July 13: Building Digital Collections and Narrative Interpretation

Instructors: Sheila Brennan and Sharon Leon

Readings

Crymble, Adam. “Project Funding and Economic Sustainability in Historical Research.” Software Sustainability Institute, January 21, 2015. http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2015-01-21-project-funding-and-economical-sustainability-historical-research.
Kissane, Erin. The Elements of Content Strategy. New York: A Book Apart, 2011.
Morgan, Paige. “How to Get a Digital Humanities Project Off the Ground.” Paige Morgan, June 5, 2014. http://www.paigemorgan.net/how-to-get-a-digital-humanities-project-off-the-ground/.
Whitelaw, Mitchell. “Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections” 9, no. 1 (2015). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/1/000205/000205.html.

Discuss readings
Digital Methods: Planning effective digital projects with an introduction to metadata and content management platforms
Hands-on Session: Server basics
Hands-on Session: Introduction to Metadata by examining sources in digital repositories
Break
Discussion: Identifying elements of digital projects before you start.
1. What is the goal, question, or mission?
2. What is the project’s content? Digital assets/collections/ data sets/ narratives
3. How will the interface communicate your argument, display your stuff?What structure is required to accomplish your goals with the assets you have?
4. Who is that audience?
Picking a platform from common content management software
- http://history2016.doingdh.org/week-1-wednesday/picking-a-platform/

Hands-on Session: Critical appraisal of existing digital history projects, using JAH review criteria, http://jah.oah.org/submit/digital-history-reviews/
Discuss project is small groups:
- What is the argument?
- What is the content (assets, digital stuff)
- What is the Format/Structure behind the site (can you tell?)
- Who is the audience and is it addressing those people?
- Does it make effective use of new media?
- What do you think of this project?
Live Critique: CSI Dixie
Break
Hands-on Session: Install on Omeka on Reclaim
- http://docs.reclaimhosting.com/omeka
- Omeka Documentation: http://omeka.org/codex
Finding and adding plugins: http://history2016.doingdh.org/week-1-wednesday/extending-omeka-with-plugins/

Please fill out a quick survey about how things are going so far in DoingDH 2016.
Install R Studio for Desktop for work tomorrow:
1. Install R, https://cran.rstudio.com/
2. Then, install R Studio for Desktop: https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/
3. Open R Studio, in the bottom right window (Files, Plots, Packages, Help, Viewer), Install the ggplot2 package.
Sign up for a Plotly account: https://plot.ly/