a spectrum ranging from practical service to perhaps a little academic navel gazing.

 

Clearly benefitting a wide swath of users was a project presented by a representative of the Science Industry Business Library: a tool called Simply Analytics (SA) whose tagline is, “Analytics for Everyone.” SA provides a range of easy-to-manipulate parameters to help non-DH humans visualize data in truly pragmatic ways. The presenter demonstrated how easy it is to determine, say, where a prospective liquor store owner might find an untapped Brooklyn space ripe for business. In just a matter of clicks, he had narrowed his search to two spots. (For the academic among us, he showed how to access metadata on the data sources to boot.) The demonstration was made all the more powerful in that the example came from real life. SCORE, a group of retired and self-professed tech-nervous business people who offer free advice to small business owners, had used SA to help a client research exactly that question. So, while we may argue about whether increasing the number of liquor stores boosts the public good, the tool certainly allows greater access to the kind of data visualization tools often reserved for the tech savvy or for those with money to purchase proprietary software or hire someone to do the work. The only drawback is that it seems you have to be in one of the SA-licensed NYPL buildings, like the main branch, the Schomburg Center, or the Science Industry Business Library itself, to get the free access.

 

On the other side of the spectrum was the Photographers Identities Catalog (PIC), a labor of love by an NYPL photography specialist. The project is a searchable database that visualizes on a dynamic map where prominent photographers were born, did their work, and, if applicable, died. I was particularly interested in the project because my students are currently investigating figures from the Harlem Renaissance, among which are photographers James Van Der Zee and James Latimer Allen. The PIC is complicated and not terribly intuitive, though exploring certainly sparks interesting questions about the arc of a photographer’s life or about demographic or historic trends (since you can filter by, among other categories, gender, nationality, and date). My very surface exploration was ultimately unrewarding, as the data varies wildly by photographer without a particular pattern. At first, I thought there was a predilection for white, well-known photographers. For example, Dorothea Lange has 491 marked locations, while Raghu Rai and Dewoud Bey each have only 1. But, famed Ansel Adams has only 2, and Edward Weston just 1, while my students’ lesser-known research subjects James Van Der Zee and James Latimer Allen have 4 and 5 respectively. Chester Burger, whose collection rests solely at the NYPL, has 1261 locations, yet his work isn’t visible online in a quick Google search, while Mary Ellen Mark has only 2 locations, and neither is connected to the Miami image that is part of the NYPL collection. So, representation seems haphazard. (The site displays no photographs by the photographers, so copyright restriction is not likely to be the issue either.) Further, while the site does a lovely home-page job of encouraging exploration and inviting non-academics in, the interface isn’t built for the lay tech user. The PIC may have potential for helping scholars in the field of photography, but it seems in stark contrast to Simply Analytics which appears to be built with a wide range of the public in mind to allow them to dive in for pragmatic needs.

 

Other presentations fell somewhere in between, from how the NYPL’s historic visualizations can spark good design thinking to combining maps and pie graphs to analyze spatially the 1880 census data about Greenwich Village. All delightful. But the full array really got me thinking about the work we do at the GC. Particularly, I hope to ask myself of future projects questions such as, “How does this work directly benefit or interface with the public?”, “What does this tool or project assume about that public, its abilities, and its needs?”, and “How can we communicate the limitations of our data to avoid misleading users?”

NYCDH Week – Travis

For NYCDH Week, I went to a workshop on literary cluster analysis at NYU. Never having an opportunity to do cluster visualizations with literary texts (I only have had the opportunity to experiment with some language data from undergrad), I was rather interested in some of the projects that the workshop surveyed. Some particular standouts were: stylistic similarities between Fielding’s parodies and Richardson’s novels, language preferences across ghost writers in children’s literature, and deviations from style when James switched to dictating his novels. My curiosity was also piqued when we discussed analytic techniques to compare topic preferences of two groups against each other, as there seems an interesting possibility to incorporate the technique into the Newbery project as a stretch goal. I’m interested in seeing how topic preferences vary between those novels that feature diverse characters and those that trend towards white only characters. While we will likely not have the time to gather data from every nominee under discussion, I’m wondering if we can find the time to take a look at simply the summaries provided by the Newbery group for award winners.

Another point that came up to me upon reflection is the question of proprietary software in project design. Strangely, while the workshop presented a host of open source tools that could be used, we only practiced with proprietary software (IBM origin to be specific). While the results were fun to produce, I couldn’t get a bad taste out of my mouth regarding a need to learn these techniques all over again through a different platform for those participants that lacked reliable access. As well, I kept reflecting on how ugly some of the platforms we were using presented themselves as- in spite of their proprietary nature. It appeared as though we were working in a sphere where industry dominance leads to an immediate disregard for intuitability and design, despite such aspects being the ideal selling point over open source alternatives.

Georgette’s Skillset

Research: Since graduating with my MLS with a concentration in Archives and Cultural Materials, I am currently the Library and Archives Curator at a historical society in NYC. As the only librarian on staff I oversee all operations of the library and archive. In addition to basic cataloging and processing work, I contribute to outside research projects by combing through our collections for relevant materials. Requests usually come from researchers writing a book, filming a documentary, or creating a digital project. This usually leads to digitizing the selected materials and providing metadata. Two of the most recent projects I contributed to was Maynooth University’s Letters of 1916 Digital Project and a documentary called ‘De Valera in America.’

Outreach: A very important part of my job is outreach. I collaborate with the Board and Executive Director on fundraising, programming, and exhibitions based around the Society and its collections. I also create and update content on our website (WordPress) and social media platforms and would be happy to work on outreach for this project.

Project Management: As the only librarian on staff, I am used to working on projects solo or with interns and volunteers. This has led me to become extremely organized and understand the importance of time management and creating project goals that will allow for completion (or a change of staff) after a semester.

Design: I feel that this is my weakest point. I do have prior experience with WordPress, Omeka, and other archival software, and minimal knowledge of CSS and HTML. Since starting my DH coursework, I have some experience with ArcGIS StoryMaps and Tableau Public. I am eager to learn more during this semester.

Emily’s skillset

Developer: While I do not have a background in programming, I recently began learning Python, HTML and CSS. I have enjoyed developing my knowledge of these languages and hope to further my experience with them during this course.

Project Manager: I am very organized and have experience with juggling my projects and tasks at once. In the past, I worked as an operations assistant so I am familiar with making sure things are running smoothly while taking care of issues quickly and efficiently.

Researcher: My background is in history and using traditional research methods. I love to dive deep into new specific events or periods in history.  I have experience working with a variety of source material and often use online databases to further my research. My past academic research has focused on British history and more specifically the creation of its social welfare state during WWII.

Outreach Coordinator: I am familiar with and use various forms of social media.  I enjoy engaging with others and believe community engagement is extremely important when working on humanities projects. During my undergrad, I helped with community outreach for a museum exhibit I curated with other students.

Designer/UX: I some experience with design and user experience but I am interested in learning more and developing a solid understanding of this area. I am familiar with Adobe Premier and Indesign.

Meg Williams: Skillset

I work for a public policy research group as my day job, though as a community organizer and not a researcher. I work with the policy team to design outreach to inform the public. This means I have to be very research literate and able to design outreach programs to explain this rather wonky stuff to college students. I have also done research at the Library of Congress and the NYPL Berg Collection and served as a fact checker on a Jonathan Franzen novel (which I never read because I lowkey find him insufferable).

I know SPSS and statistical methods which we can use to test whether our claims are really supported by the data or are just random. I have a background in psych experiment designs, but this translates well to archival research as well. I can use Excel/csv to organize data and generate graphics.

As part of my background in statistics, I am skilled at designing projects so that we can ensure the data we are using actually illustrates what we are claiming. Also, I am very sensitive to arguments and can spot problems in logic. I am good at asking the right questions.

I want to learn how to:

-work with large datasets through programming

-use Python in some way

-use code for archival research

Christofer’s Skillset List

The following are a few traits close to my heart for the past few years. I have worked in many different positions within the Arts and have worked on multiple Geography related projects within the areas of Cultural Geography & GIS while at Columbus State University. My personal interests are documentation and digitization of historical objects, artifacts and events whether of personal interest or cultural significance for public use and long term accessibility.

GIS: ArcMap/ArcGIS Online/QGIS
Intro-Adv GIS courses as a Geography minor during my undergrad. Assisted with digital map projects for Cultural Geography projects and created digital maps of artist’s studios.
http://www.arcgis.com/apps/presentation/index.html?webmap=be0f292017154d6e8be446edb2e6aba2

Archival: Omeka/Excel/WordPress/Wax
Worked on the archive and CV of realist painter Bo Bartlett with Excel and Omeka while an undergrad and in the course Archival Encounters in Spring of 2019 with Lisa Rhody.
https://philiplivingstonjr1777landpatent.omeka.net/exhibits

Documentation and Digital Scan: Photographs/Documents/Objects
Work with the Warwick Historical Society to document and digitize collection by a flatbed scanner and digital camera. Scanned over 50 journals and sketchbooks for the Bartlett Center.
Grace_Herbert_Pelton_Autobiography_1918

Data Analysis and Design: Tableau/Excel
Data Analysis and Design: Fundamentals course last semester with Michelle McSweeney. Created over 12 data visualizations with 12 different data sets to tell a specific story.
https://public.tableau.com/shared/MD6TPPWJ2?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link

Outreach and Social Media: Program Director/Webmaster
Directed non-profit program Home is Where the Art is and assisted with Art in Jails for the Bo Bartlett Center and Bartlett Studios. Also, webmaster and social media creator for the Center.
https://bobartlettcenter.org/home-is-where-the-art-is/

 

Relevant Skills for Digital Project – Margael

I decided not to propose my DH project, so I am ready to be a collaborator on one of the project teams.

Research + Digitization: I have a disciplinary background in history, which has allowed me to work in traditional research methodologies. I’ve worked on research projects that have had strong historical underpinnings, such as looking at the geopolitical ramifications of Non -Aggression Pact of 1939 in Eastern Europe. I’ve worked on all types of colonial history and black identity projects. If your project requires digging into digital databases, archives, libraries, and cultural institutions to find particular source material, I can help. If you need to write through a historical lens, I can contribute those skills. However, I want to do more than contribute skills I already have. I want to learn new skills in research. I want to learn the tools of digitization, audio, visual, textual and otherwise. Digitization which is a process that DHers often use to reproduce materials and expand their accessibility to other researchers. I want to learn the fine skills of working with OCR to translate print material into machine readable material, which is enormously important to anyone working in the humanities, if you want to export that data to do any sort of computational text analysis. I want to learn how to organize a digital repository or archive.

Outreach + SEO: I’ve previously worked in digital marketing where I optimized upward of 7000 pieces of jewelry for a small business. We had a multi-pronged strategy through social media activity, digital advertising, and search engine optimization to get customers to our website. As a result, I have some skills optimizing pages through meta data, links, keywords, and creating social media attention for our products. Not only that, I also edited materials in Photoshop for our campaign and online placements. I definitely want to learn newer skills in online marketing to make sure our projects get the public reach it deserves.

Project management + Team leadership: I’ve certainly served as team leader and a team member. Most often, I opt to be a collaborator. If I feel that I know enough about how the project should work, I would be enthusiastically choose to be a project manager but I generally don’t like to take roles where I don’t have much expertise. It will certainly have to depend on the project.

Coding + Programming: one of the most important roles that will be part of every project is the programmer role. I have close to zero experience in that capacity. I would like to work closely whoever is in that role since my chief objective in taking this class is to learn more about coding in general.

Kelly’s Skills

I’m a seasoned educator and a budding hacker. If your project has didactic intent, I can help you shape your interface for your intended audience. If you need a courageous team member to learn a new program or coding language, I’m happy to do it. In my 20 years of tinkering with technology in the humanities, I see joy in every opportunity, from designing game-based play using TWINE and building critical collections in Manifold to automating the resizing of huge collections of images in Photoshop and creating envelope-pushing audio versions of text and primary sources. As a published author of fiction and a long-standing department chair and curriculum director, I’m also happy to write and edit.

Research
My passion for research has been reignited since entering the DH program. Last year’s courses led me to the collections of the Morgan Library and Schomburg Center for the sacred experience of holding in my hands an 1899 edition of The Yellow Wall-Paper and letters penned by Nella Larsen. I’ve loved the digital bloodhound pursuit as well, sniffing around the web for details about New York Times best-selling authors or merging and cleaning datasets from disparate sources.

Development
My skills are adolescent, but my persistence is professional! My most developed skills are HTML and CSS. For DH courses, I’ve done some decent work with Tableau and Python. I’ve tinkered with (and loved) JavaScript, SQL and Jekyll as well, though I’m far rockier there.

Design/UX
Last spring, in Patrick Smith’s Software Design Lab, I helped a peer create a network-independent website for teaching DH in prison. In considering the UX for that site, we did a lot of research into the psychology of prison reform, the psychology of color and layout, disabilities common among the imprisoned (there’s a disproportionate number of colorblind inmates), and W3C accessibility guidelines. What the Intro to DH course last term taught me is that good UX goes farther than that: you start with a diverse team, the principles of universal design, and a deep eagerness to detect implicit bias in the work. You also include loops of testing and feedback with a diverse group of reviewers. And even then, there’s still work to be done, such as versioning and clear crediting, as our reading for this week reminds us. I’m deeply committed to these issues of accessibility and universal design. (In fact, there are great accessibility tools even in WordPress that I think few have explored.)

On the more skill-specific side, I’ve used Photoshop for years and I’ve just begun to explore Illustrator, so I’m happy to create web graphics or logos as needed, though I don’t have a background in graphic design.

Project Management
Years of serving as a dean of studies and department chair have taught me that explicit expectations and clear deadlines can turn brilliant vision into reality. In order for a project to work well, team members need to agree on the timing, medium, and nature of their meetings and work—decisions that often vary widely from group to group. My experience with workflow apps has been limited to proprietary software for education, but I’m happy to learn.

Skills – Marcela

Hi All,

As I mentioned the last Tuesday, this is a class in which my aim is to learn digital skills. This semester I am taking a class on GIS. I know to use Excel, SPSS, NVivo. For my own digital project (capstone project), I will have to learn to create a webpage, visualization of statistics, creation of interactive maps, and analysis of photographs. The range of skills I need to learn is broad, and I am willing to learn and assume a more supportive role in this area.

I have certainly an extended experience doing research, in project management, and outreach, though I am not particularly interested in doing something in social media. Those who took classes with me know that as life philosophy I do not use social media.

I think that for two of the projects, it is important to mention that Spanish is my mother tongue and race and ethnicity is one of my fields of specialization.

Among the three projects presented, though I find all of them super interesting, I am more inclined to participate in Kelly’s project. I am academic and I like a lot of her proposal and the fact that she had the imagination and courageous to create a journal. This is something I would like to be part of and gain experience. I also know well the field of publications. I have published myself and I am reviewer in peer-reviewed journals.

Exploring Diversity in the Newbery Medal and Honor Books

Overview
Literacy is essential to a child’s development. Through reading, children expand not just their vocabulary but their understanding of the world around them. But can children really learn from books if a majority of groups and topics are misrepresented or ignored? Recent studies have shown that there is a lack of diversity in children’s books. And while there have been initiatives created to address this issue, the fact that children do not have access to all of these books is something to consider. But what about the books they do have access to?
This project will explore diversity in the most popular children’s literature books, the Newbery Medal and Honor Books. Data collected from the four hundred and fifteen Newbery Books will seek to answer the following questions: Do the Newbery Medal and Honor Books provide an accurate representation of diverse backgrounds and subject matter? If so, has this been a recent development? And are there any trends of note in the honorees? The project team will attempt to answer these questions by collecting the biographical data and subject matter of all four-hundred and fifteen ‘Newbery Honorees’ (both Medal Winners and Honor books), and use Tableau Public to create a digital visualization of their findings and share with the project’s intended audience of librarians, educators and the DH community.

Enhancing the Humanities
In a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) of three thousand books published in 2018, fifty percent of books featured a white main character. Twenty-seven percent of books featured an animal, and African American, Asian Pacific American, Latinx and American Indians/First Nations were featured a total of twenty-three percent. Sarah Park Dahlen and David Huyck, who presented these findings in an infographic to School Library Journal, argue that children’s literature continues to misrepresent underrepresented communities. But their hope is that their findings push conversations about this issue and lead to a change in publishing. And while there have been initiatives created by the American Library Association and children’s book publishers to address this issue, the fact that children do not have access to all of these books is something to consider.
School and public libraries offer children (and their caregivers) access to a vast number of books that they would never be able to purchase for themselves. And more people are going to public libraries each year. According to the 2016 Public Libraries Survey Report by the Institute for Museum and Library Services, more than 171 million registered users visited public libraries over 1.35 billion times in 2016. Even with this increase in patrons, librarians often deal with limited budgets and shelf space, so books must be carefully chosen. Librarians will often rely on book lists and reviews for guidance on purchasing, and the books usually topping these lists are the Newbery Medal and Honor books.
First awarded in 1922 to encourage original creative work in the field of books for children, the Newbery Medal is awarded to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The Newbery Medal is the most popular award presented to children’s books, and studies have shown that after the winners are announced, book sales can increase up to 1,000%. Honorees are highlighted on ALA websites and accompanying book lists, and librarians will often feature honorees in their display areas and programming. Children (and their caregivers) become exposed to these works that may or may not help them to understand and handle situations that deal with diversity in religion, race, gender, etc. And these books, for better or worse, usually stay on library shelves much longer than other books due to their status as honorees.
Since the Newbery Medal and Honor Books are so popular amongst the public and librarians, the questions this project hopes to answer are do these books provide an accurate representation of diverse backgrounds and subject matter? If so, has this been a recent development? And are there any trends of note in the honorees?

Environmental Scan/DH Context
Finding similar projects has been difficult, as projects tend to focus on analyzing diversity in the most recent children’s books published, or creating a book list that focuses on a particular group or theme. There are journals that investigate diversity, such as the Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RYDL). RYDL is a peer-reviewed online journal hosted by St. Catherine University’s Master of Library and Information Science Program and University Library. The publishing community has also recognized the general lack of diversity and have started new initiatives to tackle the issue. Scholastic created the catalog, The Power of Story, that offers recommendations for books representing diversity of race, sexual orientation, gender identity and physical and mental abilities. In regards to digital projects focusing on diversity in children’s books, a good project is the Diverse Book Finder. This site collects information on picture books that feature black and indigenous people and people of color (BIPOC) from 2002 to the present. The themes given on the site are Genre; Categories; Settings; Tribal Affiliation/Homelands; Immigration; Gender; and Race/Culture. An issue with the site is that it only tracks fiction and narrative nonfiction picture books from 2002, and only books with suggested reading levels kindergarten through grade three. This visualization project will be unique in the fact that it analyzes all four hundred and fifteen Newbery Honorees, and that it will be an interactive visualization where users can search for specific information on authors, themes, and main characters.

Work Plan/Final Product
The project will consist of three stages: gathering the data, organizing the data into the pre-approved format, and then analyzing the data using the visualization software Tableau Public. The team will organize the data into the following eight categories: Year; Winner/Honor; Title; Author; Author’s Gender; Author’s Race; Main Character(s); and Themes. The first four categories are available on the ALA’s Newbery site. The team will have to find the author’s gender and race either on the authors’ websites, publishers’ sites, or an internet search (author interviews, etc.). The books’ main characters and themes will be found with the Library of Congress’ and New York Public Library’s bibliographic records.
Gathering the data will be the most time consuming part of the project, therefore the project team will use an existing software to display their results. Once the team has organized the data, they will use Tableau Public to create a data visualization of their findings. Tableau Public is a free service that allows users to create and publish data visualizations. Tableau Public users do not need programming experience, and there are many tutorials and a dedicated community available to assist the project team. Published visualizations are available to the public, and can easily be shared through email, social media and on websites. Once the visualization is completed the project team will analyze the findings and write a paper on their process and the results.