Uncategorized – Page 5 – Moose in the Machine

Initial Thoughts on A Summer in Digital Scholarship at Amherst College

From a young age, I have been intrigued by the faces and places of the past–as a child, I visited various historical museums, found a home within the pages of historical fiction novels and films, dreamt of finding a time machine or Narnia-like wardrobe, and spent hours poring over the diagrams, photographs, and first-person accounts that I found in my history textbooks. I loved how I was alive in the same world that so many others had once been alive in, and that, while most of the people and events that I was learning about had passed on, handprints of those people and events still impacted my own life however-many years later. I often found myself thinking of historical figures as friends who I’d merely lost touch with, and, as a native of Buffalo, New York, I loved comparing old photographs of Buffalo to the contemporary land and cityscapes that I lived in myself. For me, exploring history was merely a step in discovering where my life and other lives intersected in this big world that we live in.

Imagine my excitement when I arrived as a first-year at Amherst College: an institution of higher learning that was literally built into the historically rich (for better or, oftentimes, for worse–but that’s another discussion) hills of Western Massachusetts. Naturally, I yearned to learn as much as I could about the place where I would spend at least four years of my life, and took every possible chance to absorb information pertaining to the College on the Hill. During the summer of 2016, I became especially interested in the first few decades of the College’s history, and spent time over the following months reading and investigating. But, alas, my senior thesis was then birthed into the world, and as I’m sure I’ll learn whenever I become a mother to a human child, I found that much of my life became re-centered on Caring for My Thesis rather than Pursuing In Depth My Own Miscellaneous Interests. That being said, I was naturally overjoyed when being offered an internship in Frost Library where I would not only be able to explore Amherst College’s history on a deep level, but where I would also be laboring within the framework of the Digital Humanities, a field I’ve been slightly dipping into here and there over the past couple of years.

So far, I have only experienced two days of my internship, where I’ve spent much time exploring information pertaining to the early years of Amherst College. Rather than not having much to say due to how early in the game it is, my mind is absolutely packed with ideas, questions, interests, and random-bursts-of-thought–one of which is, “I could spend the next several decades within the walls and webpages of Frost Library and still not have enough time to explore all of the projects that I’m already forming in my mind.” What a great first day-and-a-half, no?! To make it easier for both you and me (For you: to be able to coherently read my thoughts. For me: to be able to coherently assemble my thoughts), I’ve provided a list of some of these items below:

Topics of Interest on Amherst College, 1821-1861

Campus Life
- Student uprisings
- Class divisions and rivalries
- Hazing culture
- Sports and their impacts
- Fraternities and their impacts
- Women involved with the College
- Amherst students of color
- Christian revivals
- Personal narratives and accounts (students, faculty, townspeople, etc).
Education & Intellectual Endeavors
- Relationships between students and faculty
- Role of the arts and visual media in education
- Role of Christian ministry and missions in education
- Amherst as an educational opportunity for low-income students
Architecture/Landscape of the College & Town
- Interaction between students, faculty, and townspeople
- Architectural development of the College
- Impacts of the College on the town (cultural, economic, etc.)

…The list could go on, but I’ll stop here. My point is that I’ve found a vast array of topics interesting and worth pursuit–the problem is that, as I mentioned earlier, I could basically spend the remainder of my life researching all of this information and still have ideas and topics left to explore and discover. Truthfully, it seems that every time I find another interesting topic or every time I have a question answered, about six more topics or questions branch out of the original ones. On one hand, this is a problem for my adventure-and-exploration-seeking heart: I just want to learn everything I can (the good, the bad, and the ugly) in order to come to a fuller understanding of who and what Amherst College was and is, both for my own benefit and that of anyone who cares to take an interest. On the other hand, is this not an integral aspect of the beauty, complexity, and value of a liberal arts education? Having only graduated from Amherst two weeks ago, I can reflect on the past four years and say that I have more questions on my mind as an alumna than when I first arrived–and what a blessing that is!

I’ve learned to challenge, to question, to engage, and to disrupt. I’ve learned to utilize resources, to voice my thoughts, and to be critical of those same thoughts that I’ve voiced. I’ve learned to explore. I’ve learned that there’s no such thing as a dead end, even when the door is locked. I’ve learned that pursing knowledge is useless unless we are willing to challenge those pursuits, learn about things we’re uncomfortable with, and humble ourselves when we realize that we don’t know everything. Pursuing knowledge is useless unless we make that knowledge accessible, and making that knowledge accessible is an integral step in making our world a more fruitful place.

Each of these things is something that time-machine-searching, old-Buffalo-daydreaming Amanda would never even have dreamt of pursuing. But thankfully, Frost-Archives-searching, old-and-new-Amherst-daydreaming Amanda is excited to pursue each of them (and more, because goodness knows she’ll discover more worth pursing) as she delves into her internship. Cheers to an incredible summer!

The End.

After two long months of struggling, laughing, and occasionally, working productively, the Digital Scholarship Internship has ended. The project I ended up working on was definitely not something I could have imagined in the beginning. But with the help of all the librarians and research assistants and special archives people, I learned a lot more about digital tools than I could have imagined and a lot more about the history of Amherst College than I ever cared to know. I am ~quite~ satisfied with my project, although I hoped that it would disappear quietly into an Internet black hole after its completion. More importantly, I am happy to have met so many people working at the library, I am happy to have worked so closely with my teammates, and I am happy that we made it. Now I can (maybe) give an answer to the question, “What is digital humanities?”

Here is a link to my project.

Dear future interns, who will probably be reading this post in your first week of your internship, here is some advice:

Don’t worry too much what you’re going to do. It’s kind of like choosing your major: either you know or you don’t know, but eventually you will know.
Start your WordPress site early.
In fact, start everything early if possible.
Look forward to giving a workshop on Gephi. By far the most useful tool you will use.
Bring a jacket everyday.
Most useful shortcut on WordPress is Command + K (unless you use PC – then I don’t know how to help you). If you highlight text and ^do that, you can add a hyperlink.
Make sure you pick a project you enjoy. Otherwise, you are going to be spending a lot of time on a project you do not enjoy.
Val repeats their menu even more frequently during the summer.
Best time to go to lunch is 11:30 or 12:45.
^People might strongly disagree with the above, but don’t listen to them.
Have fun! (Or not. Up to you.)

Sincerely,

This cat

Ive-seen-the-end_o_118440

My Kingdom for a Time-Turner!

I don’t have a kingdom to offer, but time has passed disproportionately for this internship. The past week has been a build-up to the day of the presentation; those days were long because of the amount of work I was doing, but then they always appeared too short for the amount of work remaining. We have come so far since my last post; I didn’t even have a concrete idea of what my project would look like then, but now two weeks later, I have the privilege of looking backwards in time with a final product to boast about.

Here is A Little Magazine, complete with documentation.

Although I am proud of my project, it is certainly not the be-all and end-all. In fact, I would venture to say that the most valuable things I have learned from this Digital Scholarship internship, and the most valuable memories I have, have been the rest of “it.” The final product is a landmark, but not the cumulative experience.

I will end with a bullet-point of “it” in no particular order:

Building the timeline of the Student Publications Collection!
Knowing Lane Room too well. Knowing the computer lab on A level too well.
Increased knowledge of best spots in the library to counteract the temperature of the AC
The hypocrisy when I (almost) commit the same sin that I criticized of another website (story for another time)
Learning what “deliverables” mean
Still not knowing whether it’s “the digital humanities is” or “the digital humanities are”
The irony of making jokes about literary magazines, and then ended up focusing on one of them as my project
Not having enough time to do textual analysis and/or topic modeling; would have loved to see what kind of trends emerged
Learning that there are more than five librarians in the library. Really thankful for the network of librarians and other staff who have taught us and helped us along the way. [Personal note: now I know who to pester during the school year]
That feeling of accomplishment when my initials appeared in a streak on the Archives log-in sheet, because I came in everyday for data collection
Team meeting every Thursday; scrambling to prepare things for presentation
Learn that copyright is a thing, and that it is very complicated despite having charts to guide you through it
Having a group of interns to joke with in the first half of internship, and to keep up my morale during the dark days of tool failure; going crazy unproductive on one day and wake up and nail a Gephi workshop
Finding my way around WordPress; building something online for the first time
Being in the Archives for the first time; doing detective work
Getting stronger by lifting archival boxes from the front desk to the desk I was working on
First time at Mt. Holyoke; visited Leslie in the Archives
Emerging into the sun after a day of self-isolation in the Archives
That time when the word “concatenate” gained special status
Appreciation for access to the staff lounge (food cornucopia), with us interns at the highest priority for emails about food opportunities in the library
Finding the perfect spot in the Archives to take pictures of documents without my shadow blocking it
The beauty of Command F to look for keywords in a decades’ worth of newspaper OCR
Staying in the library until all the lights shut down
Being totally turned off by a tool at first sight, but then realizing some possible merits after having to teach a workshop on it (hint: Gephi)
Learning that Tableau is “like Excel, but more fun!”
Attended two job interviews
Took awkward group pictures
How to make a Pictionary session of publication names educational
This insight and call to action:
The havoc that puns cause on productivity, when you throw four tired interns together in a Monday afternoon, which leads me to…
A certain “Group Proposal” document that is in fact, bonkers. Inside joke:

Signing off, but not gone,
Phuong-Nghi

Iterate & Circulate (rinse and repeat)

After spending every single working hour with each other in the first five weeks (I’m not complaining; after all, we managed to create a “pictionary” session out of publication titles- that’s the epitome of team bonding and productivity), the self-imposed isolation of the recent two weeks meant only catching a glimpse of each other’s dazed faces at team meetings, or during the sporadic half-hour of project planning. Otherwise, with the range of our project topics and reliance on different tools, it is a fairly solitary undertaking. Also, the materials that we are working with demand that we physically be in certain places, whether that be in the Archives Reading Room or the Higgins Room.

Despite this physical constraint, we keep morale up by sharing the occasional high-fives and smiles when we see each other in passing. On days when we happen to do research together in one room, the quiet is often punctuated by excited bursts of commentary on all sorts of interesting finds, even if not necessarily relevant to the project at hand. I find that this adventurous spirit – refusing for our topics to become blinders, even at this stage where the days until the final presentation are indifferently ticking away – stimulating and encouraging. For me, it is comforting to hear how others’ projects are going, the headway they made, the unexpected obstacles and the lingering confusion. Although I cannot contribute in terms of resolving their problems, it is a vicarious and almost cathartic.

It will be a relief to reconvene later in the week in order to figure out the information architecture for our website and put together the final product. The hair-wringing process of research would transform from abstract to concrete, ready for presentation (or so we hope).

As for my own project, it’s been dizzying. But at least there’s movement, right? If this intrigues, check back in a week and see what kind of creature hatches.

More Contemplation

Flipping through old copies of The Amherst Student from the 60s and 70s, I have slowly begun to realize that history has a tendency to repeat itself, and that students back then were asking the same questions we ask now. Take the two pictures below. The first one is from the Afro-American protest in 1969 and the second is from #AmherstUprising in 2015. Both reflect the turbulent time period the protests arose from, and both are making demands to the administration to give voice to the marginalized populations at Amherst College.

Screen Shot 2016-07-05 at 3.07.05 PM

Another interesting aspect about the history of student protests at Amherst College is that not all of them were meant to be taken seriously. It seems like a couple of times a year, there have been several articles that say “protests” but describe a party gone wild. I wondered if this reflected the divide between student activists and non-student activists on campus (aka those who took civil disobedience seriously and those who didn’t) or if this was the student publication’s idea of humor back in the day. In any case, with these types of articles, it is hard to trace the intent and origin behind the sarcastic use of the word “protest,” and I concluded that I would consider it a lost cause to try to look deeper.
I am still delving into the archives to find out more about student protests, but as a group, we have also stepped back to look at the bigger picture. We are working to create a timeline of student publications from the beginning of Amherst College. After importing all the details from our abstract list and fitting them onto the Excel template given by TimelineJS (the digital humanities tool we decided to use), we now face the task of cleaning it up and making it look presentable. So far we have organized the publications into one of these categories: News/Student Life, Humor/Satire, Literary Magazine, Journals of Thoughts, Academic Journals, and Yearbook. This categorization has helped me to understand that repeating patterns in student publications, especially the tendency to express themselves creating new student publications when there is not one that feels sufficient. We also cleaned up the dates for each publication, double checking with the finding aid and special archives. This task was mind-numbingly mundane (see the comic strip below), but at the very least, helped me see how many single issue publications there were.

It seems like I am achieving a good balance of doing purely research and then stepping back to see how this fits into the bigger picture. At least, the timeline is giving me a vague feeling of productivity.

Rod Serling and Boxes 1-20

In the Amherst Special Collections, there are documents that venture onto the precipice of strange and weird, categorized within an archive beyond man, the middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of mans fears (Amherst Literary Monthly) and the summit of his knowledge (everything else). It is known as the Twilight Zone.

Behind the door to this dimension lie Amherst Student clippings with headlines like “Sarat Joins [O.J.] Simpson Defense.” One front page article features a student covered in a white full-body poncho, “SHE’s debut new mascot, Captain Condom” Publications dedicated to alternative art, advocating students to wave around Mao’s little red book. It depicts an Amherst that both was, is and will never be.

These documents, worthy of headline in any SNL Weekend Update, are legitimate. On their own, they are the quirkier aspects of life in a small college. They are united only by their deviation from the norm and not similarities, a collection of misfits. Together, they paint Amherst as a little unhinged but immensely lovable.

Unfortunately, that makes them ill suited for study. I love to snap photos of each strange feature I see, with Ripley’s Believe it or Not on speed dial. However, I can’t really find any digital use for them- I can’t even explain why we’re so drawn to them anyways! The application of some collections to projects are easy, like charting the growth of buildings or the advancement and recession of Sarat’s hairline in each photo appearance.

IMAG0772 — Sarat’s “Peak” hair years- named for both the climax in hair density and the premature onset of widow’s peak.

If anything, it’s affected my attitude towards my dedicated project. I’m grateful to be exploring comedy publications, because the lines between fiction and reality and not as blurred. For now, I’d like to focus on the question I asked earlier in the summer- when was comedy looking inward and when was it looking outward? Originally, I would’ve assumed most inspiration came outward. But now…. I’m wondering if it flowed from the pioneer valley between reality and fiction, situated in the Twilight Zone.

Fancy new word for a day of dialogue

The past weeks research was mostly protest related, which is the path along which I am strongly inclined. I dug through the moratoria papers, which in a nutshell is a collection of papers based on different moratoria (read day of dialogue) that have been held on campus to address concerns that had come up as a result of protests.

Moratorium: a temporary prohibition of an activity. Synonyms: embargo, ban, prohibition, suspension, postponement, stay, stoppage, halt, freeze, standstill, respite

So I learned that the day of dialogue isn’t a new thing, it has been proposed before on campus as a solution to some of the protests that have previously been held. Moratorium, day of concern, day of dialogue; same thing, different name. On top of that, the response to the day of dialogue as a solution hasn’t changed. The one that was held in my freshman year didn’t seem to bear much fruit, the same goes for the ones that were held 30 years ago. What this revealed to me is that I can take research on protests in a different direction. Rather than picking a specific time period, comparing similar protests that occurred at different points in time and seeing how they evolve over time, or how closely they mirror each other could also be interesting.

I also stumbled across the letter that President Plimpton of Amherst College sent to President Nixon of the U.S, to which President Nixon DID reply (albeit through his assistant). I’m also constantly finding random things in the Student which aren’t necessarily tied to protests but are cool, like for instance, the opinion sections where people weren’t afraid to blatantly express what was on there minds, and then googling the alums with the most controversial posts. I’m constantly finding cool things in the digging in process but at the back of my mind I feel like going through the archives is putting off actually having to start the project. I wouldn’t call it a dead end, but I really am not sure about where to start. Hopefully now that we have Gephi out of the way, I can channel all that energy to figuring out where.

Still trying to figure out which one I am. Maybe a spin on the Internet Researcher – the Archive Researcher

I Spy a Black Hole

Let’s tackle the mystery of the title right now instead of threading it subtly throughout the post. Black holes are noble and majestic – remnants of collapsed stars that strive to make this harsh, ever-expanding universe warmer by extending a generous welcome to all who venture within its gravitational field. At least that’s what I presume based on my Earth Science knowledge from 7th grade… and a rose-colored figment of my imagination, since I’ve never actually encountered one (thank my lucky stars). A quick Google search reveals that black holes are, in fact, quite photogenic. A starry spiral spreads outward, punctuating the profundity of the enigmatic core that is soul-less-ly black. It’s hard not to wax poetic about black holes, but one quibble remains. If they are trying not to attract attention, they should reconsider their color choice, or at least think about how their effects on their surrounding give away their position. This aside, what’s not to like about the enigma of black holes, except the fact that our very attraction to them comes from their ability to elude extensive study?

Smooth transition coming up.

In the compact 90-linear-ft universe of the Student Publications Collection in the Archives in A Level of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, there too exists a black-hole. It has earned many affectionate names from the DSSI interns and generated many a fruitful conversations:

A glimpse into the life... — Fear the Literary Magazines

As you can see from this snippet, I am venturing into dangerous, unknown territory. Putting the juicy metaphorical significance aside for a moment, literary magazines do make up roughly 40% of the collection (disclaimer: no actual calculation has been done), so it seems careless to disregard this size-able chunk that managed to remain a staple of student publications for almost 200 years. We do not know how these publications were received in their time and how large the readership was, but there is something to be admired in the resilience of literary magazines to pop up in almost every decade of Amherst history.

Newspapers, editorials, and journals of thought tell us directly about the conditions and issues of the time. Literary magazines, on the whole (although there are a few peculiarities), seek to showcase student work by providing a space for creative expression through multiple mediums (poetry, short stories, photography etc.). What can creative expression reveal other than the polished brain scribbles of some person’s imagination? In a way, fiction is a paradox: it transcends time while remaining firmly a product of its generation. How does a lowly intern even begin to capture this paradox through digital tools?

One option is topic modeling and textual analysis, which would reveal trends in topics that occupy students’ imagination through the years. In addition to the enormous data ingestion that this requires, it also seems counterintuitive: doesn’t the power of fiction lie in the uniqueness with which each author approaches a universal topic? These tools can reveal patterns through similarities, but how can they display the range of differences? The pieces that I have read so far range from personal to mystical, from piercing to eccentric, from emotionally draining to confusing. They straddle that threshold of the real in the bubble of the imaginary.

Research at this point is simply to read. And then read some more, all the while praying for serendipity. If I never end up working with literary magazines for this internship, at least they have earned an acknowledgement in a modest blog post.

________________________________________________________________

Other notable accomplishments this week:

Detective work for Visualization Deliverables: discovered a mystery man whose fate in WWII turned out differently in three publications
First time reading a senior thesis in an attempt to find some numbers on Amherst students during World War II
Pictionary with publication titles- totally educational
Teaching a Gephi workshop in a responsible, critical manner without completely roasting the tool as we were originally inclined to do
Creating a Group Proposal document that went bonkers with a certain three letters (no worries, a properly academic one was created the next morning, just in time for its presentation)
Beginning to construct a timeline of Student Publications (all ~120 of them!)

Research Proposal = Commitment?

research-meme

Proposals. I could never shake off the feeling that I’m signing a contract when I’m writing a proposal. In my three and half years of college, I’ve written a variety of proposals. The standard research project proposal. The ambiguously phrased photography project proposal. The stab-in-the-dark film proposal. All of them amounted to feeling like I have committed to something I’m not sure I want. Like buying a dress at Forever 21 and wondering if it’ll still be in style a month from now.

The initial proposals we worked on weren’t that different, despite the many reassurances that we would have time to change our minds. Especially once Norah and I started to dig into The Amherst Student issues from the 60s and 70s, it felt as if the research project already started. I was honestly elated to find abundant material relating to the topic: campus protests. It was the first eureka high I’ve had for this internship.

But I’m still at the stage when I’m still browsing, trying on different topics to see which suits me better, but not willing to commit to anyone in particular. And then the store announces that it’s closing in ten minutes, and shoppers should line up at the door to check out their proposals. Sure, you can always come back and return it, but that’s another commitment, a commitment to saying no.

In terms of moving forward, I think we need to spend less time staring into each other’s eyes, wondering if we all feel the same way or if it’s just me, and start admitting that we are all as lost and uncertain as each other. Maybe we have a nebulous hunch. But if we keep turning that hunch into a research proposal, we’re gonna find ourselves in a two-week relationship with a research project that we had doubts about from the beginning.

At least we learned to avoid Gephi (see images below).

Screen Shot 2016-06-27 at 6.39.28 PM — What we know about Gephi

Screen Shot 2016-06-27 at 6.39.22 PM — What we don’t like about Gephi

Shocking: Moleman Bares All!

moleman

Despite my loud mouth, I’m not a very outwardly social person. When it comes to group research projects, I would much rather live in a corner of the archive bunker, scraping off lichen from the walls to eat and subsisting off the dried ketchup stains of messy readers past. Those moleman tendencies push me towards individual research and study, as well as sources of light when I’m digging subterranean tunnels.

When we first drafted our list of proposals, we made a list of the projects we had already begun as well as other general questions we wanted to answer. Some of the new questions were wide-ranging like “What type of writing was popular by each decade, and why?” and others were more specific, ‘Which is more absorbent, toilet paper or Amherst Literary Monthly?”

After we had this list, we committed our first cardinal sin of group research: we broke up into groups of 1 or 2 to each work on individual proposals. This was part selfishness, part-necessity. There were too many ideas whizzing around to be focused into 3 solid proposals by four interns at 2pm on a Friday.

Now, we’re attempting to come together and combine those ideas, which is proving a little difficult because we aren’t sure how wide-ranging the overall proposal should be. I’m sure that we’re probably still very rooted in what we originally proposed. We’ve summarized our proposals into bullet points and then did some “text-analysis” by highlighting common words and themes in each proposal. These have included:

Publications looking outward v. inward
Anonymity in Amherst writing
Administration and censorship
Reactions
Wartime Attitudes
Protest

However, I think that as we push forward, that protectiveness will slowly drop away. At first, I was hesitant to let go of my issues of Hamster, but I’m definitely now more interested in the way comedy tracks trends present in other publications. Admittedly, it’s hard to come together on a day when Europe decided to fall apart. (#Archivexit)