From Research Ideas to Projects

A version of these slides were presented to the “Resilient Networks to Support Inclusive Digital Humanities (DH)” workshop at George Washington University, August 10–12, 2016.

Transcript

1. Trevor Muñoz RESILIENT NETWORKS WORKSHOP Developing Research Ideas
2. Trevor Muñoz What is a research idea?
3. Trevor Muñoz A research idea is with some existing set of ideas in dialogue A research idea is an intention to in the community of people engaged with that body of ideas intervene
4. Trevor Muñoz What if we “read” [THING] this way?
5. Trevor Muñoz Bonnie Mak and Julia Pollack — Influenced by a principle of inspiration rather than reproducibility or repeatability, scholars in the humanities deploy strategies such as metaphor, analogy, contradiction, silence, and seduction to provoke their audiences.” “ make new knowledge [ ]
6. Pause We need to talk about the relationship of ideas to projects ( )
7. Trevor Muñoz “Project” is a shibboleth of the digital humanities
8. Trevor Muñoz A project is a process by which we try to implement some version of an idea the idea(s) “the project” It’s important not to lose sight of the distinction between and
9. Trevor Muñoz Four Parts of an Idea* questions audiences sources tangible products this formulation was co-developed with Jennifer Guiliano *
10. Trevor Muñoz Ideas are constructed validated then they need to be thinking through the four parts of an idea helps you do this
11. Trevor Muñoz the idea(s) “the project” Don’t lose sight of the distinction between and gaps The most exciting ideas arise from the in what has already been done. Think of ideas as being made out of FOUR parts: questions audiences sources tangible products
12. Trevor Muñoz RESILIENT NETWORKS WORKSHOP How to think about data like a digital humanist
13. Trevor Muñoz Defining Data evidence Data is information deployed in the role of
14. Trevor Muñoz Sabina Leonelli — Any product of research activities, ranging from artifacts such as photographs to symbols such as letters or numbers which is collected, stored and disseminated in order to be used as evidence for knowledge claims.” “ Defining Data
15. Trevor Muñoz … like a digital humanist WHEN IS THIS A DIFFERENCE THAT MATTERS?
16. Trevor Muñoz * not to scale research data curation preservation
17. Trevor Muñoz discipline matters research data curation preservation discipline agnostic
18. Trevor Muñoz evidence circulates that through some kind of public.
19. Trevor Muñoz Bonnie Mak and Julia Pollack — Influenced by a principle of inspiration rather than reproducibility or repeatability, scholars in the humanities deploy strategies such as metaphor, analogy, contradiction, silence, and seduction to provoke their audiences.” “
20. Trevor Muñoz Data is not intrinsically digital Some of the challenges you will encounter will be data challenges and some will be digital challenges. It’s important to be able to tell them apart.
21. Trevor Muñoz Data problems/Digital problems
22. Trevor Muñoz
23. Trevor Muñoz For the computer, the information in a digital image is a matrix of color and light values. There is no computationally- available information in this version of the object about language
24. Trevor Muñoz To the Honble the Judges of the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for the County of Washington The petition of Amelia Marshall alias Milly Marshal (coloured woman) humbly represents that she is a coloured woman and is as she believes entitled to her freedom. That she is now held in bondage a state of slavery by John Gant & William …
25. Trevor Muñoz If a human transcribes the image, now there is computationally- addressable character information. Depending on how that character information is organized there may or may not be computationally- addressable information about the “text”
26. Trevor Muñoz Additional (meta)data
27. Trevor Muñoz Typology of data problems Identity problems Is this the data we think it is? Is this data the same as that data? Meaning problems What is this data supposed to be telling us? Relationship problems How is this data related to that data? Integration problems How can I combine this data with other data? Interoperation problems How can I get this data to work with my software? ALLEN RENEAR’S
28. Trevor Muñoz Models, transformations, and views WORKING WITH DATA
29. Trevor Muñoz entity relationship attribute Modeling tools
30. Trevor Muñoz Modeling tools Or, alternately, the Or, one of a number of vocabularies linked data TEI standard Text Encoding Initiative
31. Trevor Muñoz Open Refine http://openrefine.org/ Transformation tools
32. Trevor Muñoz Transforming data is one reason that it can be valuable to learn a programming language
33. Trevor Muñoz When deciding what data to collect or how much it’s useful to try to imagine how someone will ultimately view that data This could be through something like wireframes of an interface, or sketches of a visualization
34. Trevor Muñoz evidence circulate Data is information deployed in the role of and it thus follows that data must be able to through some kind of public. A large proportion of research is data curation models To be effective working with data, think about transformations views
35. Trevor Muñoz RESILIENT NETWORKS WORKSHOP How to turn an idea into a project
36. Trevor Muñoz The most important thing to have is a that attempts some research idea in a community of people engaged with a shared body of knowledge intervention
37. Trevor Muñoz Ideas are cheap The core ideas involved in how to turn ideas into projects involve good stewardship of the resources that people invest in those ideas
38. Trevor Muñoz Project Management Are we using people’s time well? Relatedly, are we using any money we received well? Team Management How are we giving credit to everyone who is contributing to this project? How will everyone communicate? Who is responsible for the emotional labor of making us a team? Sustainability Will the work people put into this project disappear in a year? Five years?
39. Trevor Muñoz Project Charters formal One of the more ways for a team to decide how they’ll work together Most useful when working across institutional boundaries or for complex divisions of labor
40. Trevor Muñoz They can be most helpful to those on the team with the least power, who are least able or least comfortable getting what they bureaucratic Formal tools, like charters, are more than exercises need to do their work through more informal means.
41. Trevor Muñoz not hiring help Building a team is formal informal How teams work together will vary from to Being good at managing a team is different than being a good scholar, librarian, administrator, organizational leader
42. Trevor Muñoz Planning the work
43. Trevor Muñoz Work plans are purposeful fictions. Embrace this by using them as simulations Identify some checkpoints and imagine ways that plans would have to change if you’re behind schedule at that point
44. Trevor Muñoz Project Management Tools
45. Trevor Muñoz There are several different project management tools in wide use Basecamp Trello Asana Pick the one that best fits how you think
46. Trevor Muñoz Email is not a project management tool
47. Trevor Muñoz Choosing technologies
48. Trevor Muñoz When starting new projects, choose technologies late as in the process as possible
49. Trevor Muñoz If you’re not a specialist in technology, your first job is to establish a relationship with a person who is and who will help* you help does not mean that person will choose a technology for you *
50. Trevor Muñoz If you are a specialist in technology, balance being efficient (which probably means using technologies you’ve used before) (beware warping solutions to fit familiar technologies) with being flexible h/t Jill Gremmels
51. Trevor Muñoz Dissemination
52. Trevor Muñoz Don’t default to producing a white paper
53. Trevor Muñoz Think about when planning dissemination activities audiences Administrators and policy makers are the (chief) audiences for white papers, which they use to help them make decisions. Is your output for that audience? If so, have you thought about their needs?
54. Trevor Muñoz impact What can you generate for the community in return for the resources invested in your project?
55. Trevor Muñoz Don’t default to producing a scholarly article especially in a closed access journal *
56. Trevor Muñoz workshops Consider other active and engaged forms of dissemination like symposia tutorials
57. Trevor Muñoz Sustainability is not the same thing as preservation
58. Trevor Muñoz It is difficult to do good sustainability planning without being able to distinguish between active archival and phases of projects
59. Trevor Muñoz Ithaka S+R Toolkit RESOURCE http://www.sr.ithaka.org/publications/ sustainability-implementation-toolkit/
60. Trevor Muñoz http://devdh.org DevDH.org Further Reading Jennifer Guiliano and Simon Appleford
61. Trevor Muñoz Thanks My thinking about research ideas and projects has been immeasurably improved by Jennifer Guiliano Simon Appleford Ed Summers Megan Senseney Stephanie Sapienza Purdom Lindblad
62. Trevor Muñoz tmunoz@umd.edu