Hello. My name is Keira Koch and I am a student at Gettysburg College. I have been researching women’s experience at Gettysburg College during the 1950s and learning about digital humanities during the summer as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow in Musselman Library. Based on what I’ve learned about digital humanities, I have been able to create a website by using the digital tool Scalar, to tell the narrative of women during the 1950s by looking at their academic, social, and personal lives at Gettysburg College. By using digital tools, we can create digital projects that can display research in an interactive way that a paper cannot. Specifically, my project pertained to Gettysburg College women of the 1950s. Now that I’ve done this part, my next step is to expand upon my research by looking at women from other time periods at the college. You have been a supporter of undergraduate research, and I thank you for your continuous support. I would like to show other undergraduate students how to use digital tools for their research. In order to this, I hope you will consider introducing digital humanities to your students. If we are able to move forward, I expect to see an increase in the number of the students who are interested in research and an increase in the number of students who are interested in using digital tools. I know that’s a lot of information. I hope we will be able to meet again soon.

To be completely honest, I had no idea what an elevator speech was until our workshop. Now, since I know what an elevator speech is, I realize how important they are. An elevator speech is an introduction to you and who you are and what you are for, a first impression. I think it is safe to compare an elevator speech to and advertisement or commercial. You say all that you can and need to say about yourself in 30 seconds but it is up to the person or audience that you are speaking to, to decide whether they are interested or not interested. These people who you are talking to can range from being a friend to a very important donor.

Because you may be talking to different types of people, the meaning of your elevator speech might change. If I were talking to a friend, my elevator speech would be much more relaxed and informal. My elevator speech would most likely be trying to convince her/him or apply for the Digital Summer Scholarship Fellowship or to simply tell them what I did this summer. My elevator speech to a very important donor would be very professional and probably encouraging them to continue donating money to digital humanities. My elevator speech to students in a class would be still formal but possibly more personable. The message of my elevator speech would be to introduce them to digital humanities or convince them to use digital tools for their research.

The elevator speech above is aimed at professors. My goal is to tell them about my research and my work with digital tools, as well as convince them to use digital tools in their classrooms and introduce digital humanities to their students. Although this speech was written for a hypothetical situation, there is a strong possibility that I will deliver this speech to professors or people I meet at Bucknell. With some tweaking and drafting, I can say I am ready to deliver my elevator speech.

The scholars and I have been working increasingly hard over the past week. There have been many days spent on the second floor of the library working and many nights spent in Glatfelter Hall….working. From uploading images to writing metadata, we all agree that we have a lot of work still to do on our projects. It can sometimes feel overwhelming, the more I think about what I have to do in order to finish my project. But will the project that I present this summer be the final project? Most likely not. And I think almost all of the fellows believe that our projects to not end with the summer. We all have ideas of expanding our projects and furthering our research.

My meeting with the working group this past week has helped me see what I can and cannot accomplish this summer. I believe that I can accomplish what I set out to do, build a digital project that shows women’s experience during the 1950s at Gettysburg College. But there is no limit to how in-depth I go with my research. Right now, I know how deep I want to go into my research. But there are a plethora of other statistics, topics, and women I can research as well. The beauty about researching a topic of your choosing is that there are no boundaries to how far you want to go with it.

In the workshops and sessions, we talk a lot about the direction of our projects and what is the ending going to be for them. I believe that what I have and am going to accomplish this summer is not the end of my project but just the foundation and beginning.

This week’s topic of discussion was about Data Visualization. There are a lot of different ways to display a data set. For my own project, I do not have a specific data set. The only type of data I have now is in regards to academics. I have a list of women’s majors and minors from the class of 1954 that could be compiled into some sort of data visualization. I am currently trying to figure out a way to display this data in a way that is both informative and visually pleasing to users.

My first thought was a pie chart. A pie chart would be an easy way to show the different subjects women majored in. A pie chart could both display the total number of women in the class of 1954 as well as the breakdown of majors. I could also use a bar graph to show this data as well but it would only show the breakdown of majors. Since I am only showing one particular class, there is not much data. There were only 63 women in the class of 1954. However, I could compile a bigger data set if I were to do multiple class years. With a larger set of data, there would probably be more options for showing and displaying that data.

I could break down the majors themselves using line graphs to show the increase or decrease of their popularity. I could also show the difference between what women and men majored in if I decided to gather a list of subjects men preferred major in. It would be interesting to put this data into Voyant Tools to see the frequency of majors and minors throughout the years. It would also be neat to see the majors in a word cloud as a visual aspect to my project.

Besides academics, I could also compile data on student clubs and activities. This data may be a little harder to gather because the only way of gathering the data is by paging through the yearbook. It would be interesting to see what types of clubs women were involved in and the shifting of interests throughout the years. I would also use pie charts, line graphs, and bar graphs to display this data.

I am currently working on a map that shows the day in the life of a 1950s college student by using StoryMap JS. Although the map serves as an extension to my narrative, I could also use a map as a way of displaying data. I would be able to use a mapping tool (something like Carto) to display the areas where women were living on campus throughout Gettysburg College history.  I assume that over time the points on the map would grow as the college expands and women are given more freedom.

Although I am currently only working on the lists of women majors and minors, there is a possibility of adding more datasets to my project in the future. These datasets will add depth to my project and narrative to my project.

It was a welcoming change to have an afternoon session that did not focus on digital humanities. The 3 D printing lab was very interesting to both witness and experience. However, we learned that the 3D printers were very temperamental. It took Lauren and me three tries to print out our names. After I successfully printed out my name I decided to print out something more complicated. I settled on the Doctors famous TARDIS. I crossed my finger and hoped that the base layers would go down smoothly and they did. For a solid 30 minutes, the TARDIS was coming into form. Then something terrible happened, the TARDIS moved and was out of line. It was more than half way done and in one split second, it was ruined. I was crushed. Discouraged, I decided to print out smaller and low-risk objects.

When R.C returned to the lab I told him about my half TARDIS. He then reminded me that failure is okay. I realized that failure allows for creativity. If you fail at something once try something else. As we have discussed before, much of digital humanities is trial and error. If something doesn’t work out the first time, try it again or try something different. I will try to keep this lesson of failure in the back of my mind as I continue to create my digital project.

This Tuesday I had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Holley, the woman who I am basing my project on. Barbara Holley donated a personal collection of scrapbooks to Special Collections. These scrapbooks document the years she attended Gettysburg College (1950-1954). It was interesting to hear what could not be gathered from her scrapbooks, personal stories, and thoughts. We chatted about the college customs freshmen had to follow. She told me that the customs lasted the whole first semester. One thing she distinctly remembers is not daring to walk on the grass, even though the upperclassmen would try to trick the freshmen into stepping on the grass. I asked her what she thought of the freshmen customs. I thought she would tell me that she thought they were unnecessary but she actually replied that they were a lot of fun.

 

We also talked about the changing geography of the college. Most of her classes were in Glatfelter Hall since there were not as many buildings on campus. Huber Hall served as the student’s dining hall. Ms. Holley then went on to tell us how awful the food was and how their one saving grace was the neighborhood food truck that came around to deliver sandwiches. This is a little bit different from today’s love of Servo.

I am happy to have met Ms. Holley and hope to see more of her in the future.

Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, and David Golumbia seem to have a lot to say about Digital Humanities. In the article, “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities”, these three professors have expressed their thoughts and views about Digital Humanities. Normally, I can always see the other side of the argument when reading an opinionated article. But I only saw the views of the authors in this particular article as being biased and extremely narrow. I perceived the overall tone of the article as being belittling and (for lack of a better word) “snobbish”.

The first line of the article already had me annoyed. “Advocates position Digital Humanities as a corrective to the “traditional” and outmoded approaches to literary study that supposedly plague English departments”(Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities). There are many things wrong with this statement in my own humble opinion. First, of all the Digital Humanities texts we have read none had ever mentioned “correcting” the traditional approaches to literary study. From what I have learned as a DSSF Fellow is that Digital Humanities does not seek to abolish the traditional standards of academic research but hopes to widen the horizons of research. Writing papers will never go out of style as much as we might like them to. Digital Humanities only strives to allow another platform in which research can be displayed to the public. It also allows for people who are not professors or scholars to publish their work to the public.

Secondly, I found that their arguments were largely focused on the just the English and literary side of the humanities. It seems that they forgot the other sects of academia the word humanities encompasses. The authors only provide examples of how digital humanities is corrupting English departments. If you are going to make an argument for or against digital humanities, you should probably give arguments that highlight different disciplines that the humanities encompasses, not just one. Although I think that the authors should have looked deeper into other subjects that fall under the umbrella of “humanities”, two of the three authors are English professors and therefore wrote about their own discipline. However, this only makes for a bias and narrow argument.

Another point that left me flabbergasted and dumbfounded was their remarks to funding. I will admit, I know absolutely nothing about how funding works but the conclusions that these authors are making  are extremely farfetched. They claim that the funding of digital humanities is largely based on the need to justify student research to those who do not have site-based research needs. They also claim that this way of thinking has led people to believe that in order to get a grant they need to use some sort of digital tool. The authors then go on to stress again how this mold of funding only develops funding for new models of intellectual work thus accelerating the devaluation of older models of literary study. Again, digital humanities does not seek to devalue older models of research. Also, I don’t see why there should be a problem with funding new ways of researching. Technology will always keep evolving, we should try to find and experience news ways in which to share scholarly writing and research.

Another quote that I was appalled at was, “…major research institutions, from the University of Virginia to University College London, have invested in Digital Humanities precisely in order to consolidate their grip on available research funding, and are about as likely to renounce their market dominance as are Facebook, Amazon, or Google”. Really? Are you arguing that colleges are investing in Digital Humanities just to hoard grant money? Again, I do not claim to know how funding works, but I seriously doubt that the thought of holding a grip on money goes through their minds when applying for funding.

This article is an example of a misinformed interpretation of Digital Humanities. Much to the dismay of the authors, Digital Humanities is a force to be reckoned with and is here to stay.

Working with Scalar this week has brought me back to my childhood. As a child, I loved building things with Lego bricks. In some ways, Scalar is the digital form of Legos. You can build and create something with both Scalar and Legos. The difference is that instead of building a three-dimensional house, I am building a digital book. I have been building various paths on Scalar to mimic the idea of how I want my user experience to be. The task has proven harder that I originally thought it would. I am constantly trying to figure out the most logical way to organize my chapters and paths. Does it make sense to start out with the interactive map or should I introduce Barbara Holley to the users first? Where should I put Greek Life? Under student clubs and activities or have it as a separate path? I am excited to see my digital “house” taking form. So far Scalar has been a great tool to work with and I am excited to see how my project will look like as a finished house.

I have spent the better part of my afternoons in Special Collections. Most of these trips to Special Collections were spent looking at the College Catalogue, G-Book, and Barbara Holley’s Scrapbook Collection. This week I decided to take a look at the Oral Histories in Special Collections. I was surprised to read and learn new things about college social life and culture that I would have not otherwise known. Facts, numbers, pictures, and books can only give you a wide range of information, but Oral Histories find the narrative and the voice of the people. I hope I will be able to use the voices I found reading the oral histories in my digital project to add another layer of depth to the narrative of women.

This week I meet with Dr. Birkner to discuss some questions I had about my project. He gave me some very interesting advice. He said, “to make your project interesting, find the story, find the personal narrative.”  I know I had originally planned to use Barbara Holley as a featured woman, but I wonder what other ways I could incorporate other women’s stories. How can I make a cohesive narrative out of multiple women’s stories? I have been reading the Oral histories of women who attended college during the ’50s. Each has their own unique story and not all women fit the mold of the 1950s woman. I don’t know how I will display each women’s story through my project yet, but am excited to see how it turns out.