Category: links
Working around the Shutdown
Meghan
Sharing opportunities to engage with Smithsonian collections and distribute knowledge during the U.S. government shutdown which closed to the public all federal institutions including the Smithsonian Institution and its facilities
On Tuesday, with the shutdown of the U.S. government, many of the greatest FREE opportunities to experience science, art, culture, and technology have CLOSED indefinitely. An extremely simplified version of events: without federal funding, the Smithsonian Institution buildings must close, services end, and federal staff face furlough. It should be noted that many national parks and other locations that share cultural heritage stories are also closed to visitors.
The Smithsonian’s current slogan is “seriously amazing” and it could not be more accurate as a description of the breadth and depth of events, research, and access to information. As with many large-scale institutions, there are controversies and gaps in representation – though work continues to address these issues while improving access to physical and digital Smithsonian Institution collections.
In my fieldwork, most apparent in each exchange with staff, volunteers, and researchers in different units: every unit is engaged in passionate pursuit of its goals and energetically seeking to engage with its audience(s). These folks are advocates for learning and clearly agree on:
- the primacy of the distribution of knowledge
- the need to craft better and more dynamic experiences in person and remotely through digital spaces
- their desire to collaborate and share their enthusiasm for their work and
- the need to make collections more widely available (find ways around restrictions)
With such passionate stewards, it seems such a misfortune for visitors to Washington, D.C. (and NYC and affiliate locations) that opportunities for learning and exploration are not available…
Or are they?? The doors may be locked and lights turned off, but all this knowledge cannot be contained by physical barriers!
BARRIERS OR NOT: GET BUSY!
In the interim of government shutdown, let’s explore ways you can engage with Smithsonian Institution collections and materials, whether hosted by SI or other digital repositories.
There are still plenty of opportunities to transcribe and review content at the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Transcription Center – try your hand transcribing Carl Heinrich’s fieldnotes on butterflies or tackle John Reed Swanton’s detailed English-Alabama and Alabama-English vocabulary cards. You’ll find plenty more to do at the Transcription Center, especially reviewing fellow participants’ transcripts!
You can view truly astounding images on Flickr in albums and photostreams from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), and Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA).
If you want to help develop Smithsonian Institution knowledge AND view detailed images at the same time, perhaps adding machine tags to images in the EOL and BHL Flickr albums is up your alley. Here are the instructions – you are welcome to add machine tags or even tag as you would typically do on Flickr.
You can also to participate in a data mining research sprint in early February 2014 as a part of pioneering efforts to mine Encyclopedia of Life and the Biodiversity Heritage Library – and learn more about the free access to biodiversity resources. Download the new mobile app, M-EOL, on iTunes or Google Play; earn points as you roll the dice and travel across continents, dynamically mapping relationships between different plant and animal species.
There are on-going opportunities to help build and share knowledge in Wikipedia through Smithsonian collections. Find to-do lists for several museums and archives like SIA and Archives of American Art (AAA) and get editing!
You can explore Freer-Sackler Asian art exhibitions through their website or explore selections hosted by the Google Cultural Institute. Find more details about collections on view and held by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – there are so many pieces to admire (and analyze) in these listings!
Want to learn more about what’s happening in related spaces? Check out the weekly round-ups and Link Love posts at the blogs of different units, including Smithsonian Institution Archives Bigger Picture blog.
Education and outreach sites including the Smithsonian Latino Center and the apps and Google+ hangouts hosted by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center have regional, national, and cultural foci on intersections and daily experiences.
If you’ve got a head for researching more, consider exploring archives and collections with finding aids at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Archives, the National Anthropological Archives (an AMAZING series of collections!), Anacostia Community Museum, and the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History.
You can also see rich interrelated content from Smithsonian on Tumblr – this is a fantastic chance to develop those webs of knowledge through relationships of cultural heritage, scientific, and artistic content. Check out Smithsonian, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Libraries, and the Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum.
While the #shutdown is on-going, Smithsonian social media will not be populated with new information; now is the time to catch up on what you’ve missed!
Connect with Smithsonian Institution museums, archives, galleries and libraries here – from each unit’s presence on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, and more. Keep up-to-date with any announcements or changes to open status at the the main Smithsonian Facebook page and @smithsonian on Twitter.
That’s merely a drop in the bucket of Smithsonian digital activities – there are so many opportunities to learn AND share the knowledge you’ve developed. If you have other suggestions for this list, such as a favorite app or Smithsonian online activity, please share your thoughts in the comments!
**Featured image for this post of Francis Davis Millet (1846-1912) at work in his studio, courtesy Archives of American Art
Keyword Round-up: June on Academia.edu
Meghan
Exploring my June Academia.edu analytics report featuring minimal use of keywords but increased views.
In June, I was a busy bee preparing for the Expeditions & Explorers Edit-a-thon and concurrent launch of the Transcription Center. Admittedly, late July and early August have been wild with work! The last two months have featured research and consulting heavily, as well as an unanticipated two week sabbatical-cum-nannying “project.” Alors, back to the task of unpacking analytics…
KEYWORDS
First, focusing on simply the keywords that were used to locate my papers and profile: there were 8 keyword searches recorded and all used Google search (one Google.co.uk search). They came from 6 different countries. The searches led my “audience” to the following: four searches directed to “Heroes & Zeroes“, two to “The Stories They Tell“, and two to my profile. Keywords and their rank in the Google search, if applicable, are below:
- descriptive text about athletes (8)
- heroes and zeroes: extending celebrity (1)
- (The Stories They Tell URL)
- (The Stories They Tell URL)
- http://www.jerryricefootball.com/index.cfm/pk/content/pid/400047
- meghan ferriter (8)
- meghan ferriter soccer
- sport narritive storylines (4)
Matching the trend from May, two searches related to text and narrative though one focused on celebrity and the other for athletes. Two searches used the full URL for the paper on academia.edu, while one used the first words of the article to search. Two searches included my full name. Intriguingly, with one middle of the month exception, the keyword searches were performed in the first and last week of the month.
Although I uploaded my MA Thesis “The Sharper Image” – regarding the interplay of constructions of Irish Nationalist Identity in British political cartoons and Irish Nationalist writings prior to the establishment of the Free State – neither this paper nor “Arguably the Greatest” received any hits from keyword search.
VIEWS
June did turn over interesting results in views despite low keyword searches – with credit to my inclusion of more papers and being featured on the Academia.edu blog.
The paper additions included my introductory chapter of my dissertation/thesis (US/UK, depending on where you dwell & study), as well as my M.A. thesis/dissertation (again the international contextualization applies). Each of these pieces are presented in their final draft form – and each has massive utility for publication and further research, so dusting them off for Academia.edu’s digital display case was a welcome move and started gears turning.
In direct correlation to the feature on the Academia.edu blog, my profile views leapt to 74, with 11 views of my CV page. My papers “The Stories They Tell” and “Heroes & Zeroes” received the greatest number of views with a significant drop in views between the two; the former at 58 views and latter at 14 views. The three other papers accounted for 15 views in total.
|
Paper |
Views |
| The Stories They Tell | 58 |
| Heroes & Zeroes | 14 |
| Arguably the Greatest | 8 |
| Changing the Game (thesis chapter) | 4 |
| The Sharper Image (full M.A.) | 3 |
|
Page |
Views |
| Profile | 74 |
| CV | 11 |
| Posts | 2 |
| Question | 1 |
VISITORS
I was also intrigued by the locations of visitors, with the US, Ireland, and the UK leading visits. Most of these visitors viewed one page, though a handful from Ireland and the US visited multiple pages. Three visitors viewed 4 or 5 pages on their visit.
|
Countries |
Views |
| United States | 73 |
| Ireland | 46 |
| United Kingdom | 13 |
| Singapore | 11 |
| Canada | 9 |
| Bulgaria | 7 |
In May, I had 40 unique visitors. In June, 110 unique visitors spent time on my pages. Of those numbers, the Academia.edu blog feature sent 37 visitors to my profile; 14 visitors navigated through their academia.edu feed. Finally, 35 visitors navigated from my profile to my papers.
CHALLENGES
There were limited conversions of follows from views, even with the Academia.edu blog feature. Approximately 10 followers were added in the month of June and it is unclear whether that resulted from my legwork or “clickwork” in following other researchers.
Furthermore, there are two gaps in understanding user behavior based on the analytics we are provided as a part of the service:
- the download conversion rate (i.e. actual download numbers for papers)
- time on page (i.e. how long a visitor stays on the page, ideally reading)
Drilldown capabilities and the paths which users follow through your pages are also not provided but can be guesstimated by piecing together details by visitor ID.
SUMMARY
In summary, keywords brought people in relation to celebrity, athletes and narrative, while a profile piece attracted visitor numbers that doubled the previous month’s visits. I had increases in views on my profile and especially “The Stories They Tell” and “Heroes & Zeroes,” which discuss – you guessed it! – celebrities, athletes, and narrative. Overall, this information may be useful in understanding an appropriate existing audience for my research.
Stay tuned for elaboration on the adventurous terms used to find my work in the forthcoming July Keyword round up.
Keyword Round-up: May on Academia.edu
Meghan
Back again with the May keyword round-up from Academia.edu, this time with an emphasis on “Heroes & Zeroes” and celebrity athletes and narratives.
A reminder: Academia.edu offers scholars analytics data, as well as the opportunity to understand the ways in which their research is being discovered. Using this data, scholars may be able to better frame their research to interested parties. I’d certainly say there are interested parties in retiring athletes, transitions, and harnessing celebrity of sports figures.
Following a lonely period, my article “Arguably the Greatest: Sports fans and communities at work on Wikipedia” (2009) was given a page-dwelling compadre. I expanded my identity as an academic who explores the conflict-to-consensus process at play on Wikipedia to one who also explores athlete narratives as they intertwine with celebrity – all achieved by posting another article.
This article “HEROES AND ZEROES: Extending Celebrity Athlete Narratives Beyond Retirement” was developed in 2007 and published in the now-defunct journal Football Studies in 2008. This was a part of my early work in exploring the strands of media(ted) storylines and bundles of cultural values – through which athlete public identities are developed by interconnected sets of meaning . You will notice my early thinking on narrative and the importance of unpacking the ways we tell stories – what and how we say what we mean in media discourse.
In the article, I also proposed a fifth type of professional athlete identity based on contemporary cultural contexts. Here an athlete moves from what Critcher (1979) (1) frames as “traditional/located to transitional/mobile to incorporated/embourgeoised, then to superstars/dislocated.” I argue that the emergence of celebrity grounds the athlete once more in a new realm. I explain: “Though displaced from their former social statuses and lives, this re-rooting in an imagined popular space of celebrity makes these formerly remote stars accessible once more following the cementing of their narrative. Thus the individual is subsumed by a new concept of the brand or celebrity entity – rather than a person, the celebrity is notable for his or her cultural pattern of values.” It was a fascinating exploration and essentially informed what was the first dissertation I wrote prior to embarking on the final version of my doctoral research. If you’re interested, you can read more at my Academia.edu page.
Back to the keywords! My analytics report shows that ten searches were performed through Google and brought visitors to my Academia.edu page. One of these searches was performed on Bing, with the bulk through Google. Visitors searched from the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Indonesia. The search terms were as follows:
- athlete as cultural hero (No ranking provided)
- how sporting celebrities cope with retirement (Google search rank: 1)
- retired celebrity women (Google search rank: 1)
- culture value of pro athlete endorsement (Google search rank: 3)
- narrative about mia hamm (Google search rank: 1)
- the rise of the celebrity athlete in the 1980s – (Google search rank: 5)
- One David Beckham? Celebrity, Masculinity, and the Soccerati /Cashmore, Ellis; Parker, Andrew (2003) In: in: Sociology of sport journal (No ranking provided)
Searches of note: Four searches concerned celebrity and athletes – this is interesting as the notion of celebrity athletes seems to have become both less popular but also redundant. In other words, there is nearly an expectation of celebrity for emerging (let alone retiring) athletes. Retirement transitions were in the crosshairs of 2 searches. Several searches also related to the narrative (also “narrative” sic) and cultural messages conveyed by the athlete. Finally, visitors were seeking information on women athletes.
This month, no searches were directly seeking my scholarship. The addition of this slightly older article demonstrated an intriguing change in the incoming traffic for my page; I only had eight unique visitors to my profile and documents—and 7 document views—in May. Let’s see if June brings in more summer searching.
(1) Critcher, C. (1979). Football Since The War. In J. Clarke, C. Critcher, & R. Johnson (Eds.).
Working-class Culture: Studies in history and theory (pp. 161-184).London: Hutchinson of London.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
Meghan
Linking past to present, and considering the revolutionary framing of knowledge and visions for the future across space and time, Robert Darnton discusses next week’s launch of the Digital Public Library of America. This post links to one of my favorite tumblr presences, exploreblog, and their summary of Darnton’s perspectives.
I’m enthralled by the process and particularly interested in the shifts of institutional (and academic) thinking that will be required to make DPLA a success. As I also applied to be a ACLS Public fellow for DPLA, I am closely tracking developments and partnerships, such as the recent announcement the UVA libraries and the Bioheritage Diversity Library are teaming up with DPLA.
DPLA launches on April 18 and more information can be found here.
CFP: Digital Anthropology (DANG) at AAA 2013
Meghan
A last minute nudge toward a call for paper abstracts on the overlap of online and physical IRL ethnographic practices for researching “digital publics.” Seeking insight into methods & ethics for a panel session at AAA 2013, the Digital Anthropology Group wants YOU for this year’s American Anthropological Association meeting in – submit an abstract TODAY 10 April for review. There are still a few hours left to join the conversation!
Call for Papers: “Digital Anthropologists’ Current Engagements with 21st Century Publics” – #Digital Publics, #Ethics, #Methods, #Insights
The panel organizers are particularly interested in exploring major questions such as:
- How do anthropologists collect and analyze data while doing digital field work?
- What are the ethical issues facing anthropologists who rely on visual data and texts collected in the digital publics of the internet (social networking sites, forums, websites, etc)?
- How does digital anthropology intersect with the physical as people increasingly act in physical space in response to the digital realm?
- What kind of “future publics” are being constructed through today’s “current engagements” by users and anthropologists in the cyberspatial plazas of the internet (social networking sites, etc.)?
These questions can be explored in the panel through “ethnographic examples and evidence of the interactions between digital/online and physical life” – while linking the future of anthropological engagements with the public to current concerns about digital studies in anthropology.
Click through for more information and good luck!