Creating data from humanities sources helps identify themes within a source and find ways to categorize and better understand the content. By giving you a resource you can annotate and re-read many times, creating data categories can help identify themes across sources and connect similarities you may not have seen before. Humanities and studying history involve deeply understanding your research question and the sources you deem relevant; data can be a tool to deepen your understanding and help others see the connections and discoverability of your primary sources. Data can help answer many questions that traditional methods cannot. Data can serve as a processing tool to understand large datasets quickly, rather than through the time-consuming process of individual analysis. As stated before, it can connect themes and ideas across many sources and help break down your research question to identify sources that may not support your main argument or topic. While data is important, the process of transforming sources into data needs to be communicated by scholars using it in their arguments. Data is a representation of the information in a primary source or text; the issue with this is that the information may not always be accurate. Therefore, when you use data in an argument, it could not always represent the full picture or the historical process of validating a source. With this in mind, it’s a great way to spot historical accuracy or the common themes or roadblocks in research. Context and narrative are important in every source used in an argument, and oftentimes, with data, it removes the quieter biases that reside in many primary sources. While this is an important idea to point out, it’s still a positive for overall research and can help aid in understanding and elevating research processes and building online resources for discoverability and data lifecycle.

Metadata is important for the humanities for many different reasons. The most important features of metadata are storing and guiding historians or researchers in their research! As referenced in the article, “Digitisation and Digital Resources in the Humanities,” by Terras, Melissa, they state that giving yourself and your audience breadcrumbs to figure out where and how you collected your sources is critical for helping others reach their research goals and helping you curate your process. Metadata can help a researcher keep track of their sources, but it can also help with the future discoverability of primary sources and research tools. Digital humanities is a growing section of the online sphere, and with unorganized and uncategorized collections and sources, there can be an historical connections that are lost within the chaos of the influx of data. Working with Metadata can be hard, especially when historical information is missing or when sources overlap in ownership or location; sometimes questions are hard to answer, but metadata can help researchers address this issue by revealing connections otherwise unseen in physical media. While it can be time-consuming to transform a physical piece of media and its sources into a digital one with metadata, some systems are created to help with the confusion. Systems such as Tropy help visualize the different metadata options and categories. You can edit a photo or resource you collect in research and input ownership, legal use, names, and locations. You can input tags and other forms of data into a source to help aid in the discoverability and tracing of the information pulled. Omeka is another site that helps present Metadata and input findings into an online platform that helps with discoverability and processing. In the My Kitchen collections designed in this class, we take pictures of our own kitchens, assign metadata based on what we know, and add it to the collection. With this information, with the help of Tropy, we then create the collection in Omeka, input the information and pictures, and publish it to pull the collection together. This collection and process of uploading the metadata was a valuable practice in the time and dedication it takes to process something as simple as one’s kitchen appliances! The questions that come up during this process help navigate you to a better understanding of metadata as a practice and the practicality of it from a researcher and publisher’s perspective.

 Finding digitized sources for a research project can be a large undertaking. Finding a source or collection that fits your research needs can be daunting and, at times, aggravating, especially given copyright regulations and how each digital archive is sourced. Finding a digitized resource begins with thinking through clear themes in your research and key terms to refer back to. Having a work set to follow helps keep research on topic and narrows searches. In my research about the 1960s counterculture movements, I used the terms 1960s, counterculture, Dissent, Vietnam protests, COINTELPRO, student protests, and organizations. These keywords keep searches focused on a consistent theme. A resource like the GMU library and database helps you find reliable online resources for any project; it provides access to organized collections and other reliable websites dedicated to primary and secondary sources. I used the database to find a 20th-century American history collection from GMU, which led me to resources such as the FBI files. The FBI files were a great resource because they are in the public domain and provide insightful information on the movements of specific figures during the 1960s. Another resource is using search engines such as Google to find other digital resources through local museums or nonprofit projects related to your chosen research topic. This helped me most in my research; many colleges in certain cities were directly involved with past protesters and have a deep history they are enthusiastic to share. In the article by Hannah Frydman titled “ In defense of the search bar,” there is a continuous view into the ease of access to material usually hidden behind an archival system that involves in-person movement and accessibility. Frydman’s points on accessibility become clear when the content of the 1960s counterculture movement is not as widely circulated in museums or archives. Even when it is openly circulated, accessibility information is harder to track. One example I found in my research is the collection of documents and primary sources related to Abbie Hoffman. Abbie Hoffman was a notable figure in the counterculture movement, yet much of his researchable primary material and belongings are tucked away in an archive in Texas, with no online digital library accessible to the public. Research can be a hard process for a long-term project, but a critical step is understanding how to find and analyze a source, a skill that seems to be evolving with digital media to this day.

If you stumble upon a source that would be perfect for your project or personal research, it can be an exciting discovery, but it’s not as simple as copying and pasting the source or photograph and using it as your own. Copyright, licensing, and terms of use play a big role in sources you find and want to apply to your work. Copyright, in a basic sense, is someone having ownership over content and having sole access to decisions about the reproduction of that content. When someone posts a picture or document online and places a copyright, you won’t find that content in every scholar’s book and project without someone gaining direct permission. Copyright can come with stipulations, and regulations govern the public domain and fair use. When you have a copyright, people may have certain creative freedoms over your work. In a graph by Mary Minow via Peter Hirtle on Section 107 and fair use, we learn guidelines for understanding what falls under “Fair use.” If someone uses an image or document without monetary gain and, to a certain extent, transforms it, that falls under fair use. This also includes factual interpretation of the content and using a small amount of the content for research purposes. Copyrighted content can fall under fair use in certain circumstances, but these restrictions differ from public domain rules. Public domain means documents or content no longer qualify for copyright protection. This doesn’t mean it was never copyrighted, only that its copyright expired after a certain period of time. This time period could range from the author’s age plus seventy years to one hundred and twenty years after publication if the author is unknown. After a certain date, if no one renews the copyright, the content will fall under fair use for the general public. (Mary Minow, Peter Hirtle) The best way to understand the content you are looking at, and whether it falls under certain regulations and licensing, is to look for contact information for an archive or even the author. Usually, the details section or terms of use explains how to use the sources correctly without risking a copyright violation. Each source is different, and understanding the terms and where to find accurate information about a source’s rights status is critical to producing legitimate material.