Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
137 lines (73 loc) · 4.26 KB

finalproject.md

File metadata and controls

137 lines (73 loc) · 4.26 KB
Raw

The Final Project

#HIST3907b, Carleton University

Goals for this project

  • You will demonstrate via your project mastery of the six modules in this course
  • ie, you conceive, create, document, a work of digital history that visualizes some argument about the past

The final form

  • could be an infographic (picktochart, for instance)
  • could be online
  • could be a poster for printing
  • ... key thing: the form serves the function!

Options

  1. The Migrant Experience at Home: the Colonial Newspapers Database
  2. The Business History of Ottawa: advertisements, etc
  3. A topic of your own devising cleared with me by January 14

Working with newspapers

I will expect to see the following:

  1. searching digitized newspapers for materials appropriate for the larger research project
  2. transcribing and encoding these materials in xml (with all of the reflective decision making that entails)

Working with other materials

  1. creation of a dataset with appropriate encoding

All datasets:

You will share these materials via contributions to the course repository on Github (no later than March 1st)

  1. Fork the 'final project' repository https://github.com/hist3907b-winter2015/finalproject
  2. Create a folder inside that one, with your name
  3. Place a copy of your dataset there.
  4. Make a pull request to me to incorporate your dataset into the repo.

Your main analytical tool must serve the research question!

  • but remember that exploration & deformation are valid too
  • use your online notebooks to keep track of what you are doing and why

You will draw on your online notebook for your paradata document.

  • if everything goes pearshape, we can use your notebook to craft a post-mortem: this, too, is productive!

Some Examples of Interesting Digital History Visualizations

Pause. Consider.

Take a quick glance at one of those projects. What strikes you immediately?

Building as a way of knowing

Many projects make their materials available via github, ex:

It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel!

An Introduction to Project Management

see DevDH for helpful tutorials

Appleford, Simon, and Jennifer Guiliano. 'Best Practice Principles Of Designing Your First Project.' DevDH.org, 2013. http://devdh.org/lectures/design/bestpractice/

The components of a project:

  1. the question, problem, or provocation
  2. sources (primary, secondary)
  3. analytical activity
  4. audience
  5. product

Your first checkpoint

Will respond to these five points.

It will also contain a workplan

See Appleford, Simon, and Jennifer Guiliano. 'Building Your First Work Plan.' DevDH.org, 2013. http://devdh.org/lectures/manageproject/workplan/.

Planning your time

  1. How many hours, total, do you think you have this term?
  2. Look at the modules for this course. Which parts do you think will be hardest for you?

The modules correspond to the various steps in working with data. Build into your plan time to learn the tool you think you're most likely going to use.

Colonial Newspaper Database

https://github.com/hist3907b-winter2015/Colonial-Newspaper-Database

A project of Melodee Beals, Sheffield Hallam University

Read: Losing my methodology

Let's explore the database now, and talk about how we could

  1. contribute to it
  2. ask interesting questions with it
  3. see how it's constructed (we'll get into xml in more depth later)

Start exploring digital history projects now

and start imagining what you could do...