Part of what I Learned from the BeardStair project

 

When I first signed up for this class, I really didn’t know what to expect.  It fit my schedule, but I was skeptical.  As researchers and writers we are used to doing most of our work alone, in front of a computer screen.  We are used to studying things that other people have already figured out, or adding to scholarship in already existing fields, not breaking entirely new ground. 

From day one, that is what the BeardStair project has been about, breaking new ground.  That first night in class was an awakening for me.  I realized that instead of our usual individual roles, we were going to be engaged in a collaborative project that was going to require everyone to contribute toward the end goals. 

It only took that first week before my skepticism turned to excitement.  Having built my own website to show my artwork and poetry, I was very excited by the possibility of creating a website that would function as an online teaching tool. 

I joined the literary research group, because tech has never been my strong suit, and I wanted to contribute in the fullest way possible.  I chose to focus on Sebastian Van Storck, because even though it was the most involved book, I felt that I was best suited to give explanations of the artwork, as it lies in my area of expertise.  But it was nearly impossible to find information on the publishing house and the physical construction of the book.  This made it more difficult to put the book in its proper context. 

This taught me patience, and to adapt the research to the needs of the group project.  Once I realized that there was little to be discovered in the physicality of the book, I was able to shift my focus to the story and Walter Pater, the assemblage of the editor book as medium, and then to the BeardStair project as a whole.  The connection between Pater’s original intention, the intention of the editor books, and the goals of the BeardStair project, were too striking not to be explored. 

I learned to communicate with the other people in my group, to take criticism, and to adjust my research methods to the goals of the group.  Most of all I think I learned to listen better, and craft solutions based on the feedback of group members.  This class is unique in the curriculum in the SJSU graduate program, because it has focused on working toward a group goal, and has taught us how to accentuate our strengths, and mitigate our weaknesses by using the strengths of others in our group.  More to come later.  

More Excited than Nervous

The Graceful Degradation Survey: Managing Digital Humanities Projects Through Times of Transition and Decline is an essay that gives some credence to fears that digital projects are only as good as the people that maintain them.  These two quotes from the essay spell out rather well that unless there is server support, institutional support, and a staff to maintain digital projects, they are in jeopardy of being quite impermanent. 

 

 “Participants were asked about funding sources for these projects (generally via institutional support or “external public funding”) and understood length of funding or support. Projects treated were generally funded for 2-3 years, with no possibility of renewal, but often (in 21% of cases) the length of funding or support was “unclear.” That said, 75% of respondents considered their project’s funding to be “reliable and clear in scope.”

67% of respondents indicated that their personal views and practices have evolved as a result of experiencing a period of difficult transition or the decline of digital humanities project, but in only 32% of cases did they feel that the views or practices of their local institutions or the larger academic community have evolved in response to such experiences like these.”

 

The beauty of a digital project is that it can let us examine rare books, engravings, and all other sorts of previously untouchable archived materials, in ways that previously would have been impossible.  These digital projects, in essence are high functioning websites.  In theory you could assemble your team of experts, build a site that examines every area of a topic, like we have been doing with the BeardStair books, and then there is no more work needed once the website is completed.  But this is not how it works in the real world.  No project is perfect right from the outset.  There must be room for the project to grow and change as new information is discovered.  Most good digital projects expand, as discovery leads to new questions, and new avenues of inquiry.  This growing process invariably transfers itself into more pages for the website.  So a good digital project would require a small staff, even if it was a perfect website, in need of no changes.  There must be somebody there to fix the website, to fix the server, and if it’s a good site, to respond to inquiries, scholarly or otherwise.  It seems to me that any high functioning digital project should have a few people watching over it: the server caretaker, the website care taker / code writer, and the information expert capable of answering questions and making new copy. 

This is where my own dilemmas have come, other than time.  I am not an expert on Sebastian Van Storck, but I am quickly becoming one.  I was previously unfamiliar with the work of Alastair, or Walter Pater at all, but through the BeardStair project I have been engaging with many other digital projects that are already up and running on line, and it gives me a good idea of what we can make our own digital project.  I must say that it has been quite a bit more difficult to discover what kind of paper was used, and the specifics of the binding of the art book.  But I am still searching down the publisher records from Dodd and Mead circa 1927, and hopefully I come up with an answer soon.  There also hasn’t been enough time in my days, working full time and taking twelve masters units, to really examine the book fully yet.  But I will finish that before next class.  For now, the most exciting part that I will get to contribute is an interpretation of the eight artist plates.  Being an artist myself, this is where one of my greatest skills lies, and in all my research, I have not seen any interpretations of Alastair’s illustrations of Pater’s, Sebastian Van Storck, even though it is almost 100 years old!  So I am excited to have the chance to do some genuinely fresh scholarship, on some drawings and a modernist story I find incredibly interesting.  My anxiety about the longevity of the project, is not as great as my eager anticipation of what we can build, if we get building, and stop talking about it already.  No, wait, just kidding, I have to finish doing some work before we can build anything.  My bad, I’m on it.  Give me a few days.