Scribed by Sage P.

“Room A Section 1: Topic- Intro to API’s

DPLA- Digital Public Library

API-Application programming interface

Behind the scenes, to get data

Why?

Scrape data from webite

Data in a structured way

need

Chrome

Postman in chrome (Add app)

(Don’t have to sign up)

hit “send”

It will email a key

API request

Protocol-Domain-version-action-parameter

Switch to GET. Enter domain: api/dpla/v2/items

Params (parameter)

Key & Value

Api_key… # from email

Key: q (query)

Value: (search)

Click send

0 is first not 1

Count -# of matched

Start   Limit   Docs

Different way to search, defined on Dpla website

Specific info back

(ID & titles)  put in fields   Pagination   Saving it is by send & download

More way to access

Web console

Web application- developed gwu library

Commandline- twarc (twitter app)

Code- can always write code

(depend on API and what you want)

Read documentation (to understand)

You may not understand data if you don’t

Fairly stable

Disasterview.laurawrubel.org

Tweeting slides”

Rebecca Benefiel presented and talked about using tools for data analysis that would be useful for businesses, social media, and email communications. Rebecca said that when you analyze text, which approaches do you use depends on what is the focus of your research. Specifically, for social research your often confronted with a lot of language material. In essence, when you do the analysis with one of the tools you focus on detailed analysis of text. Some of the uses of text analysis tools that were mentioned and briefly explained are:

• Social network analysis
• Geo-spatial/mapping
• Distance reading/content analysis
• Visual/sound analysis
• Visualization

Also, Rebecca mentioned Gephi; another tool platform, which is used for data analysts and scientists keen to explore and understand graphs. A tool in which “the user interacts with the representation, manipulate the structures, shapes and colors to reveal hidden patterns”.

Some of the tools for text analysis mentioned are:

• Dirt Directory (dirtdirectory.org)

• Voyant (voyant-tools.org) for text analysis

• Open Refine (openrefine.org)

• Programming Historian

AND Notes from Neil on the same workshop  Tool Sharing w/ Rebecca (Text Analysis

• Easier to learn by example
• Types of digital tools
  • Text analysis
  • Social network analysis
  • Geo-spatial/mapping
  • Distance reading/content analysis
  • Visual/sound analysis
  • Visualization
• Voyant tools demonstration
  • Allows people to replicate your analysis about the data set
  • Open source
  • Many tool options
  • Helpful community
  • Ability to filter out words in data, while maintaining full original text
  • Can increase tool window size (term #)
  • How to get Twitter text?
    • “tags” – allows you to collect data every minute from Twitter
  • The Programming Historian
    • Used to ask and answer humanities quetsions
    • Well-written tutorials
  • Open Refine
    • Helpful explanation video on Youtube
  • Text grid
    • Software for download (open-sourced)
    • Search image (create hyperlink)
  • org
    • Visualizing networks
    • Viewing group clusters
  • Palladio
    • Limited in showing statistical importance of people in a social netowrk
  • Node Excel
  • Omeka
    • Good for images, video, sound

THAT Camp Conference Summary

Transcribed by: Manuel Fiallos Garcia

The conference I was in talked about Wikipedia. It focused in the fact that there’s a lot of information in Wikipedia that you can come to believe it’s fake. That is because people could edit information easily and there was no problem with it, even if it was fake. People started doubting about using Wikipedia as a credible source and developed a tendency to disapprove it as a primary source of information. In the conference, they explained that there are actually back up proves of who the author is and what he added to the information, bringing more credibility to the source. As well, now you need to become an approved user to be able to edit in Wikipedia. They told us that also if you get to add too much fake information, people can flag you and you can get to a point were you are blocked from editing the content in Wikipedia. There was also someone who had edited a page in Wikipedia and showed us where her user appeared and what she had edited. A lady was saying that there might be content that even though it is backed up by an author’s biography website or some sort of website containing the content he added up; there might a probability that what he added is fake and could have make up that information in the website just to add content to Wikipedia. We saw a video containing how to edit Wikipedia and how people really use this tool to spread the information they know and contribute to the digital information world. This is the audio file that contains the conference, it is not that great the audio but it can provide a further insight of what they talked in the session. Thanks.

Hosted by: David M- PHD at George Mason

-Looked at travelers between US and Mexico before 1856

-Organizing with Excel but thinks their could be some database versatility

-Trying to incorporate more visual stuff into his spread sheets, Excel is possible but very difficult to get it done, Google Sheets seems to be more user friendly for this

-Google sheets and election—> Washington Post directed people to Google Sheets to help track popular votes in past election

-Excel vs Google Sheets vs Sequel:

-Excel has proved its longevity and that no matter the improvements Google Sheets may make, Excel will still have its own usefulness.

-Excel is very helpful for social network analysis

-Google Sheets makes communicating information with other people fairly easy as it can be exported into a number of different of formats including Excel

-Sequel is good for large networks as it allows you to create separate tables for specific criteria

Multiple spreadsheets vs single spreadsheets for extensive databases:

-Multiple spreadsheets seems to be more helpful for different pieces of information about same topic instead of compiling all into single spreadsheet with numerous pages

-No one database is right for a specific topic: Many different databases can work for same topic, At the end of the day, it all depends on what exactly you are looking for, and user preference.

-Issues with historical databases: Spelling “conventions” took a long time to settle down so people may be referring to one person but are spelling it in many different ways so hard to keep accurate track of individuals

-One solution to this is the Open Refined Program (open refined.org): Source for when you have messy data to help clean up your data and clarify potential inaccuracies, spelling errors, etc

Building History Databases: What’s Overkill?

• Looking at travelers between Mexico and US pre 1846
  • Passenger manifests used after 1920, which is helpful
    • Organizing with excel with criteria
• How do you organize this information?
  • Do you want to simply organize your data or do you want to share it?
    • Washington Post used Google Sheets to track popular votes
    • Access vs. Filemaker Pro vs. Excel
      • Google sheets makes it easier to communicate information with other people and it can be exported as an Excel sheet
      • Excel can also be used in social network analysis, GEPHI (plugin called Geo Layout) for visualization
        • IE: t.co/idasYmtWJq ( Quantifying Kissenger)
• How you construct the database dictates what kind of questions you can answer
  • Think about building in the right way to see patterns
  • Is simple data ok for answering these types of patterning questions?
    • Visualization tools can be super helpful
      • But perhaps use separate spread sheets?
• What is a database?
  • Data dump?
  • Organized Data dump, which can be used to see relationships?
• hueristnetwork.org
  • Very robust resource
  • Allows you to organize your date and export as CSV
  • Nonprofit open source program
• Sequel
  • Allows you to create separate tables for specific criteria and combines them
• OpenRefine
  • Cleans up your messy data, like spelling differences
• Carto.org
  • Mapping tools, allows you to mess with CSS
  • Gives you a sense of changing patterns over time
• Node Excel
  • Social Networking Analysis
  • Also, Palladio from Stanford for a less intense analysis
• introtodh2016.web.unc.edu/workshops/mapping
  • For comparative mappings
• Omeka and Neatline
  • More web-publishing than researching

How to Connect Global Communities Online Around History

• AJ- Purpose to build a platform/ find some way that they can learn from one another
  • Presently working on project about Frederick Douglas for Bicentennial events
  • Trying to figure out how social media platforms work together
  • How does this work behaviorally? Do you need a website before you have a social media presence, or can you build presence on social media
• Patrick- there is a paradoxical trap worried about
  • All of these sites and groups would be in their own solis and starting another one runs the danger of creating more of the same trap
  • Looking at aggregation tools, making it all about the aggregation
  • To make sure the primary mission is doing the aggregating, not adding another site.
• AJ- original idea is aggregation
  • Other people said they needed to have an event that this will take off
  • Place the reading in a place where passersby will stop and be able to take part in the meeting
  • Hopefully, the one event will interest others, ways to combine
  • Are there specific places for aggregation
• Patrick
  • Zotero can be used for aggregation, maybe create a Zotero group where, when people see these events, they can share them.
• Jen
  • The issue with the platform can depend on who you want to reach
• David
  • Finding some way of you not having to do that labor or going out and finding these events
  • Building a site that has some time of form capability (possibly wordpress)
  • A place for “Do you have a or know of a Douglas event? Enter it here”
  • No Anthologize
  • Press Forward as a platform
  • WordPress is decent at RSS
• Patrick
  • The utility of facebook/twitter is to make people aware of and get them to the aggregator site
• Jen
  • Platform infrastructure, but also the reason why they should contribute.
    • A newsletter, other things to keep people informed and share the information.
• AJ- what an RSS feed is? Is it similar to a google alert?
• David
  • Need to manually set up the sites you want to monitor and what you want to know what its for
• Patrick
  • Press Forward manages these feeds.
    • Helps you sort through the different information in the site.
  • RSS is a format for machine readable versions of a website
    • Sharing content that the machines can do in the background
• Jen- what is the overall strategy
• AJ
  • Success would be our project emerging as the place of aggregation for all things Douglas.
  • Create a group of Douglas interest
  • Hoping that is we can establish a beachhead so that when you do Douglas everything
• Jen- is GW putting funds into it to help sustain?
• AJ- no, but there is a possibility
  • There was a lot of interest, but the kind of “call me when you get something starting?”
• Jen- do you want to bring people who know and want to connect Douglas more tightly or reach out to people who don’t know much about Douglas?
• AJ- I wanted to do both
  • The more of the site has thing happening in different places, the larger the audience it can draw.
  • Way for Douglas interest people to see what other Douglas interest people are doing.
  • Black Lives Matter was a way of connecting people who combined and movement building through smart use of Twitter and other virtual connectors.
• David
  • Lincoln Bicentennial Committee may be a more useful connection to Douglas bicentennial
• AJ
  • Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was created by the president, had government funding and support.
  • Douglas is a reputation washer
    • People want to be involved, but may do other things in Douglas’s name.
    • Doesn’t want to go to the politicians yet
  • Thought “when I have an ask that big layers of government can do that we can’t do, then we will ask them”
  • If we are the education people, the park service, etc., the politician would come to us as the people to partner with.
  • Lincoln was defined by government sponsorship and private money, my vision is a democratic ones.
    • People have said that they will provide money if they can control the site.
    • Wanted to build something to be that people would provide funding, but be one of many.
• Jen
  • This is a maintenance issue.
  • Reach out to teachers, state historical groups, just so they know about it, even if they can’t fund it.
  • It’s one thing to build it, but it’s another to have people coming back to it.
• AJ
  • Has some networks with the Smithsonian, Parks Service, etc.
  • It’s the order of steps, don’t know how this will be maintained
  • This is the first phase
  • Had hoped that as we become the place where you can find the event information, then the people who fund them will support.
• Patrick- the resources are more about people then the money
• David
  • Thinking of this infrastructure, decide what you want to do best, the one goal
    • If the goal is to be the aggregator, focus on that, to connect the people doing these events and the people who want to participate.
• AJ
  • That was the idea, names the “Douglas Bicentennial Community,” but hasn’t used the word “aggregation”
• Patrick
  • Community says to me that it’s about connections and conversation
  • Aggregator say that you provide and combine the information
  • “What’s the one thing?” is super important because you can slip back in forth in what you want to do.  
  • The aggregation can be the first demonstration of usefulness, then maybe build on around the edges can bring in the communication.
• AJ
  • Wants to pull in the art angle
  • There are lots of other groups doing the education work, i thought bringing them together to show that Douglas is bigger than the classroom.
  • This could serve the teaching mission, what the past has to teach the present
  • Wants to showcase Douglas’s presence and how it lives on.
    • Sees these goals at combined and not separated.
  • Most things that people see will be either partisan or for-profit, that or a million tiny things that are harder for people to learn about
• Jen
  • recommendation is to design a beachhead to allow people to find you
  • get started with the open materials
  • can always change it
• AJ
  • Has the website, but it’s password protected because it looks like a third grader built it and was afraid that the website would not look like a viable place
    • Interns presently working on making it better
  • Will be pitching again to the DC Douglas Interest
• Patrick
  • It’s going to be a while that you are on the first page of google results
  • If you open it, people won’t really be finding it, except google.
    • By opening it, it allows google to become familiar with the content and things so they come up on search engine people.
• Jen
  • Build your ally base (state humanities, smaller groups)
  • Do a soft launch, so other people can possible help.
• David
  • Talk to ASLH, who is an aggregator of the smaller places, and they could probably help.
    • Seems that you are focused on the smaller, local historical societies.
    • Smithsonian and Parks Service doesn’t need the extra exposure.

Resilient Networks Projects

• How to support digital humanities projects for places that don’t have digital humanities center
• Wanted to hear everybody’s responses
• How can people start/realize digital humanities project
• A Digital Humanities Project:
  • can be many things
  • the kind Amanda is most familiar with is by putting humanities information online.
  • making searchable databases online of historical documents/images
    • WhatAmericaAte.com– created at a digital humanities center- just launched out of Matrix at Michigan State University
      • they had this content, made is searchable and available
      • they combined libraries, scholarship, and digital humanities center
• How can these projects last without being grant funded?
  • Digital humanities center and library as the same space, doesn’t really need a center.
    • Saying ejournals versus journals- they are the same thing.
    • Keeping them together can help the technological people and the content people collaborate.
  • Raises the Question: we don’t only do all humanities, how can we combine them and put them in the box?
  • Humanities- we always need to ask for money
  • Digital Humanities because a lot of humanists need help with the technology.
    • Does the library support the digital humanities center or does the digital humanities center support itself?
    • Specialized skills needed for humanities
    • Reference librarians can guide, even if they aren’t an expert
• Why the humanities particularly?
  • Difficulties with The idea of “the Library is the Humanities Lab” as a substitute for the scientific labs
    • Engineers, sciences, etc have a lab, humanists have never worked that way
      • Humanists work on their own, in the stacks
      • Technological collaboration wasn’t as much a thing in the humanities in the past.
    • Library is more “come to me and I can help you find something”
    • Digital Humanities “we want to do this/make this/etc.”
      • GMU- the center has been separate from the library and history.
      • Librarians can have people come give the humanities people the workshop
      • The case for digital humanities hasn’t been made yet.
  • Digital Humanities Center could be called Digital Scholarship Center- it isn’t just the humanities that centers support
  • The Value of Digital Humanities
    • Transcription is a big project in the digital humanities
      • People don’t realize that search engines need text to search something
  • The Negatives of Library intrinsically connected to Digital Humanities
    • Having support from the library focused on the digital humanities
      • There is a lot of money, time, and people needed for DH
    • Library needs be there for support to help researchers find things
    • Cost
      • The more information, the harder it will be to sustain
      • Libraries would need to consider divide costs
      • In a 40 hour work week, can put X documents online OR we can help someone do their research project.
        • Trying to figure out how to make the work “good enough”
    • Sustainability
      • Funders are worried about funding these projects that are then done/away
      • If in 5 years, no one is looking at it, you need to update it
    • Labor
      • Mellon foundation is using grant trying to find an alternative to digital humanities centers
      • Having the people say, “we can’t give you a beautiful website, but we can get the information on there.”
• What should we be doing locally and what should we be doing collectively?
  • “My library has to have everything my users need” – it can’t be done
  • Expertise training
    • Consortial efforts to make it
    • Creating a bare minimum of common knowledge
  • Finding Aids and Catalogued
    • Finding aids are collection guides, not item levels
      • Large amount of description in the scope
      • Teaching finding aids is difficult
      • A lot of people can’t use the finding aids
• Back to “What is a Digital Humanities Project”
  • Once you have digitized things and put it on line, there is so much more you can do with it (mapping, text analysis, etc).
  • “Digital Humanities” is a term that students don’t need to know, but the professionals do.
    • Should know about digital tools, but DH is the inside talk.
• What is in scope for libraries in the DH space and what is not in scope for libraries in DH?
  • In Libraries- should be making it discoverable, having collections, etc.
  • The analytical side should not be in scope of library/part of library’s focus
  • Similar to a writing center:
    • you can reside here, but there are specific people who work within that center.
    • not focus on transfer of resources into digital scholarship.
  • Library- needs to limit their scope of what they can do/support
    • Not everyone can do everything,
  • Some libraries feel the need to save things because no one else will
  • Encouraging libraries to not support things forever, but giving it a specific amount of time.
    • The book- you write it and you publish it, book preservation is covered by the library, but they are used to that preservation.
    • The digital project- goes out of date, the look needs to be updated, doesn’t need to be saved forever.
• “You put it online, they will come”
  • A little bit of that, but it takes large amount of labor and time to get people to see it come up.
• Back to the Library’s role in analysis
  • It is not in their scope to conduct analysis, but it is important for them to enable analysis.
    • A commons where researchers from multiple groups can come together to learn about the basic tools.
  • There is an issue of “non-consumptive research”
    • Non-consumptive research- automated analysis of big data sets
      • You’re not reading a million books, consuming all of the information.
    • A lot of for-profit databases are selling this as a service

Suggest topics here by logging in and going to Posts –> Add New: what you suggest will appear below. Or just bring your ideas on Saturday. We’ll give you paper and markers to propose an idea and put it on the big grid. See the Propose page for more on session proposals.

This is also where any of you can post the notes you’ve taken on sessions. Please give the Room, Time, and Title (roughly) of the session you are writing about at the top of your entry.  You can also post bibliographies, cool examples you know about, and more so long as it is relevant! Please write one post per session. To post, you need to log in and click “Posts –> Add New” — it’s that easy.