First, congrats on completing your midterm mini-projects! They look great so far and I’ll be giving you detailed feedback ASAP, posted in Moodle.
Second, well done on the final project proposals! I have commented on some of your group posts on this website with some suggestions for next steps and resources. Look over them, comment back if needed and ask questions as we work in today’s session.
DH Awards
Today is project work day, so we’ll check in and do hands on work. But first, for inspiration, check out the
These are annual community awards (with a prize of nothing but bragging rights). 2023 nominations just closed at the end of January, but you can check out past winners through 2022. There should be good inspiration as we work towards our own final projects.
Final Project Tasks (4 this week)
Both class sessions this week will be devoted to working on your final projects. Specifically, you will do two tasks in class today, and submit two components of the final projects for the regular blog post and lab assignment due date slots on Friday and Sunday of this week, respectively.
In Class: Register a subdomain
Your midterms were on your own cpanels, but the final projects will live on the Digital Arts & Humanities subdomain so that they can stay there for perpetuity to inspire future students and anyone with internet access.
Consult with your teammates and decide on:
- A Title for your project (Title Case, human readable)
- a subdomain slug for the project (lower case, short, no special characters)
- What kind of web presence you want installed, e.g. a WordPress site, an Omeka site, just a web root folder to post code files to, etc.
Then, fill out the following form to request a subdomain of hhfinals.dgah.sites.carleton.edu to host your project.
In Class: Final Project: Team Charter (due Tuesday)
Good collaboration doesn’t just happen! It takes open and sometimes difficult communication. One way to take the trouble out of group work is to talk about the issues at the very beginning of your project. In the DH world, this is sometimes called a “project charter.” You can see examples from the Praxis Program at Scholars’ Lab (UVa). Your charter should be collaboratively written with input and agreement from every team member. It can be helpful to reflect on your best and worst team experiences before you meet to draft your charter.
Specs:
- Post to WordPress today
- Tag with your final project consistent tag
- Submit link on Moodle
- No word count, but your charter should address the following:
- What are your shared values? Shared goals?
- What will you expect from each other?
- How will you communicate?
- How will your team handle disagreement?
- How will you divide responsibilities? Is someone responsible for calling meetings? Cleaning data? Assess and share your own strengths and weaknesses
Final Project Assignment: Source Documentation (due Friday)
The thing that makes archival materials so captivating is also what makes them challenging to work with in a computational way. 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. 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:
- Post to WordPress.
- Tag with your final project consistent tag
- Submit link on Moodle.
- 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?
Final Project Assignment: Project Update (due Sunday)
Assignment 2 — The Details (Week 8)
Now that you’ve had some time to research and figure out what the possibilities are in terms of sources and technologies, collectively write a blog post on the course blog tagged with your project stating the following:
- Progress
- What have you done so far, who have you talked to, what have you gathered, and what have you built?
- Problems (and proposed solutions)
- What issues have you run into?
- Have they forced you to change your initial plan?
- Do you have a proposed solution or do you need help formulating one?
- Tools and techniques
- What applications/languages/frameworks have you selected and how are you going to implement them?
- Deliverables
- An updated timeline of deliverables
- Is you project still on track?
Remember to include citations and/or links to any resources, tools, or information that you reference.
Personal messages:
Each team member should add a brief message outlining your personal work on the project, referencing the roles decided in the team charter.
