On Build­ing

Cross-​posted on Human­i­ties 340: The Muses and the Web.

As many of the stu­dents in Human­i­ties 340 have come to under­stand, one of the key issues in DH revolves around a con­tin­u­ing effort to define what the dig­i­tal human­i­ties is or are. One aspect of this almost per­pet­ual debate that seems to crop up con­sis­tently is the issue of build­ing. Some stu­dents have wres­tled with this issue of build­ing: do I have to know how to build to do DH? do I have to build to be a DH’er?. I would argue that you do not need to know how to build to do DH as the class has prac­ticed DH—Infor­ma­tion Trap­ping—over the last six weeks. Defin­ing “build­ing” is not an easy task, but one I think it is worth con­sid­er­ing for a moment, read or re-​read Ramsey’s post and pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the com­ments to get a deeper sense of what build­ing is or is not. Just to weight in on the debate, “build­ing” is the act of mak­ing, whether you use meth­ods and OTS tools—search meth­ods + Zotero + visu­al­iz­ing tool—to do some human­is­tic project; whether you build a tool, or cre­ate a plu­gin, or an archive, or even a web­site to serve some human­is­tic project or goal.

Nev­er­the­less, regard­less of how one defines “build­ing,” I believe that “build­ing” is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent to doing DH. As such, over spring break and con­tin­u­ing for sev­eral weeks upon our return from spring break, we are going to “build” a per­sonal iden­tity web­site using web best prac­tices. The ratio­nale behind this build­ing exer­cise is based in the chal­lenge Dr. Tom Sche­in­feldt issues in “New Wine in Old Skins: Why the CV needs hack­ing,” and as Adam Crym­ble does with “My CV.” We will do our best to meet this chal­lenge given the time­frame and the level of tech­ni­cal exper­tise we gain dur­ing our build­ing section.

I do not expect you will be coders/​programmers at the end of this sec­tion. That is not our goal. The class goal is to famil­iar­ize you with the process of build­ing in gen­eral by hav­ing you build a web­site, though I hope that some in the class will find cod­ing and pro­gram­ming as reward­ing as I and oth­ers have found it. Regard­less of whether or not you come to find pro­gram­ming reward­ing, I know that you will come away with 1) a greater appre­ci­a­tion for DH and the pos­si­b­li­ties it offers for doing human­is­tic research and 2)enough of an under­stand­ing of pro­gram­ming to col­lab­o­rate with those who are programmers.

Build­ing

There are many dif­fer­ent aspects of build­ing a web­site and we will cover what I con­sider the most impor­tant aspects: from project man­age­ment to con­tent strat­egy and infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture from cod­ing and pro­gram­ming to testing.

Over the course of spring break, I would like the class to tackle what I often con­sider the hard­est aspect: what to build, what con­tent should be included, and how can or should the end-​user inter­act with infor­ma­tion. To help guide you through this aspect, I offer the fol­low­ing steps.

First:

1. Read: Dr. Scheinfeldt’s post “New Wine in Old Skins: Why the CV needs hack­ing”;
2. Read: Adam Crymble’s post “My CV is Bet­ter Than Yours”;
3. View: Adam’s CV;

Think: about Scheinfeldt’s chal­lenge. Did Adam meet that goal? How did he meet it? Is there any­thing he did not include that he might have that would have gone even fur­ther in hack­ing the cv?

Sec­ond:

1. View: Dr. Char Miller’s CV;
2. View: Dr. Janet F. Brodie’s CV;
3. View: Dr. Tom Scheinfeldt’s CV;
4. View: Jeremy Bogg’s CV.

These are more tra­di­tional CV for­mats (though I would sug­gest dig­ging around Jeremy’s and Dr. Scheinfeldt’s web­sites). Your CV or resume is prob­a­bly some­what similiar.

Third:

1. View: Jeremy Keith’s Web­site;
2. View: Dan Cederholm’s Web­site;
3. View: Dou­glas Bowman’s Web­site.

How do these sites com­pate to the tra­di­tional CVs listed above? Think about the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences? Could you trans­late your tra­di­tional CV into some­thing sim­il­iar to the web portfolio’s? Again, do they include a semi non-​traditional for­mat (think: blog)?

Fourth:

1. Read: Bogg’s post “Dig­i­tal Human­i­ties Design and Devel­op­ment Process”;
2. Read: Croxall’s post “12 Basic Prin­ci­ples of Project Man­age­ment”;
3. Read: Bogg’s post “Part One: Fig­ure Out What You Are Build­ing”;
4. Read: Lovinger’s post “Con­tent Strat­egy: The Phi­los­o­phy of Data”;
5. Read: Halvorson’s Post “The Dis­ci­pline of Con­tent Strat­egy”;
6. Read: Kahn’s post “Strate­gic Con­tent Man­age­ment” — pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to links he includes;

Reflect on what you learned from these posts, com­pare that to the tra­di­tional CV exam­ples and the designer portfolios.

Next:

1. Think: What is your project? What is the ratio­nale behind it?;
2. Map: Your project out, briefly, on a piece of paper or using a dig­i­tal tool if time permits;
3. Think: What con­tent do you have? What con­tent do you want? What con­tent do you need?
4. Gen­er­ate: That con­tent dig­i­tally — e.g., write out some “About” text, write up your “Projects” or “Research” text, etc..

As you are think­ing, map­ping, and gen­er­at­ing your project and con­tent, remember:

• You are hack­ing your CV;
• You are adding that mate­r­ial to a blog, with posts that can and should be con­sid­ered a part of your New Skin CV, incor­po­rate that blog aspect into your think­ing, map­ping, and gen­er­at­ing regard­ing the con­tent you have, want, and need;
• You are build­ing this site, you make the deci­sions on what you have, want, and need, and how much you want to include; the length, the amount, of mate­r­ial you use and include is up to you;
• Think not about “who you are,” but about “what you do” as you go through this project man­age­ment and con­tent strat­egy process.

Last:

1. Read: Rohde’s post “Sketch­ing: the Visual Think­ing Power Tool”;
2. Read: Bogg’s post “Part Two: Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture and Orga­ni­za­tion”;
3. Sketch: out on paper first, before you employ a dig­i­tal tool, your per­sonal iden­tity site, incor­po­rat­ing both the blog and the CV con­tent you devel­oped into that sketch.

Final Note:

1. Do not: spend more than a few hours — though you can spend as much time as you would like — read­ing, reflect­ing, and gen­er­at­ing your content;
2. Enjoy: spring break, take a break from the dig­i­tal, do some research, do some writing;
3. In short: Relax.