“Open To The Public”: Cultural Institutions,

Digital Labor, And Local Networks

@JimMc_Grath james_mcgrath@brown.edu

Brown University

Jim McGrath

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEHow can humanities scholars employ digital tools

to talk with different publics?

How can emerging technologies help us better

demonstrate the value of our work?

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEHow do investments in digital projects transform

the kinds of academic labor that scholars do at

their institutions?

How do digital projects force us to think

differently about our research interests, our

departments, our cultural institutions, our

communities, and our methods of publication

and communication?

●

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat does “scholarship” look like? Who is doing it,

where is it published, how is it used and

disseminated?

How do universities, cultural institutions,

community organizations, and other publics

productively use digital tools / resources and

collaborate on digital projects?

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat professional identities and trajectories are

available to people interested in “public digital

humanities”?

How are digital objects created, contextualized,

curated, and circulated in academic and non-

academic contexts?

How can we plan for short and long-term use-

cases?

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE

“Oh, I’m open to the public. Pretty, pretty open to the public.”

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat do we expect public-facing digital projects

and digital scholarship to look like, to “do”?

How do academics address the expectations of

collaborators and audiences?

What resources / tools / labor / $$$ do we have?

Why do so many digital humanities projects look

like digital humanities projects?

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGEWhat do we expect dissertations, book chapters,

and journal articles to look like, to “do”?

How do academics address the expectations of

collaborators and audiences?

What resources / tools / labor / $$$ do we have?

Why do so many scholarly monographs look like

scholarly monographs?

PUBLIC HUMANITIES in a DIGITAL AGE

May 2013-August 2015*

2006-present (Jim: 2015-present)

● Our Marathon (Case Study)

● What We Talk About When We Talk About Public Humanities In A Digital Age

“The Productive Unease of 21st-Century Digital Scholarship” (Julia Flanders; DHQ; 2009)

1. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the significance of

medium.

2. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the institutional

structures of scholarly communication.

3. Digital scholarship is uneasy about the significance of

representation in forming models of the world.

“Money and Time” (Miriam Posner; miriamposner.com; March 2016)

If we want to produce truly challenging

scholarship and keep our best scholars from

burning out, we need to pressure our institutions

to, frankly, pay up. You can optimize, streamline,

lifehack, and crowdsource almost everything you

do — but good scholarship still takes money and

time.

“Untitled” (Patricia Lockwood; @tricialockwood; March 2013)

2013 Boston Marathon Bombings

Build a lasting community memorial

Tell a wide range of stories

Preserve the historical record

37

9,321

307items

oral histories

memesphotographs

letters sent to City of Boston

2,886

4,849

9community partners

Our Partners

#BostonBetter

“Dear Boston”

SHARE YOUR STORY

WATERTOWN FREE PUBLIC LIBRARY

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

What We Learned From Our Marathon● Participating in dialogue with communities

about value of archival projects

● Making the value of community-generated

metadata explicit and visible

● Highlighting the roles digital media play in

shaping and revising our cultural memory of

recent history

What We Learned From Our Marathon● Collaborations with external partners essential

● Collaborations with Library / Archives essential

● Preservation of items vs. interfaces

● Digital projects take time, money, and labor

● The need to take an active role in shaping the

value of the project to various audiences and

in a variety of contexts

What We Learned From Our Marathon● “Why are English PhD students doing this?”

● “No Story Too Small”

● Using (and customizing) Omeka

● Model for crowdsourcing?

● Digital Archives, Curation, Metadata

● Direct and public engagement between

cultural institutions and communities about

recent events

What We Learned From Our Marathon● Community Partners are Project Stakeholders

● How are partners defining the value of their

collaboration and their goals?

● Community Partners are not Free Labor

● Librarians and Archivists are not Free Labor

● How are you telling stories about your human

subjects? Ethical dimensions of doing so?

What We Talk About When We Talk About

Public Humanities in a Digital Age

● Two-Year M.A. Program● Courses taught by American Studies

Faculty, Adjuncts, Postdocs, (among others)● Students collaborate with Brown, local,

national, and global partners on a wide range of projects

● Digital components have been a part of many recent projects

● I’m the first Postdoc in “Digital Public Humanities”

● “Public Digital Humanities”?

● digital storytelling● digital curation● digital archives● digital tours● educational outreach / initiatives● Public intellectual activity on the

web (professional web sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc.)

Recent Course Discussions● Using data to create visualizations for a

variety of audiences / publics● Accessibility issues (particularly in global

contexts)● Interface design (visible and invisible

interfaces and UX)● Crowdsourcing that is not gamified data

entry● “A Domain of One’s Own”● The ethics of digital scholarship (Moya

Bailey)

Recent JNBC Activities● Physical exhibits with digital components

(Stamp Collections; Umbrella Movement)● Contributions to “Mapping Violence” project

(Monica Martinez; American Studies)● Visualizations of Harvard Art Museums’

metadata (using its API)● Preliminary stages of Asian-American family

photo archive (digitization / digital storytelling)

● Crowdsourcing● Digital Tours (web-based, mobile, and

tablet)

Questions● How to navigate access to digital tools,

technology in particular collaborations?● How to discuss best practices re: digitization

and digital storytelling / curation?● How to meet communities in spaces they

use already in digital contexts?● “Small data” (Brian Croxall)● How to manage expectations of “digital

collaborator” (what we’re expected to know / do)

● Where to begin?

Final Thoughts● DH Projects that look like the rest of the

web?● DH Projects that work with available

resources● Where is there room for “exploratory work”

in these contexts?● You don’t have to build a database, an

archive, digital stories, tools, tours, simultaneously

● How do we assign value to this work and the people who know how to do it?

Final Thoughts● How “Open to the Public” is your project?● Consider multiple sites of engagement for

particular audiences● Consider the benefits of a range of entry

points (Search, Browse, Visualize, Map)● Multiple uses of digital assets● Collaborators should share assets and

methodologies (“How’d you do that?”)● “User Stories”: Test site navigation, use

cases (and consider spec writing)● The afterlives of digital projects

james_mcgrath@brown.edu@JimMc_Grath#acla16Special thanks: my students in #dhJNBC at Brown, Alicia Peaker, Julia Flanders, and Larry David

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