Week 10: What can we contribute to the digital humanities community?

With the “documented exploration” project behind us (watch for my feedback soon!), we can turn our attention squarely to the two remaining assignments that will keep us busy for the rest of the semester: the individual final project and the collaborative class project. If you haven’t taken the time to read through the details of each assignment, please do so, and let me know if you have any questions about what’s expected of you or how I’ll evaluate your work.

During Week 9, we got off to a great start on the class project, and at this point all of you should be coordinating with your assigned partner to scan and OCR your issue of The Gray Jacket. Try to complete those tasks sometime during Week 10, and when you’re done, add your files to our shared Google Drive folder. I’ve created a new folder called “Gray Jacket,” with subfolders for each issue. You should add three types of files to your folder:

1. The scanned .jpeg images (Special Collections will keep the high-resolution .tiff files; ask Marc Brodsky about that if you have questions.)
2. The OCR’d .pdf files (Ryan Speer can help you with this process.)
3. A raw text file associated with each .pdf file (Copy and paste the text from your .pdf files, but don’t worry about “cleaning up” the text yet. We’ll work on this during Week 11.)

Our other big task for Week 10 is getting started on the individual final project. Here’s how we’ll proceed:

• Instead of meeting as a whole class on Monday, I will meet with each of you for 20 minutes to discuss your proposal for the individual final project. Please use the template I created as a starting point for your proposal, but don’t feel constrained by it. When you come to your conference, be ready to walk me through your proposal and iron out any wrinkles in your plans.
• On Wednesday, I will be traveling, but I trust that you will be able to have a productive day without me. Each of you should take five minutes to briefly describe your individual project to your classmates and seek their feedback about tools and strategies that might help you with your work. My hope for this exercise is that you’ll discover other people in class who are pursuing similar topics or using similar methods, and you’ll help one another brainstorm ideas about how to proceed.

As always, I’ll be checking email while I’m away, so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.