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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
  2. @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
  3. @trevormunoz The committee found examples of either recent library collaborations

    current collaborations within higher education that we believe could benefit from library participation or “ .”
  4. @trevormunoz The following discussion may tend to get a little

    academic library }-centric Corrections from other perspectives warmly welcomed USA
  5. @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”
  6. @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
  7. @trevormunoz We cannot engage this question by asking what ___

    number of peer institutions have done/are doing
  8. @trevormunoz DATA DRIVEN … but how do we steer this

    thing? digital humanities in the library
  9. @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:
  10. @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. …” “
  11. @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
  12. @trevormunoz Academic libraries can play a key role in supporting

    humanities faculty in their research …” “ ?
  13. @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
  14. @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
  15. @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
  16. @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
  17. @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
  18. @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
  19. @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
  20. Designing for Difference” McPherson, Tara. Differences 25, no. 1 (January

    1, 2014): 177–88. doi: 10.1215/10407391-2420039 “ cf.
  21. @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
  22. @trevormunoz The library needs to know how to read itself

    as a social- technical-intellectual infrastructure” “ — Shannon Mattern
  23. @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
  24. @trevormunoz I would like to see library DH work that

    thinks through media technology innovation culture
  25. The Invisible Substrate of Information Science” Bates, Marcia J. Journal

    of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 12 (1999): 1043–1050. “
  26. @trevormunoz DATA DRIVEN … but how do we steer this

    thing? digital humanities in the library
  27. @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
  28. 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 “
  29. @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
  30. @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
  31. @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
  32. 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