I checked today with the Emory Inn and here are the options for transportation to/from the airport: a cab costs anywhere from $40-55 one way. There is a shuttle that you can reserve for $30 one way or 50$ round trip. Atlanta Superior Shuttle 770-457-4794 I plan on taking that to the airport on Sunday. See you soon!
Archive for February, 2011
Recently I’ve been interested in the idea of “Trace Ethnography,” as developed by David Ribes and R.S. Geiger (a pdf of their article is available here). In a nutshell, Trace Ethnography describes a method for studying the actions of an online community “by combining a fine grained analysis of the various ‘traces’ that are automatically recorded by the [community’s] software alongside an ethnographically-derived understanding of the tools, techniques, practices, and procedures that generate such traces.” Trace ethnography provides an elegant name for the hybrid archival/ethnographic methods that have been used by both Joseph Reagle and myself to study WIkipedia. In addition, I have been trying to extend the idea to develop “trace pedagogy,” which would inform techniques for using wikis and related technology in the composition classroom.
In this session, I would like to begin a conversation about the best tools and techniques for reading and interpreting the traces left by users of a wiki community, or other online community. The archive of traces left by such communities can be large and diverse, making them both extremely informative and quite difficult to navigate. A discussion of how to select cases, how to read traces, and what sorts of tools might make it easier to derive both quantitative and qualitative information from trace archives might help both novice and experienced researchers engage with these techniques.
I would like to offer THATCamp-ers a guided tour of “The Future Belongs to the Discontented: The Life and Legacy of Robert W. Woodruff,” an exhibition in the Schatten Gallery of the Woodruff Library. Robert W. Woodruff was Atlanta’s most successful businessman and most generous philanthropist; he was the longtime head of The Coca-Cola Company. Let me know if y’all are interested.
More information about the exhibit here: web.library.emory.edu/libraries/schatten-gallery
Session idea: Zotero
Feb 28
I’m the librarian for the Communication department at GSU. For the last several months I’ve been working on a book about the open-source citation manager Zotero. I’m wondering whether there would be interest in a discussion session about teaching and collaborative applications for Zotero. I’ll bring some sample classroom assignments and collaborative projects that teaching faculty and librarians have shared with me, like the New Orleans Research Collaborative (about which several Emory campers know more than I do), and talk a little about GSU Library’s plans for using Zotero group libraries.
I can start with a demo for those who haven’t used Zotero before. Other discussion points could include advantages and disadvantages of Zotero’s nature as an open-source application, best practices for teaching and supporting Zotero in libraries and in the classroom.
I am interested in a session focused on discussing some of the issues involved in teaching with and about technology. I work as a librarian in a theological library in which we offer both hour-long workshops and a credit-bearing course titled “Technology for Ministry.” The students in that course are primarily masters’ level students in divinity who are interested in both practical and theological considerations for the use of technology in their work. We discuss not only how to use particular tools, but also hope to engage in a broader discussion that begins by examining the purposes for which tools are being considered. In the course, students develop projects based on their own contexts and interests, and examine the tools we consider during the semester with an eye to those projects. In the workshops, although we don’t have time for same kind of reflection, we do try to bring the question of purpose into the discussion where appropriate. We use a few criteria for selecting the tools we use for both workshops and in the class, but I would like to engage in a broader discussion about how each of us selects which tools to teach and how we discuss their uses. Here are a few questions to begin:
• What criteria do you use for selecting a tool to assign as part of a class assignment?
• How do you choose the tools you use in your own classroom presentations?
• How do you account for students’ differing levels of comfort and experience with a particular tool when choosing if and how to teach with it (perhaps particularly when this is not the focus of the assignment or the session)?
• How do you help students consider the biases of a particular tool or form of communication, and its appropriateness for a particular context?
• How do you discuss the limits of technology, and/or the places where a new or popular option may not be the best option for a student’s intended purpose?
I want to second Brian Croxall’s “show and tell” proposal and suggest another way it might be productively framed. There’s been a lot of discussion (sometimes outright debate) in the wake of the 2011 MLA Convention about the necessity of coding, programming, building, or doing technical stuff vis-à-vis the digital humanities. In a blog post that followed up his own comments at the convention, Stephen Ramsay claims that
DH-ers insist — again and again — that this process of creation yields insights that are difficult to acquire otherwise. […] People who mark up texts say it, as do those who build software, hack social networks, create visualizations, and pursue the dozens of other forms of haptic engagement that bring DH-ers to the same table. Building is, for us, a new kind of hermeneutic. (original emphasis, “On Building”)
Such “building” does not have to require arcane or specialized knowledge. (Suspicions that it does have likely generated much of the anxious backlash about DH as an exclusive and computational domain.) It does not have to take place at an institute for digital scholarship or be funded by a major grant. It can happen with the parts one finds virtually lying around. This session invites participants to “show and tell” about their favorite apps, APIs, websites, digital resources, wooden blocks, whatever with which to “build.” Its goal would not necessarily be to create an electronic tool shed, of which there are already some wonderful examples (e.g. Alan Liu’s Toy Chest wiki). Rather, its goal would be “haptic engagement” itself, giving every participant inspiration and some practical strategies for a building project of their own, whether in designing an interpretive machine, a personal/professional hack, and/or a pedagogy. Such a session would also allow participants to apply and customize the lessons from their particular BootCamp tracks.
As a grad student interested in how museums make their exhibits palatable to diverse publics, I’d like to put together a session on public history and digital access. Some of you might be familiar with the Smithsonian’s planned American Enterprise exhibition, which will solicit ideas for content on its blog: americanenterprise.si.edu/
I’m curious about some of the implications of this venture. In his book Consuming History, Jerome de Groot seems to suggest that technology (broadly defined) will improve access to public history (also broadly defined)–even to the point of “democratizing” public history. The Smithsonian’s approach certainly marks a shift away from older forms of exhibit construction, but what are the implications for curating, displaying, and experiencing exhibits and other forms of public history?
Perhaps using this cases as a starting point, I’d like to propose a session that examines what digital access and democratization mean in the context of public history. Are these approaches significant departures from old ways of thinking about public history, or are there continuities and complications? I’d like to cast a pretty wide net here–I can certainly see these questions being applicable to archives and libraries, as well.
-Sarah
Subject guides
Feb 27
I would be interested to share experiences relating to subject guide development. My questions include:
Do undergraduate/graduate students find these digital presentations useful? Faculty? How do they use these guides? At what stage(s) in their research is the guide helpful? Do people in local communities use subject guides provided by the local public library?
Maybe LibGuides / subject guides are as much a tool for the librarian as they are for the student, i.e. note-taking, a way of self-education around an academic discipline? I’ve heard that hard-copy reference materials are more for the benefit of the librarians than for the students — is this really true?! If so, maybe web-based subject guides have similar use.
In terms of reference, I would think it’s important to tailor information to one’s user base, but the subject guide exercise also feels somewhat like re-inventing the wheel. Surely other institutions have excellent guides that my students could make use of.
I’m aware that institutions have internal guides for their subject guides, i.e. best practices, uniformity of look-and-feel, usability, etc.
Has anyone effectively used analytics to facilitate development? i.e. which links do users click into, how much time do users spend on a page, etc.
Here’s a summary of the software that you’ll need to install on your laptops if you’re participating in the Programming Track at BootCamp.
For the “Introduction to Programming, using Python,” you’ll need to download and install Python from www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.1/. Make sure you choose the version that matches your computer. Current Macs (i.e., those that don’tuse PowerPC chips) should use the last link. If you’re on Windows, you’ll need to know if you’re using a 32- or 64-bit processor. Documentation about Python can be found at docs.python.org/.
For the second session, “Introduction to the Django Framework, Using Python,” you’ll need to download and install Django. Please note that you must install Python before installing Django. Documentation about Django can be found at docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/.
Installing Django On a Mac
Download Django from www.djangoproject.com/download/. Once it’s downloaded, you’ll need to work through your command line interface, which you’ll find in Applications > Utilities > Terminal. Once in the terminal, you will need to go to the directory where you’ve saved the Django download. I’d saved the file to the desktop, so I typed “cd desktop.” I then had to type the following (w/o quotation marks): “tar xzvf Django-1.2.5.tar.gz”. This extracted the files for Django. I then entered the Django directory by typing “cd Django-1.2.5”. And then I ran the install by typing “sudo python setup.py install”. I had to authorize the sudo process, and then I was set.
Installing Django on a PC
The easiest way to install Django is to download Python’s setuptools from pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools. Once that set of tools has been installed, access your command line. You should then be able to simply type “easy_install django” and it should download and install the package.
Please let Brian know if you’re having trouble getting things installed. We could perhaps makes some screenshots if necessary.
Here’s a summary of the software that you’ll need to install on your laptops if you’re participating in the Digital Humanities Project Track at BootCamp.
For “Visualizing Time and Space with Simile Widgets and Google,” you will need a Google account (like a Gmail address) so you can use Google Docs. If you don’t already have access to Docs, please sign up before our session starts. Second, you’ll need a text and/or HTML editor. Most computers have one already installed: Notepad is on Windows and TextEdit is on Macs. If you want something with a little more oomph behind it, you could look at the tools at these recommended tools: simile.mit.edu/wiki/Exhibit/Tools. If you have a tool like Dreamweaver installed, that will work nicely as well.
For “Intro to Encoding Texts,” you will need to download and install <oXygen/> XML Editor. Please note that there is a 30-day free trial for the software, so you don’t need to pay anything.
For “Intro to GIS,” you will need to download and install Google Earth.
In summary, you’ll need
- a Google account and access to Google Docs
- a text editor
- <oXygen/> XML Editor
- Google Earth
