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