http://dc2017.thatcamp.org Making History Tue, 04 Apr 2017 16:57:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 http://dc2017.thatcamp.org/files/2017/02/PROV_1617_2_THATCamp_Univ-calendarDrupal-Promo_220x220_v2_Option-2-150x150.jpg http://dc2017.thatcamp.org 32 32 http://dc2017.thatcamp.org/2017/03/26/session-notes-invisible-labor-of-digital-history-collaboration-i-vs-we-in-dh/ Sun, 26 Mar 2017 15:42:15 +0000 http://dc2017.thatcamp.org/?p=301 Continue reading →]]>

• “Gnomes and elves problem” – invisible labor in special collections and other fields
• What is invisible labor?
  • Thread on Twitter a few weeks ago stating person found this hidden gem; no, a librarian found it, catalogued it, shouted it out, you didn’t discover it
  • Invisibility – things difficult to assess (like course surveys); direct vs. indirect measures, skills that don’t manifest until later on, hard to measure and communicate
    • Big issue for funding – erasure of labor has financial implications
  • Technology may have exasperated this issue of erasing labor
    • Physical card catalog bank vs. online – mass quantity better indicates labor behind it
  • Librarian older model seen as support for researchers, not co-researchers
  • DH asking for more and different support – role as librarian changing based on tasks of researchers, which plays into idea of visibility
    • Visibility obvious as providing a service, but less so in other ways
  • Be more conscious about delivering products and benefits to get away from being seen as a call center
    • Ex. Mukurtu Project – active collaboration with indigenous peoples; normally invisible labor but support highlighted because of direct engagement with this community
    • Linked the product with the process
    • Engage with invisible voices that want to interpret themselves
  • Public transcription can help as well
    • Ex. transcription center at Smithsonian
  • Use the word “product” – makes things visible, but also still invisible
    • Everything in libraries being “projectized”
    • Hard to make something like knowledge a commodity
    • Creating end products like transcribed Diller jokes, which is important to show what labor is doing, but then worried that we are going to be judged off of that
      • Turns things into assets, money-makers (look what we can do in 5 months, how much $ we can make from it)
      • McDonalds vs. working with a chef
    • Product view also erases maintenance issue
  • Library as servant
    • I’m going to go to library and librarians going to find what I want vs. librarians teaching me to find something I need
    • View librarians as partners
  • Don’t necessarily want to be more of a partner by making invisible labor visible
    • Show the demands, need for funding, etc.
    • DH is helping uncover hidden labor
  • Flexibility and prioritization
    • If we have different levels of say, describing millions of collection objects
    • Triage and categorize objects as demonstration of value
    • And different levels of support
    • Counter: some don’t want to value different things differently
    • Doesn’t mean priorities won’t change, just see immediate demand in current environment
  • Important to define our goals – is it # of papers scanned into internet, or more indirect measures that may take longer to manifest down the road
    • Quantitative AND qualitative – qualitative harder to put in grant report, for example
    • Subjective harder to quantify
  • Need a big, broad picture narrative
  • Librarians as experts vs. community collaboration/ownership
    • Use librarians as starting point to get academic project off the ground – like a guide for best practices and best tools
    • Write them into your budgets
  • MFA becoming the new MBA – we are critical
  • Transcribing – undergraduate students present learned how much effort it takes
  • Crowdfunding – often seen as solution to all labor issues (unpaid labor)
    • But also sense of community and getting people involved
  • Want to bring digital documents into physical space – show and tell model
    • See what digital looks like in person – seeing that would give one a different awareness

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