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Data Driven but How Do We Steer This Thing?

Data Driven but How Do We Steer This Thing?

These are slides for the keynote talk I delivered at the "Data Driven: Digital Humanities in the Library" conference in Charleston, SC, June 20-22, 2014.

trevormunoz

June 22, 2014
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  1. DATA DRIVEN …
    but how do we steer this thing?
    digital humanities in the library
    Trevor Muñoz
    University of Maryland
    @trevormunoz

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  2. @trevormunoz

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  3. @trevormunoz
    is one of the “Top Trends” in academic libraries
    College & Research Libraries News 75, no. 6 (June 1, 2014)
    — ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee
    DIGITAL
    HUMANITIES

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  4. @trevormunoz
    What Makes
    something a “top trend”
    ?

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  5. @trevormunoz
    The committee found examples of either
    recent library collaborations
    current collaborations
    within higher education
    that we believe could benefit
    from library participation
    or

    .”

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  6. @trevormunoz
    *Apologies

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  7. @trevormunoz
    The following discussion may tend to get a little
    academic library
    }-centric
    Corrections from other perspectives warmly welcomed
    USA

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  8. @trevormunoz
    DIGITAL
    HUMANITIES
    Top Trend:

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  9. @trevormunoz
    Academic libraries can play
    a key role …”

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  10. @trevormunoz
    YES!

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  11. @trevormunoz
    … in supporting humanities
    faculty in their research …”

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  12. @trevormunoz
    Uh Oh

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  13. @trevormunoz
    Many of the problems we have faced
    ‘supporting’ digital humanities work may stem
    from the fact that digital humanities projects in
    general do not need supporters—they need
    collaborators.

    — Miriam Posner, “No Half Measures”

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  14. @trevormunoz
    … by creating partnerships
    and collaborations …”

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  15. @trevormunoz
    … and helping to connect
    with other campus units …”

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  16. @trevormunoz
    In or Out

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  17. @trevormunoz
    … needed to implement and
    carry out digital humanities
    research.”

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  18. @trevormunoz
    DIGITAL
    HUMANITIES
    IS NOT A
    SERVICE

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  19. @trevormunoz
    Academic libraries can play a key role in supporting
    humanities faculty in their research by creating
    partnerships and collaborations and helping to connect
    with other campus units needed to implement and carry
    out digital humanities research.”

    — ACRL Research Planning and Review Committee

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  20. @trevormunoz
    What to Make
    of these divergent views of
    digital humanities in libraries
    ?

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  21. @trevormunoz
    We cannot engage this
    question by asking what
    ___ number of
    peer institutions
    have done/are doing

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  22. @trevormunoz
    Not
    HOW
    But
    WHY

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  23. @trevormunoz
    DIGITAL
    HUMANITIES
    Top Trend?

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  24. @trevormunoz
    I believe there is a
    MORE
    SIGNIFICANT
    connection between
    digital humanities
    and librarianship

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  25. @trevormunoz
    DATA DRIVEN …
    but how do we steer this thing?
    digital humanities in the library

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  26. @trevormunoz
    One of the hallmarks of digital humanities practice has
    been the desire to experiment, to make things, to dig
    into our data – to see how humanities ‘things’ are
    ‘made.’ There is nothing contrary to the library spirit in
    that desire …”

    Glen Worthey:

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  27. @trevormunoz
    … Librarians – perhaps even more than other knowledge
    workers – have long distinguished themselves with the
    very gears and cogs of literary production and study: with
    the book trade; with bibliography and metadata; with the
    acquisition, organizing, and preservation of textual
    objects; with a variety of technological means for
    scholarly discovery. …”

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  28. @trevormunoz
    … What is all this traditional library work if not an
    engagement with how knowledge is ‘made’? And what
    are we, if not co-makers of that knowledge?”

    — Glen Worthey
    http://bit.ly/worthey-dh

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  29. @trevormunoz
    Academic libraries can play
    a key role in supporting
    humanities faculty in their
    research …”

    ?

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  30. @trevormunoz
    Engage this question by
    tracing some of librarianship’s
    historical self-
    understanding

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  31. @trevormunoz
    Engage this question by
    building out some points of
    connection with
    humanist
    scholarship

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  32. @trevormunoz
    Commence
    History and
    Theory!

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  33. @trevormunoz
    WAIT!

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  34. @trevormunoz
    What about the
    “digital”?

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  35. @trevormunoz
    Toward
    Better Thinking
    About
    Technology

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  36. @trevormunoz
    productive
    unease”

    — Julia Flanders

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  37. @trevormunoz
    Libraries/
    Librarianship

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  38. @trevormunoz
    Library as
    Platform/
    Library as
    Infrastructure

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  39. @trevormunoz
    This next bit of the discussion was greatly enriched by
    Mattern, Shannon.
    Library as Infrastructure”

    Design Observer, June 9, 2014
    http://bit.ly/mattern-2014

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  40. @trevormunoz
    Library as
    Platform

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  41. @trevormunoz
    … focuses our attention away from the provisioning of
    resources to the foment those resources engender. A
    library as platform would give rise to messy, rich
    networks of people and ideas, continuously sparked and
    maintained by the library’s resources.”

    — David Weinberger

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  42. @trevormunoz
    Another problem with the platform model is the image it
    evokes: a flat, two-dimensional stage on which resources
    are laid out for users to do stuff with. The platform
    doesn’t have any implied depth, so we’re not inclined to
    look underneath or behind it, or to question its
    structure.”

    — Shannon Mattern

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  43. @trevormunoz
    Weinberger:
    A library … would give rise
    to …”

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  44. @trevormunoz
    The car transformed rural
    society …

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  45. @trevormunoz
    To save everything, click
    here …

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  46. @trevormunoz
    Libraries promote
    democracy and class
    mobility …

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  47. @trevormunoz
    Part of the problem in philosophical writings about
    libraries has been a failure … to distinguish between
    philosophical analysis (rigorous critical thought) and a
    philosophy (a set of motivating beliefs, concepts and
    values). The latter always pervades library service and it
    is not necessarily democratic. Different political regimes
    have different social agendas, so LIS will be differently
    deployed.”

    — Michael Buckland

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  48. @trevormunoz
    tracing some of librarianship’s
    historical self-
    understanding

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  49. Wayne Wiegand’s analysis of
    development of librarianship:
    @trevormunoz
    expertise
    character
    authority
    institution

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  50. @trevormunoz
    Traditionally, LIS studies both the institution of libraries
    and the broad phenomenon of information largely
    through pluralist and managerial lenses as questions of
    service delivery, technical efficiency, and managerial
    effectiveness. One result is a politically naive profession.”

    — Christine Pawley

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  51. @trevormunoz
    The culture of print established and sustained by most
    mainstream organizations operated in an inescapably
    racist world—one in which the significance of culturally
    constructed racial difference was so taken for granted
    that it went unremarked, at least by the white majority.”

    — Christine Pawley
    2009

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  52. @trevormunoz
    …The platform doesn’t have
    any implied depth, so we’re
    not inclined to look
    underneath or behind it, or
    to question its structure.”

    — Shannon Mattern

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  53. Designing for Difference”
    McPherson, Tara.
    Differences 25, no. 1 (January 1, 2014):
    177–88.
    doi: 10.1215/10407391-2420039

    cf.

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  54. @trevormunoz
    Library as
    Infrastructure

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  55. @trevormunoz
    We need to ensure that we have a strong epistemological
    framework—a narrative that explains how the library
    promotes learning and stewards knowledge—so that
    everything hangs together, so there's some institutional
    coherence.”

    — Shannon Mattern

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  56. @trevormunoz
    The library needs to know how to read itself as a social-
    technical-intellectual infrastructure”

    — Shannon Mattern

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  57. @trevormunoz
    Why
    is infrastructure better than
    platform
    ?

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  58. @trevormunoz
    Toward
    Better Thinking
    About
    Technology

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  59. @trevormunoz
    productive
    unease”

    — Julia Flanders

    View Slide

  60. @trevormunoz
    building out some points of
    connection with
    humanist
    scholarship

    View Slide

  61. @trevormunoz
    … What is all this traditional library work if not an
    engagement with how knowledge is ‘made’? And what
    are we, if not co-makers of that knowledge?”

    — Glen Worthey
    http://bit.ly/worthey-dh

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  62. @trevormunoz
    media archaeology
    media history
    humanities computing
    cultural criticism

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  63. @trevormunoz
    *Not a
    complete list

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  64. @trevormunoz
    I would like to see library DH
    work that thinks through
    media
    technology
    innovation
    culture

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  65. @trevormunoz
    alongside other scholars
    across both libraries and
    humanities positions

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  66. @trevormunoz
    e.g.
    Documents

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  67. The Invisible Substrate of
    Information Science”
    Bates, Marcia J.
    Journal of the American Society for
    Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999):
    1043–1050.

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  68. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media
    History of Documents
    Gitelman, Lisa.

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  69. @trevormunoz
    DATA DRIVEN …
    but how do we steer this thing?
    digital humanities in the library

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  70. @trevormunoz
    how do we use this thing to
    run the washing machine
    churn the butter
    rock the baby’s cradle
    and cultivate the back “forty”
    run the dishwasher

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  72. Users as Agents of Technological
    Change: The Social Construction of
    the Automobile in the Rural United
    States”
    Kline, Ronald, and Trevor Pinch.
    Technology and Culture 37, no. 4 (October 1,
    1996): 763–95.
    doi:10.2307/3107097

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  73. @trevormunoz
    Luckily, libraries are not really about search. They are not
    an information shopping platform hobbled by inferior
    technology. Rather, libraries are common ground where
    knowledge and culture can be shared and nurtured.
    Protecting the commons while inviting people to use and
    contribute to them is what librarians are for.”

    — Barbara Fister

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  74. @trevormunoz
    Library as
    Infrastructuring

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  75. @trevormunoz
    The design researcher role becomes one of
    infrastructuring agonistic public spaces mainly by
    facilitating the building of arenas consisting of
    heterogeneous participants, legitimizing those
    marginalized, maintaining network constellations, and
    leaving behind repertoires of how to organize socio-
    materially when conducting innovative transformations.”

    — Björgvinsson, Ehn, and Hillgren

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  76. @trevormunoz
    role becomes one of infrastructuring agonistic public
    spaces mainly by facilitating the building of arenas
    consisting of heterogeneous participants, legitimizing
    those marginalized, maintaining network constellations,
    and leaving behind repertoires of how to organize socio-
    materially when conducting innovative transformations.
    Librarian
    The

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  77. THANK YOU.
    Trevor Muñoz
    University of Maryland
    @trevormunoz

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  78. we need recourse to library history and library and humanist
    theory to work through what “digital humanities in the library”
    can mean
    digital humanities in libraries as deeper technological
    sophistication in both practice AND “productive unease”
    not platforms but infrastructures/infrastructuring
    library work as material, social epistemology—“making”
    knowledge
    think through “media”, “technology”, “innovation” with other
    scholars across humanities & libraries

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