Throughout the course of this semester, you’re going to be completing a variety of small digital assignments as well as designing and contributing to a collaborative digital humanities project that’s intended to engage an audience beyond the confines of our classroom. But what does a digital humanities project even look like? How can archaeological research and data be conveyed digitally? How do you know where to start?

One way to attack these questions is to closely examine model projects. Model projects give you the opportunity to interrogate the methodology employed and the arguments made by the authors; assess how datasets are curated and presented; think about format, aesthetics, and user-interface; consider the experience of the intended users or audience; etc. Model projects provide an important baseline by which you can decide what you like and what you don’t like, and why, so that you can start to think of the elements that are best suited to help you make your own arguments in a digital medium.

For the Digital Project Review (Part 1), you’ll be exploring FOUR (4) digital projects chosen from the lists on pages 2 and 3 so that you can talk critically about them with your peers in class during Week 2. For Part 2 of this assignment, you’ll choose one of the Archaeology, Ancient History, & Material Culture projects that you examined and write a formal review that will be posted on our course web site. Details concerning the written review will be distributed during class in Week 2.

In the meantime, what are some principles that should guide your initial examination of these projects? What questions will you try to answer? With the following questions (that you all defined in our first session!) as your guide, come to class with thorough notes about each project you’ve chosen to explore.

Preparation

• Did data need to be digitized in order for the project to be accomplished, or does the project utilize data that was born-digital?
• Is it clear who the authors are? What can you learn about them?
• Does the project showcase collaboration between these authors?Who is the intended audience?
• Does the project encourage contributions from these users?

Research

• What can you learn about the sources used by the authors? Their date? Their reliability?
• Do the authors clearly establish and articulate their research objectives and the scope of their project? Do they accomplish these objectives?
• Is there an argument presented by the project? If so, what is that argument?Do the authors properly contextualize their project?
• Do they discuss their relevance to earlier work?
• Do they discuss avenues for future research?

Execution

• What digital tools were used in this project? How are these tools explained to the readers?
• Does the chosen medium effectively showcase the material?
• How can users offer feedback about the project or the user-interface?

Design

• How user-friendly is the user-interface?
• What types of user-interactions are possible?
• Can users comment on the material presented?
• Can users download or manipulate the data presented?

Non-Ancient Topics: Everyone reviews ONE (1) project.  

Women Who Rock: A multimedia archive that brings together scholars, musicians, artists, and activists to explore the role of women and popular music in the creation of cultural scenes and social justice movements.

The March: A digital exhibition that explores James Blue’s The March, a documentary about the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August of 1963, in its social and historical context.

Imagining a Nation’s Capital: A geographic interface that interrogates a photographic archive as a medium for a message about the construction, demolition, beliefs, and ideals that accompanied Rome’s inception as the capital of Italy in the 19th c.

DECIMA: A project that combines census data from 16^th and 17^th c. Florence, Italy with archival maps to create a tool that allows historians to explore the city’s evolving urban dynamics.

Preserve the Baltimore Uprising: A digital archive that seeks to preserve and provide access to content captured and created in response to the death of Freddie Gray on April 19th, 2015.

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank: An archive launched in 2005 to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Colored Conventions: A project that seeks to examine the lives and social networks of the participants in the Colored Conventions, state and national public meetings of free, once captive Blacks in the United States in the 19th c.

The Lost Museum: Digital exhibitions that attempt to recreate some of the attractions featured at Barnum’s American Museum, destroyed by fire in 1865.

Digitorials: Resources meant to help visitors prepare for visits to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

Archaeology, Ancient History, & Material Culture: Everyone reviews TWO (2) projects.  

The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra: A virtual exhibit curated by scholars at the Getty Research Institute.

The Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project: A project that maps the landscape of publications about Pompeii onto the space of the ancient city itself.

Online Coins of the Roman Empire: An online database of over 43,000 ancient coin types.

I.Sicily: A project the seeks to digitize and make available all Greek, Latin, Phoenician/Punic, Oscan, Hebrew and Sikel inscriptions from ancient Sicily.

The Digital Penn Museum: A portal to a wide range digital resources offered by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Paul’s Missionary Journeys: A project that maps the journeys of the Apostle Paul and his colleagues.

From Stone to Screen: A project to digitize and provide high-quality scans and images of ancient artifacts at the University of British Columbia.

Perseus Digital Library: This project consists of resources related to the history, literature, and culture of the Greco-Roman world; most important for our purposes is the collection of ancient texts and translations.

WIRE: Women in the Roman East Project: A database that collects resources that can enhance our understanding of women’s lives in the Roman East.

ORBIS: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World: An interactive mapping project that encourages users to test movement in the ancient world by road, river, and sea in order to reconstruct the duration and financial cost of traveling in antiquity.

Ancient Greece Declassified: A podcast designed to make “Classics” accessible to everyone.

Portable Antiquities Scheme: A crowd-sourced record of archaeological artifacts discovered in England and Wales.

Everyone reviews:

Eidolon: An online journal for scholarly writing about Classics that isn’t formal scholarship.

Downloads:

The Overview: Now that you’ve explored a variety of different digital projects, you’re ready to write your own review. Your review should consist of both Metadata, information that describes the project, and Content, a narrative account of your critique. 

Metadata

Please provide the following information about the site, to the extent possible. Below is example of what this information looks like for the Digital Augustan Rome project.

• Title: Digital Augustan Rome
• Description: Online map, with textual commentary, of Augustan Rome
• URL: http://digitalaugustanrome.org/
• Author(s): David Gilman Romano (Director), Nicholas L. Stapp, and Mark Davidson
• Place: University of Arizona, Archaeological Mapping Lab
• Date Created: 2009 – 2013
• Date Accessed: April 2017 (Providing your reader with the date that you accessed the site gives context to your review.)
• Availability: Free (All of the projects you’ll be reviewing are free, but it’s important to note that not all digital resources are free.)

Content
The narrative of your review should include:

• A brief summary of the project’s content and purpose, indicating its major sections
• An assessment of the scholarly research involved in the work. Remember the questions you asked yourself when prepping for the first part of this assignment. What is the scholarly argument? What is the project’s audience? What source materials were used? How was the data organized, and why? What scholarly decisions, including platform design, were made? How does the project and the way it is presented advance the state of knowledge in the field? What methodology was used? To what extent does the site take full advantage of the potential of the digital medium?
• Notice of factual errors and their severity
• Identification of the main contributors and their roles (if this is not clear, point that fact out)
• An estimate of the current status of the project with regard to its “life cycle,” as the nature of digital work can change significantly over time
• An assessment of the project’s interface design and navigation

Reviews may also include:

• Representative screenshots
• Results of tests in various browsers (Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox), operating systems (Mac, PC, Linux), and devices (computer, smartphone, tablet)

Reviews should not include:

• Long-windedness or excessive detail
• Excessive quotation
• Attacks for not being the project you would have created

The Fine Print: Effective writing requires extensive revision and rewriting. The worst thing you can do for yourself is wait until the last minute to begin planning and writing. My suggestion: start early, giving yourself plenty of time and mental space to reflect on what you’ve written and revise before the deadline.

The purpose of this review is not just to summarize the project you’re considering, but rather to offer a reasoned critique of the project — to demonstrate to the reader, that is, of the strengths and weaknesses of the project that you have chosen to review. While there is no single way to compose your review, the organization is critically important, so carefully plan before you begin to write.

Remember that spelling and grammar do count. Your review should be typed, double-spaced, and in 12-point font (Times New Roman or similar); while there is no specific length requirement, reviews should be somewhere between 1000-1500 words, and no more than 2000. Make sure you cite any sources you refer to, including course readings and other digital projects. If you have any questions about what should or should not be cited, please ask. The Claremont Colleges have a variety of useful guidelines and resources about when and how to cite properly. You are highly encouraged to make an appointment with the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC when working on this assignment.

Review Models:

Gellar-Goad, Review: The Latin Library

Arcenas, Review: Digital Augustan Rome

Others available upon request.

Downloads: