{"id":1772,"date":"2014-09-18T21:20:20","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T04:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=1772"},"modified":"2014-09-24T09:37:59","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T16:37:59","slug":"here-and-there-creating-dh-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/here-and-there-creating-dh-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Here and There: Creating DH Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks a million to the University of North Texas’s Spencer Keralis for inviting me to come speak at Digital Frontiers<\/a>, a great conference in Northern Texas! I’m having an excellent time. Here’s the talk I gave today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Around springtime, when universities are making offers for jobs that start in the fall, I tend to get a few similar emails. I\u2019m junior enough that I know a lot of people just leaving grad school (whether it\u2019s library school, a Ph.D. program, or a master\u2019s program) and as universities continue to build DH centers, these people are getting snapped up to help spark DH activity elsewhere. So around May, they\u2019re emailing me (and probably a lot of other people, too) to ask: Where do I start? What do I need to know?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been frank<\/a>, as you may know, about what I think of taking someone fresh out of grad school, giving her a temporary gig, and expecting her to be the sole torchbearer for some amorphous DH initiative. In brief, it\u2019s a bad idea, for a lot of different reasons. It\u2019s not fair to the person you\u2019re hiring, who will spend her entire tenure trying desperately to impress you at this impossible task so she can keep her job. And it\u2019s not fair to your university community, which deserves continuity, focus, and the attention of someone who cares about the big picture.<\/p>\n

But a number of people have good gigs that involve an element of community-building. And there are also a lot of people who\u2019ve been working in libraries or other units for some time and are newly tasked with the responsibility of building interest in and capacity for digital humanities on their campus.<\/p>\n

So for awhile now, I\u2019ve had a mental list of things that I tell my friends who are getting started on the job of starting a DH initiative on their campus. If at all possible, I try to do it over a drink. This work is not easy, and it\u2019s very sensitive, and I\u2019ve only learned what I know by making terrible mistakes.<\/p>\n

So in a minute, I\u2019ll give you that list of suggestions\u00a0for building and sustaining a digital humanities community at a university.<\/p>\n

But first, I wanted to talk briefly about what I think it means to create a community. We often use the term to describe a group of people who are fairly like-minded or are interested in the same goal. But I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the definition that\u2019s important to me. At UCLA, for example, that wouldn\u2019t necessarily work, because we\u2019re all so different. In fact, my favorite thing about UCLA is that our students come from everywhere. LA is the home of the Korean taco<\/a> and the bacon-wrapped matzo ball<\/a>. I\u2019ve been inspired and energized by this diversity, and it\u2019s helped inform my ideas about what it means to be a community.<\/p>\n

For me, community happens when people are genuinely invested in seeing each other succeed. This doesn\u2019t happen by being nice to each other \u2014 although there\u2019s nothing wrong with that, per se \u2014 but by recognizing and rewarding other people\u2019s work. We depend too much in the academy on the currency of prestige and what some have called \u201chope labor\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the idea that it\u2019s OK for your labor not to be rewarded now, because it may pay dividends down the road. The unpaid internship is the classic example of this. A durable community forms when people\u2019s labor is valued and rewarded, and it worries me that in the excitement of doing digital humanities, people\u2019s labor sometimes gets erased. This is why I won\u2019t circulate unpaid internship announcements to our students and why I won\u2019t accept volunteer help, even though we have no program budget to speak of. If labor is valuable, the university should reward it, and we all should recognize it, too.<\/p>\n

There are times when the notion of community seems meaningless or even oppressive to me, especially as it becomes dispersed across time and space and used as a way to determine whether someone is recognizably one of us. But on the ground, with people I work with, then, yes, it does matter. In fact, many days, it\u2019s the only<\/em> thing that matters to me, including digital humanities or the university as an enterprise or whatever. It\u2019s a way of measuring whether I\u2019m fulfilling my obligations to other people, and they to me. And if I\u2019m not, then I don\u2019t really see the point of continuing. \u201cCreating community\u201d is really a method of asking myself, are the people I interact with recognized, valued, and attended to? Of course, I fail at this all the time \u2014 we all do, we\u2019re human \u2014 but a durable community, the kind I care about, recognizes that people are fallible but connected to each other, bound by ties of mutual respect and obligation that are stronger than niceness or civility.<\/p>\n

That said, beyond rewarding people for their work and recognizing their essential humanity, there are some basic rules I\u2019ve learned over the years for helping people to create connections with each other while building a digital humanities program. A lot of these rules, I think, could apply to building any new program.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early for a drink, but maybe just pretend we\u2019re in a bar and I\u2019m about to tell it to you like it is.<\/p>\n

You are a disruption in the force.<\/h3>\n

When people anticipate challenges to getting DH activity off the ground, they often anticipate technophobia (which, as I\u2019ll explain, I think is a fairly misguided fear) or a dearth of technical expertise. But let\u2019s be real. If anyone sees you as a threat, it\u2019s because you represent a shift in the institution\u2019s power balance. Your time is an investment the university is making, and, through no fault of your own, that investment may come from withdrawing an investment somewhere else. Or \u2014 again, through no fault of your own \u2014 you may be seen as the entering wedge for a new program conceived by a controversial administrator. You can\u2019t control this, but it\u2019s important to understand what\u2019s going on so that you can try to address the real source of people\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n

Go to coffee with one new person every week.<\/h3>\n

The best way to get to know more people is to be a human being who is interested in other human beings. A lot of us academic types are introverts \u2014 myself included \u2014 and there is always something kind of terrifying about going to coffee with no particular agenda to talk to someone who may or may not like you. But I find that it\u2019s helpful to give yourself a little quota. Email one person per week and then cross that task off your list. This can seem kind of trivial, but you\u2019d be surprised at what a difference it makes. People really appreciate the gesture, even if the coffee itself is kind of awkward. Months later, they remember that you made the effort and that you expressed interest in what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

Promise nothing.<\/h3>\n

So now that you\u2019re going out to coffee with new people every week, the temptation is to agree to whatever they want you to do, so that they\u2019ll like you. Resist! You\u2019re on a listening tour. You\u2019re sympathetic, you\u2019re interested, but you\u2019re not making any promises. This is not just so that you\u2019ll avoid being burdened with tasks too soon. It\u2019s also because the single most damaging thing a new campus unit can do is to break its promises. Goodwill and reputation are irreplaceable. If you agree to something you can\u2019t actually do, you\u2019ve broken people\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n

Obtaining server space is the hardest computing problem in the world.<\/h3>\n

You’re ready to dig in and want to test something out, so you just need to throw up a quick WordPress instance to test a plugin. All the server administrators have to do is give you some server space. And the next thing you know, it\u2019s five years later and you\u2019re still hammering out details of the M.O.U. and wondering what happened to the person you used to be.<\/p>\n

It is the most hilariously awful problem in doing DH at a university, and almost nobody has got this figured out. I know people who are secretly running servers under their desks, buying their own server space, or running projects off Google Drive. On the one hand, it is completely absurd, because how in God\u2019s name are you supposed to do anything if you can\u2019t put stuff on the Web? On the other hand, it\u2019s a problem that goes to the heart of one of the most difficult questions DH is dealing with right now \u2014 specifically, who\u2019s going to deal with the damn thing down the road? If your site gets hacked, are you expecting the sysadmins to leap out of bed at 3 in the morning to fix it? My advice \u2014 which I believe originally comes from Bethany Nowviskie \u2014 is to request a virtual private server and offer to sign a memorandum of understanding stating that you\u2019re expecting no support or maintenance of anything on the server. To this, I\u2019d add that, realistically, I\u2019d expect the process of getting server space to take at least a year. Yes, I\u2019m serious. This is why I encourage people who are negotiating their new DH jobs to try to negotiate for server space in their hiring package.<\/p>\n

Work with the existing culture.<\/h3>\n

When you\u2019re getting something off the ground, it\u2019s a really smart idea to work with models that are already familiar to people at your university. For example, if the humanities center offers working groups, you might propose one on the digital humanities. If there\u2019s a standing faculty meeting, present there rather than holding your own meeting. If there\u2019s an existing program for pedagogy grants, perhaps you can team up with that organization to offer a grant for DH courses. You want your initiative to legible and to fit in with the existing system of incentives at your university.<\/p>\n

Nobody comes to workshops.<\/h3>\n

Does everyone know this? It really seems like people should<\/em> come to workshops, because they say<\/em> they want to learn new skills. If you survey people, they\u2019ll say that skill-building is their number one priority. And yet. You offer the damn workshop and no one shows up. It\u2019s the worst. Especially for me, because I actually love giving workshops<\/a>. So if they say they want workshops, why don\u2019t they come?\u00a0I think that, even if people don\u2019t articulate it, there are a few reasons workshops don\u2019t work:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. It\u2019s a one-shot. Things seem so clear in the moment, with an instructor there, and then you get home and the data hasn\u2019t been prepared or cleaned for you, or you come up with a question, and there\u2019s no one to ask. I\u2019m afraid I think workshops are just of fairly limited utility, in terms of building skills. They can be quite effective in sparking people\u2019s interest and broadcasting what your unit can offer, but for giving people a solid foundation in a new skill, workshops are too brief.<\/li>\n
  2. They\u2019re not tied to work people actually care about, when they care about it. People tend not to know<\/em> they\u2019ll need OpenRefine a few weeks down the road \u2014 until it becomes incredibly urgent to clean up a\u00a0spreadsheet. It\u2019s really hard for people who are starting out to anticipate the obstacles they\u2019ll encounter until they\u2019re faced with them.<\/li>\n
  3. Their efficiency works against them. If you\u2019ve put together a workshop, you know how much work it is. You have to get the dataset, clean the dataset, put it somewhere people can find it, troubleshoot the software, plan out the steps, etcetera, etcetera. You have <\/em>to do this if you want to get through all the material in an hour. But guess what? THAT PREP WORK IS WHAT DOING DH IS. All that garbage prep work is what we spend most of our time doing. This seamless processing of data is a fantasy world!<\/li>\n
  4. You don\u2019t have a relationship with the instructor or participants. Most people are basically interested in other people. Most people at a university are kind of desperate for a low-stakes way to get to know and hang out with people. Workshops just aren\u2019t it \u2014 you meet with a bunch of strangers and never see them again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At UCLA, we\u2019ve had better success with immersive training \u2014 dedicated days or even weeks that people have set aside to train themselves. After a year of unattended workshops, I was shocked when we announced registration for a two-day grad-student bootcamp<\/a> and had to close registration in an hour because we were full. The demand is there \u2014 we just weren\u2019t offering the training in the right format. This kind of training is effective because it\u2019s intensive and people clear the decks for it \u2014 but it\u2019s also effective because it\u2019s fun. People want to hang out with and get to know other people who are interested in similar things, and that\u2019s just not going to happen in an hour-long library workshop. A two-day long bootcamp, and even a week-long training opportunity, isn\u2019t actually the ideal. The ideal is long-term collaboration with people whom you come to know or trust over the years. So I would recommend following up an immersive training event with a working group or some other regular meeting place where people can see each other and continue to build relationships.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s your follow-through?<\/h3>\n

    In my experience, people see what places like the Scholars\u2019 Lab and George Mason and MITH are doing and get really excited about stickers and cool websites and T-shirts. Those places have fantastic outreach, and when people are starting up a center, they want to mimic that. But what\u2019s less obvious is that all those places spend a ton of energy building the infrastructure that allows them to actually deliver on the promise of their publicity. You need to know what you can and can\u2019t offer to people before you hang out your shingle. This is another case where I say: Take it slow, take it steady, and really listen to people. What kind of help can you really offer people? If it\u2019s consultations, that\u2019s great \u2014 but what are the limits of that help? Can people expect you to be on call for years down the road? If it\u2019s visiting people\u2019s classrooms, that\u2019s great, too \u2014 but does that mean you\u2019ll be answering students\u2019 emails and helping design assignments? Be clear about what you can and can\u2019t offer people, and be frank about your limitations. Keep track of people\u2019s unmet needs, so you can make a case to get the support you need to meet them later. Again, take it slow, start small, and stay human.<\/p>\n

    Go where the deals get made.<\/h3>\n

    If you care about outreach, you need to go where faculty and students are. While it\u2019s a nice gesture to hold a mixer at the library, this is not where the wheeling-and-dealing happens. It happens at department talks and lectures and screenings. You have to go to these if you want people to notice you and take you seriously, particularly\u00a0faculty and grad students. Showing up to a seminar or lecture demonstrates to people that you\u2019re interested in being part of their community, too, and when you show that you\u2019re engaged and asking good questions, it demonstrates that you do, in fact, get what the humanities is \u2014 you\u2019re not just a Twitter account and a smartboard operator.<\/p>\n

    Survey sparingly and with skepticism.<\/h3>\n

    Libraries in particular love to do surveys, and in some ways it seems like the most natural thing in the world to find out what people want from your DH center. But I will tell you right now what people want: they want you to scan their stuff and enter data for them. I don\u2019t know, maybe someone should do that for people, but it\u2019s not what a DH center needs to\u00a0be doing. If we just did what people told us they wanted, we\u2019d be answering people\u2019s email and picking up their library books. You need to have a strong sense of the community you want to build, and you need to be forceful in articulating it. Don\u2019t wait for people to tell you what to do \u2014 do what you know is right. Here, I find Bethany Nowviskie\u2019s notion of \u201clazy consensus\u201d<\/a> really helpful. If no one else cares enough to weigh in on a decision, you make it. You don\u2019t need the entire university to vote on it.<\/p>\n

    Erase the words \u201cLuddite\u201d and \u201ctechnophobia\u201d from your vocabulary (unless you study the 19th<\/sup>-century British working class)<\/h3>\n

    There are a lot of reasons people may not be super-stoked about a new DH center, and it is frankly lazy to attribute these concerns to a fear of technology. In my experience, people who truly just fear technology are pretty few and far between. I\u2019m not even sure I\u2019ve ever met someone like that. The much <\/em>more likely scenario is that people, especially faculty, consider digital humanities flash-in-the-pan dean candy. [1]<\/sup><\/a>1. I am humbly indebted to the great Natalia Cecire for the term<\/a> “dean candy.”<\/span><\/span>