Scanning Primary Sources

Day of DH ScannerBehold!  Depicted above is a CanoScan LiDE 200, alongside my MacBook Pro and primary sources on Oregon Old Believers.  I bought this scanner three years ago for around $60, and it has served me faithfully since then for all manner of scanning projects.  Today I used it to scan some primary sources on Oregon Old Believers, and I have made these scans publicly available (via Google Drive) here.  One of the things that always bugged me when I was studying history in graduate school was the availability of source materials; or rather, the lack of availability of source materials.  I’ve always believed that sources historians find in the archives should be made more accessible to the larger public, so with that in mind I’ve decided to make key primary documents I plan on using for my research project easily available for people to view and download.

Beyond upholding an open access ethos, making my sources publicly available not only ensures that my work can be verified by others, but also allows others to create their own interpretations based on their own readings of the texts.

Since I’ve already recorded detailed notes over these documents, the next step is to take what I’ve written and put together a blog post where I can explore the ideas and themes surrounding my interpretation of the sources.  Having the opportunity to work out a ‘rough draft’ of my ideas not only exercises my writing muscle- it allows me to work through complicated synthesis in a, mostly, risk-free environment   In this way I can be open about how I’m piecing my larger argument together, as well as gain potentially valuable feedback from others who might leave comments on my post.  I don’t want to write in a vacuum, and being open about my process and my sources allows me to escape that vacuum in a way that is beneficial for others in addition to myself.

How I Start My Morning

Day of DH Morning

Compared to some DH warriors, my own morning routine is rather simple and hardly innovative.  After having my first cup of coffee, generally made with Extracto beans, I open up the old browser and scan over my RSS feeds in Google Reader.  Now, as many of you probably know, Google Reader will soon be going the way of the Dodo, so I’m also thinking of what applications or services I will use in its stead.  I’m a big fan of Vienna, and used to use it before Google Reader, but it is a desktop application and not a web-app so having my reading list sync across devices (which, for me, is mainly my iPhone and my laptop) is one issue.  I’ve tried Feedly, but I’m not a huge fan of it’s shortened descriptions of what the items in an RSS feed are really about.

Losing Google Reader is not terribly inconvenient, but I do find RSS feeds to be a superb way of staying on top of several blogs/news sites; finding a suitable replacement is something I will have to spend more time investigating.

After reading over my RSS feeds, I like to get out of my house and head to any number of excellent coffee shops located in Portland.  I either walk or bike, but no matter the transportation means I always listen to podcasts while on my journey.  Today I listened to the latest offering from ‘New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies‘, a discussion by Eric Lohr on his recent book Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union.  I love listening to ‘New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies’ because, in part, it helps me stay on top of new, interesting scholarship while also providing a nice breakdown of the larger thesis by the authors themselves.  I wish more authors would take to the podcast format to explain their work or their current research, because it is a great way to humanize the profession and also convey some of the excitement we all genuinely possess over our little corner of the humanities.

Other podcasts I listen to include ‘The Talk Show‘ with John Gruber, ‘Back to Work‘ with Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann, as well as ‘Three Moves Ahead‘ hosted (usually) by Rob Zacny, just to name a few.

I’m currently leading a discussion of Foucault’s 1982-1983 lecture series, The Government of Self and Others (GoSaO), using Google Groups as a forum to keep track of discussions the reading provokes.  I also maintain a WordPress site for the discussion, and while I haven’t given it as much content at the forums possess I do see it as being an attractive ‘front-end’ for the larger project with the potential to be a starting point for anyone interested in reading GoSaO in the future.

Every monday I post a precis of that weeks lecture set (for this topic, Foucault split his weekly lectures into two, one-hour, periods) to act as a guide for first time readers.  I’m currently on my third read-through of GoSaO, but I’ve found the discussion on the forums to be quite enlightening with regards to my own interpretations of the text.  Since I’m currently an independent researcher out of Portland, Oregon, I don’t have ready access to the sort of intellectual sounding boards once provided by grad school or even daily university life.  That’s why this forum discussion is a vital part of my staying connected to the academic conversation; becoming isolated is a big danger of being an independent, and I’ve found that utilizing digital communicative technologies (like Twitter, blogs, and discussion groups) helps me to stay relevant and foster acceptance into a community that would otherwise not know that I exist.

Later today, I plan on reviewing some of the documents I’ve acquired for my current research project on the immigration of Russian Old Believers into Oregon in the mid-1960’s.  I’ve blogged about my research before, and this posting of a ‘first-run’ of my thinking on the topic has been especially helpful in working through the larger issues of my project.  Through the simple act of blogging 2k-3k word chunks on my topic, I’ve found that tackling the larger project to be far less daunting than first imagined.

Today I would like to focus on a particular report about the ‘Radical Acculturation Patterns’ of the Old Believers written in 1970.  To help with that, I’m going to scan this report and make a pdf that I will either host or provide a public link to in my public Dropbox folder so that others can read my primary source and be better able to evaluate my own argumentative thesis.  I’m not using any sort of fancy text analysis software, nor am I performing an ‘N+7’ modulation of my primary source.  I’m just going to use the critical evaluative skills I learned while studying History in graduate school, with the caveat being I will make this preliminary analysis available- open and free to read- on my blog, Peasant Muse.

This gets to the heart of what I believe the ‘digital humanities’ to be; utilizing digital technologies to enable greater access to research and ideas.  Digital Humanities can certainly be more than this, but the spirit behind the concept is never less than this.