Final Project Assessment
In this analysis of my project I will assess in four sections: The topic, the new media, the technology, and finally, the outcome and future direction of the project itself.
The topic: I believe that digitizing the Brotherhood Beacon has been a good project (and will continue to be). The best components of this project were that it forced me to learn the process of grant proposal writing and that it will eventually develop a terrific resource for those researching the Conservative Mennonite Conference (at least from the 1970s on). The unfortunate part of this project is that it is not the most innovative/malleable kind of project. Since I built the site primarily with researchers in mind, to some extent I had to follow the expected norms of researchers. While this was helpful in designing the project, I think it also limited the creativity and historical argument. It was helpful in that I am a researcher of sorts and so I could shape the database in ways that I thought would be helpful if I was researching - thus, a search function is absolutely necessary. However, you also want to be able to place each article within its historical context so it’s important to note the date and be able to browse the rest of that particular issue (some of these concerns will continue to shape the project as it progresses). On the other hand, orienting the database toward researchers also limited the space for overt historical argument. The project presents more subtle and fundamental arguments about the importance of a small religious sect, as well as emphasizing the importance of primary documents printed by the subjects of research in the historical endeavor. But researchers also want to see what they expect to see, so that also limits the shape of a research-oriented database.
Finding funding was important component of this project as well. I applied for two grants: one Mellon Research Grant through American University and one grant directly from the Publications and Literature Committee of the Conservative Mennonite Conference. I was not accepted for the Mellon Research Grant, but the Conservative Mennonite Conference accepted the proposal. Through the process of uploading and organizing the database, I found that I had underestimated the amount of time that it would take. Fortunately, the first five years are a pilot project and then the project can be reassessed and hopefully approved to finish out the remaining 30 years of the publication. The conference has already mentioned that they’re interested in digitizing the entire span of the publication.
The new media: Digital media definitely carries strengths and weaknesses in comparison to more traditional graduate history projects. This project (and the class in general) was more immediately public than other graduate work that I’ve done. The Brotherhood Beacon database could potentially be accessed by anyone during the construction process as well. I wasn’t too concerned about this though as I didn’t publicize the location too much early on and thus didn’t think many people would see it. Soon, however, I will be emailing links around to my advisory committee for the grant/project and other family and friends who I think may be interested to get their feedback on the project so that I can attempt to shape it according to their responses and how they think it can be best used as well. This is also very different than traditional graduate history work which is usually only read by professors or possibly others within your specialized field, but rarely beyond that. The increased public scrutiny is great in trying to make sure your work actually connects with people and I wish we would do that more with traditional graduate work as well - it would help us to communicate more effectively and keep up to date with what other people are doing with and thinking about our research topics.
The technology: From the beginning I wanted to stay out of the technical aspects as much as possible, but instantly I was drawn into the smaller details as they obviously shape the larger experience of the database. One of my early dilemmas was image types and image sizes. This was difficult, but in the end using the streetprint database builder limited some of these choices. Streetprint has proven slightly more difficult to manipulate than I had originally hoped. So far I’ve only made a few modifications to the layout (and have a few more to make before I ask for comments/suggestions from my advisory committee), but even those few small modifications proved very difficult to find and implement within the code. These shortcomings of streetprint admitted, it has proven to be a very useful tool for uploading and organizing the database and I think it will serve very well for searching and browsing the database as well. I also contacted one of the primary builders of the streetprint software during my work and he seemed to be quite helpful in aiding me with modifications of the software.
At various other points I was also amazed by the technology. I lined up someone else to do the actual scanning of the documents, but then processed the images through Adobe Photoshop. This program is simply amazing with batch functions and resizing and renaming as well. I was very impressed with how much time it saved me in the mundane details. The primary time-consuming efforts have been uploading and organizing each article separately and searching through the code to make small changes. I’m not sure there’s really any way around the time-consuming nature of uploading/organizing, but I do wish that streetprint was based on simpler code so that it was easier to make changes. I’ve also learned to use ftp, various search functions, and learned about the difficulties of categorizing/organizing through the process.
Outcome and future direction of the project: I think the project has fulfilled my original goals, except that it has taken much longer than I anticipated so at this point it is still small. However, eventually the five-year pilot project will be done and then we’ll get to the question of whether or not to upload the entire archive through streetprint and onto my website. I would very much love to see the entire archive online, but I do not think that I want to be the one to do all the uploading/organizing. I would love to oversee the project though if I can find people who are willing to do the various parts of the project, now that I’ve set up the primary outlines of the project. Simply put, each month of the publication takes about 1/2 hour to scan and then about an hour to upload. I simply do not have the time to upload 30 years’ worth of issues. Getting the first five years uploaded will take enough time this summer.
The major point where I think my project has some major work yet is in making a number of small modifications to make it more usable by people in the Conservative Mennonite Conference as well as researchers. I only took care of a few of these changes with lots of help from Josh Greenberg, but hopefully I will be able to change a few other things in the layout, primarily to make it more user-friendly and easily understandable (such as noting that you should click the image for a larger version, listing the date by each of the search results, and allowing users to click on a year, then a month, and browse only that issue). Another modification I would like to make if/when the archive is complete and each new monthly issue is added, would be to create a simple way to read the current issue. However, this concept is still fairly far off as the next thirty years of the publication still have to be added to the database before I focus too much on integrating the current issues.
Overall, I am fairly pleased with my project and what I’ve gained in the process of building it. Grant proposal writing is a vital skill in the historical (especially digital history) profession and I’m very glad that this project forced me to write my first two grant proposals and engage that process. I also think it taught me a few things about the financial end of history projects as well as the nature of networking within the historical community and other communities. I’m also relatively happy with the final product. The few glitches that remain to be fixed in the layout of the database annoy me, but I think that overall, the database is fairly effective in allowing readers to browse issues and researchers to search for keywords throughout all the issues that have been digitized. The essential concept that it would be great for researchers to be able to search within the text of the Brotherhood Beacon has been accomplished and the modifications that still need to be made do not detract too much from that goal.