Here’s the deal. The thing that makes archival materials so captivating is also what makes them challenging to work with in a computational way. By their very nature, archival sources are unique. Tremendous amounts of time and labor are necessary to properly organize, describe, digitize, and make accessible these materials. Libraries, archives, and museums have been working to make their collections available online for many years, but they’re not done yet. And only recently have they started thinking about making those collections available in computationally tractable ways. Most of you will not be working with perfect data sets. They will require cleaning – or tidying – to get them in a state that can be used by digital tools like Voyant or Google Maps. Sometimes you need to add data (like coordinates) or remove data (like personal information). This project component asks you to fully document the sources you’ll be using.
Specs:
- Due July 24th at 11:59 EST
- Post to WordPress.
- Submit link on Canvas.
- No word count, but the longer the better.
- A list of the sources you plan to use with full citations and links.
- Each source should include a brief annotation (bullets are fine) that addresses the following:
- Format – what format is this source in? What format does it need to be in? What do you need to do to get it there?
- Rights – who owns this material? What are you allowed to use? How do you know?
- Privacy/ethics – Who is depicted in this data? How? Is there sensitive information that needs to be removed? Any other ethical considerations?
