nirak.net - Musings of an LIS Student

Thanks to everyone who commented on my previous two posts. I’m still working these things out in my head, and am speaking from a very limited (and naive) perspective of only a handful of institutions and projects that I have seen.

One of the things I left out is that digital humanities centers are by no means the only entity that could help with digital projects or publications of art materials. This could also be accomplished through collaborations with other departments on campus (such as Computer Science)  or through a university press. I imagine that we’ll probably start to see a number of these collaborations at the same time.

The part of this that is stuck in my brain, and which I don’t have an answer for, is what one of these projects would look like? I now have an idea of what a history or literature project looks like, but not much of what an art history or especially a fine art project would look like. I have seen a few examples of art history sites, and just presenting the images as one would in a book is somehow a bit of a letdown. But I don’t know what it is that I expect to be different. As for fine art- I have seen several fine art projects on the internet, and again, I always think something is somehow missing. I’m going to ponder this and research more and come up with some links and ideas.

karin :: May.22.2008 :: Art, Work :: No Comments »

After more thought about the previous post, I think my question is:

Should digital humanities centers take it upon themselves to encourage fine art and art history faculty to create digital projects?

That would probably involve searching for funding from different venues and changing some assumptions, but I certainly think it is possible. It might mean specifically reaching out to fine art and art history faculty and demonstrating what a digital humanities center can do for them. More than just getting images on the web, it would mean a new kind of exploration for art history and fine art. Imagine an art history digital project illustrated with beautiful, high resolution zoomable (and downloadable) images that explain a concept better than static text ever could. Or a faculty artist’s web page which explores the meaning of the work in depth with (again) high resolution images interwoven with text and multimedia that brings the work alive. Better yet, imagine at least some of that content released under a license so others can reuse it, at least for educational purposes.

Ben noted in the comments of the last post that very few images that come up in a Google image search for an artist come from .edu domains. That does not surprise me—many artists and curators, especially in the academic realm, are nervous about posting images online and are stingy with high resolution images. However, what is considered high resolution has changed. I think of high resolution as above 1200×900—but many images on museum websites are around 300 pixels. Some museums sell high quality copies, but they could provide a nice big resolution and still sell the REALLY high resolution photo. Museum websites often are also stingy about letting you download images for your own use.

Ben also commented that some projects might be squashed by university lawyers. I think that is absolutely true, but that has been true for digital humanities in general. One of the great things about these centers is that they are constantly looking for materials to publish online, and will push for access for all. This is important because if we (as a society) don’t push for fair use from copyright holders, the copyright holders will take advantage and achieve ever more restrictions on use. This is true for books as well as paintings—but books, of course, are easier to deal with, because there are multiple copies. So we can go ahead and digitize that book that is clear of copyright, because it can be bought for a decent price, or our library already has a copy. With paintings, however, it’s more tricky. Many museums disallow photography in all galleries, even if the some galleries contain out of copyright works. This is all the more reason, I think, for digital humanities centers to step in, especially on campuses that hold works of art.

Ira Greenburg also left a great comment, saying:

Where I teach, “digital” seems to get inserted into every conversation these days - ranging in tone from vitriolic to sacrosanct. As a painter turned programmer (I still consider myself an artist), I find the debate tiresome and primarily fueled by ignorance on both sides.

I totally agree with this. I sometimes question whether digital humanities centers will continue past the next 10 or 20 years because I hope, eventually, that the facilities to create digital works, projects, and research, will be prevalent in every department on campus. Right now, though, a faculty member who wants to attempt a digital project has little support on many campuses. If they want to write a book, there’s a fairly straightforward process to follow, but a digital project requires expertise many don’t have.

Digital humanities centers are uniquely placed to reach out to fine art and art history faculty and create some unique and very exciting projects. Funding might be tough at first- but then, it was for digital humanities projects too in the beginning. I have a feeling that quite a few individual art faculty would really appreciate the help- some want to move online, but don’t know how or what the web can do for them. And if my suspicions are correct, they probably won’t get a lot of help from within their own department. (Again, depending on the institution.)

At this point I still have more questions than answers. I’ll end with a fantastic quote from Ira’s comment:

Working at the level of code, established disciplinary boundaries dissolve (and eventually the temples that house them will as well.)

karin :: May.21.2008 :: Art, Work :: 4 Comments »

With THAT Camp quickly approaching, I have been thinking about digital humanities quite a bit. For those that don’t know, digital humanities is a cross disciplinary field that helps explore the humanities through digital exploration. That might mean anything from an online history exhibit to in depth text analysis of literary works. Across the country, Digital humanities centers are springing up to support new kinds of digital research. The reach of these centers varies widely- some are mostly history based, and in fact it seems like a great deal of digital humanities research focuses on history. Others are more broad, and include projects in many humanities disciplines: Art History, Literature, Language, Classics, etc. A big part of the discussion in the Digital Humanities is talking about new models for publishing: what does it mean to publish online? What does peer review look like for online projects? How should promotion and tenure change to account for digital work? (Some places won’t even accept digital scholarship as part of a tenure portfolio).

One humanities discipline that I rarely see addressed in digital humanities, though, is Fine Art, and the question of why has been on my mind a lot. One obvious reason I come up with is that funding agencies for arts and other humanities are different- there’s the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The NEH has many initiatives to support digital work (see the new Office for Digital Humanities), while the NEA- well, I don’t think it has much in the way of digital initiatives (please correct me if I am wrong.) Which is a shame, really- the NEA could go very far towards “bringing the arts to all Americans” (one of the goals stated on their “about us” page) by supporting digital work, especially if they also supported work that released into Creative Commons or some such license. The separation of funding agencies is one explanation for the divide, but are there others?

To be sure, Fine Art is different from other humanities disciplines. The measure for success is different, for one thing- it’s nice to publish a book, or have a book written about you, of course, but more weight is placed on exhibitions- where do you exhibit? Is it a solo or a group show? The important thing, of course, is the professor’s work, but it is not enough to make work an never exhibit it. I’m sure similar discussions must take place in the academic fine art world that take place in other disciplines, such as: Are there other models for tenure? What should count? What about an online exhibition?

I wonder if digital humanities in general has room for fine art. Where I work, we offer research faculty fellowships once a year to help faculty with digital projects. I don’t think any fine art faculty have applied, but I wonder what would happen if they did. Our Center is not really set up for a fine art project, and, to be honest, I’m not even sure what one would look like. But I would be interested to find out.

karin :: May.18.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 6 Comments »

I have had “learn to program” on my list of stuff to do for years. It’s always “after I do this…”

But! There is a great new resource created by the fabulous William J. Turkel & Alan MacEachern called the Programming Historian which is also great for librarians and any scholar who wants a way to make programs that are actually useful to your work.

You can find it at the Programming Historian Wiki.

I’ll be working through it over the next week or two, and then I hope to move to some of the other programming resources I never seem to get around to.

karin :: May.09.2008 :: Library :: 2 Comments »

I need to write two papers, but I am having trouble even coming up with topics. I have several attempts, but about halfway through I give up - either because the research is already pretty conclusive and I feel silly writing about it or because I’m just not interested in the topic. I wish I consistently tagged my Zotero items so I could see if there was anything I’d collected a lot about, but I never did get into the habit of tagging in Zotero (partially because many systems insert tags for me).

Anyway, the two classes I need to write papers for are Library Information Systems and Information Storage and Retrieval. I have all day Saturday to work on these, and can take all day Sunday if needed, so I’m not too worried… yet.

Other topics that have been on my mind:

Creative Commons

Several people have posted about Creative Commons and the murky space it occupies between public domain and copyright protected. Since I started my Free Artwork project, I have been thinking a lot about why I might choose different licenses and what it means to buy into Creative Commons. I also have been looking into what Creative Commons detractors are saying, and thinking about ways it could be better. I have to admit, the number of licenses one can apply to work is confusing. Besides the Creative Commons standard choices, there are several others on the website, like public domain, BSD, and GNU-GPL.

I’ve been thinking about the content I produce, and why I produce it, and what license I might want to apply to what content. Certain applications make this easier than others. Flickr makes it pretty easy to have fine grained control over my work, and the new video function makes it easy, for the first time, to find video to reuse. However, that video is still wrapped up in Flash, and since Flickr doesn’t allow downloading of video, the CC license is moot (unless you just want to embed on a webpage, which, frankly, Vimeo and Youtube already cover.) I can CC license my blog content, but, to be honest, I have not found much use for CC licensed text, except to use in displays and such. (Wikipedia has proven enormously useful for displays.)

Windows on the XO

Another thing I want to write about is the continuing frazzle on Windows for the OLPC and Negroponete’s statements. I think emotions are running very hot in the whole debate, and I’m afraid the whole project will splinter and fall apart. I really hope development on Sugar continues- though I find the system slow and buggy right now, I still see amazing potential. I love the XO machine, and I love Sugar, and I don’t necessarily believe the two have to go hand in hand- but I think the conceptual aspect of Sugar really needs to fork from the work that needs to be done with power management, speed, etc, on the XO. I installed Xubuntu and it is pretty snappy- as much as I love the IDEA of using Python to create an OS (thereby opening up the possibility to modify on the fly) I just don’t know that it works for a low power machine.

I blogged a little about my thoughts on XP for the OLPC on OS Agnostic before all the recent stuff came up.

Wikis for work

My work has been using an internal wiki (using MediaWiki software) for organization for some time. It’s working pretty well- there are a few people contributing most of the content, but that is true of most wikis. Recently, some professors have started using the wiki for class projects- which is great, but also a little outside the scope of what we set up the wiki to do. So I have been investigating other, lightweight wikis, and have fallen in love with PmWiki. It’s flexible, powerful, and best of all only requires PHP to work. Instead of storing in a database, it stores in flat files. This is good for several reasons- for one, backup is a snap- for another, making a new wiki is as simple as copying a folder and chmoding one folder. I have since started using PmWiki to organize my own life and it has been quite useful. I’m debating moving it to my home server (which, by the way, I have yet to create). I could also run it off my keydrive.

I’ve been investigating other project management solutions for work, and the more I study the intricacies, the more confused I get. I know the folks at the Center for History and New Media use Basecamp for their projects, which I like, but I don’t particularly care for the monthly pay system (it’s difficult to handle through the libraries) and the limit on the number of projects you can set up. $150 a month will get you 50 projects, $49 a month will get you 35 projects. We have been using the open source ActiveCollab, hoping the new version would be bigger and better- but then the new version went closed source. The project forked into a new project, project|pier, but not much has happened with that yet.

Whew! That’s just a little of what has been going on inside my head. The semester ends May 2nd, and May 5th I start on my practicum- which will be implementing a site using Drupal. Plus, THATCamp is coming up in late May, and there’s a lot floating around in my head for that as well.

Off to attempt, again, to come up with a paper topic.

Images: Jeffrey Beall and teemow. (the OLPC illustration is mine)

karin :: Apr.24.2008 :: Uncategorized :: 4 Comments »