Category: Class Description

Beyond 2D & Project Critique 2 (11/5)

Assignment due: Project Critique 2

We will look to the readings and discuss several ways that DH work can operate beyond screens and 2D.

Readings due

Projects to explore

Walking Harlem: Refining the Archive and Working with Maps (10/29)

Assignment due: Final Project Proposal rough draft due 11/1; revised draft due 11/8

We will begin class with a discussion of the readings and going over mapping technologies. We will then divide into groups to finish the Walking Harlem project: fleshing out tours, finishing images and tags, and mapping the stops.

Readings due

Projects to explore

Optional additional material (podcasts):

Walking Harlem: Creating an Archive and Working with Metadata (10/22)

This class day will be devoted to the first part of our second in-class project, Walking Harlem. The class will divide up into 5 groups to cover the 5 tours suggested in Walking Harlem: The ultimate guide to the cultural capital of Black America. During class, we will enter the content of the tours into an Omeka Curatescape project, create and assign tags, and find images for each stop.

To do before class:

  • In the #general channel on Slack, share a stop on your assigned tour from the Walking Harlem book along with an image related to that stop that is covered by fair use. 

Readings due:

Projects to Review

Aims of the Walking Harlem Project

Through the Walking Harlem project, students will gain:

  1. Experience with digital storytelling and public DH as method
  2. Experience with metadata creation and tagging
  3. Practice finding and citing images
  4. Experience with creative commons and copyright
  5. Experience working with historical maps
  6. Exposure to working with collections and creating exhibits
  7. Exposure to Omeka and Curatescape
  8. Exposure to georectifying maps using Mapwarper
  9. Exposure to raster files with Mapbox

During Class on 10/22, we will:

  1. Create Items in Omeka
    1. Create items for each of the stops on the tours (as you add an item, mark your name by it in the Items List spreadsheet)
    2. Create text and descriptions for the items in Omeka
      1. You should quote directly from the book for the description
      2. How to cite: Taborn, Karen Faye. Walking Harlem : The Ultimate Guide to the Cultural Capital of Black America. Rutgers University Press, 2017, pp. [pages].
    1. Add location information for each of the stops
    2. Begin assigning tags to the items (tags list to work with)
      1. What will users find important about these sites?
      2. What do you want users to come away with?
      3. What is appropriate to use as a tag, and what isn’t?
  2. Images
    1. Learn how to find and cite images
      1. How to cite: Creator’s Last name, First name. (Or username if you can’t find their full name) “Title of the image.” Title of the website where you found it,  Publication date, URL.
      2. If you can only find a username or handle for the creator, use that instead of their name.
    1. Places to find images:
      1. Digital Public Library of America – https://dp.la/ 
      2. NYPL Digital Collections – https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/
      3. Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
      4. Creative Commons Image Search – https://search.creativecommons.org
      5. Internet Archive – https://archive.org/
    2. Begin searching for and adding images to items in Omeka
      1. Add the citation for the image to the item description
      2. To consider when finding an image: What would Taborn want users to see at this stop? (check the description) ; How can we recreate (to the best of our ability) the physical experience of being at this stop? ; What does the digital platform enable us to show that the physical tour outlined in Walking Harlem would not?
  3. Continue adding material to the site. By the end of the class session, we want to ensure AT LEAST that all of the items (tour stops) have been created. Once the items are all created, then 1 group member for each tour needs to create the Tour in Omeka and add all of the items to that tour.

Crisis: Networks & Data Cleaning (10/8)

Assignment due: Final Project Ideas

We will have a data cleaning workshop, in which we will prepare a dataset and then experiment with the dataset using network analysis as a method.

Download the dataset here

To do before class:

Download OpenRefine

Go to https://openrefine.org/download.html and click either “Mac kit” or”Windows kit.” (No need for the embedded Java version) Then open your downloads folder and unzip* the file. Double-click on openrefine.exe or refine.bat if the latter does not work.

*If you are on a Windows system, you may need an additional piece of software called WinRAR. You do not have to buy it. You can download it for free here: https://www.win-rar.com/start.html?&L=0. Click on “Download WinRAR,” then click “Download WinRAR” again in the box that appears. Save the file, then run the installer. Once it finishes, you should be able to right click on the OpenRefine zip file and click “Extract Here.” Then follow the rest of the instructions above.

Look through/watch walkthrough of network analysis software

Readings due: