Author: Sam Lego (Page 1 of 2)
I'm Sam, and I'm a Youth Librarian going back to school for an Integrative Studies degree, with a focus in English, Digital Humanities, and Social Sciences.
Digital humanities allows for cross-disciplinary study into society, history, geography, and more, using multiple modes of source material and presentation. The methods used in this class showed that there are many ways to visually represent data outside of the traditional – digital mapping, textual analysis through word tracking, combining place and history through digital maps and timelines, and bringing together source materials with historical context and the ways in which it informs society and culture today. These modes of presentation allow for different institutions to present new interpretations of data in ways that are not only interesting, but accessible outside the traditional venues for such presentations – like museums, libraries, or historical buildings.
My project is intended to map out in chronological order through StoryMap the different libraries that were created in the Metro East region, and a brief history of how each library came to be.
I have plotted a general area for public libraries that I want to include, and through this have decided that width instead of depth will be important for this project, due to the number of libraries I wish to include. As I continue to research them, however, this may have to be further pared down. List of places to include:
- Edwardsville Public Library
- Glen Carbon Centennial Public Library
- Belleville Public Library
- Fairview Heights Library
- Caseyville Public Library
- East Saint Louis Public Library
- Mississippi Valley Library District
- Madison Public Library
- Six Mile Regional Public Library
- Maryville Public Library
I also want to provide background on why so many libraries are considered Carnegie libraries, and so will also include at least one slide on Andrew Carnegie – this I’m not sure how I want to format, but for now is connected to his place of birth in Scotland.
I have a few sources throughout the rough draft, which is admittedly not as thorough as I would like, but does include a lot of information from the history portions of most library’s webpages, as will likely be the case for most of the locations I chose.
- History of Edwardsville Public Library
- A 1936 primary source on the history of Belleville Public Library
- Fantastic resource on the number of public libraries in the U.S. from 2019/2020 fiscal year
- Glen Carbon Centennial Public Library’s history pagehttps://glencarbonlibrary.org/library-history/
- I plan on finding more information about Andrew Carnegie and the libraries he funded, but so far Carnegie’s Wikipedia page, and the Carnegie library page are my starting point.
My project was reviewing “Connecting the Dots: A birds-eye view of St. Louis’s LGBTQ history, 1945 – 1992″ which was a StoryMap. The project was funded by numerous organizations, appearing to have started in 2016 and was published in January of 2021, and is currently being maintained by the Washington University Library. The project focused on finding and compiling resources surrounding the topic of LGBTQ culture and history in the St. Louis and Metro East areas, specifically to explore the ways in which gender, sex, race, class and geography influenced queer culture of the time. The reasons stated by the project for the importance of this work was that LGBTQ culture was inherently secretive, due to the danger that being out could mean for individual safety, which meant that many of the physical locations for the culture were obfuscated. This project specifically aims to make it clear that even if LGBTQ people weren’t publicly advertising their inclusive hangout spots, that they still existed, and were important to many movements of the eras presented. The project used primary source information for places and events that they could confirm had physical addresses, as well as recollections from elders in the queer community who lived in the region.
The project included two separate areas of history, the first leg focusing on general LGBTQ history, and those locations important that community in the St. Louis and Metro East region. The second leg, which was in my opinion much more fleshed out and had a ton of information, was the “The Impact of Segregation: Race in LGBTQ St. Louis, 1945 –1992″ StoryMap that was listed in the “More” section of the first project. This project contained a wealth of information about how the region’s history as a border state for slavery, and as a “gateway to the west” formed its cultures in minority communities, in this case in African American and LGBTQ communities. The project details how white flight from the metropolitan St. Louis area affected city, rural, and suburban life for the LGBTQ communities in every area, and the ways in which racial tensions formed the cultural boundaries of those same communities.
I think that both parts of the project were great, but I definitely gained a lot more from the second project on segregation and will be recommending this to people to read. As a non-local who grew up in a very homogeneous area, I try really hard to learn about this region, so as to better understand its culture. I was more aware of the processes of racial injustice in terms of segregation, redlining, and other predatory practices of the post Jim Crow Midwest before this project, but now I can provide more context around how that informed microcosms of different LGBTQ history.
Data set profile:
- Who is credited as the creator and/or contributors of this data set? Who are they?
- The Project Coordinators are listed as Rebecca Maloney, National Tombstone Project Coordinator, and Debra Crosby, Tombstone Photo Project Coordinator. Though there isn’t a single person listed as the creator, the contributors are meant to be volunteers, and to donate the data to the USGenWeb Project Archives of their area. The specific tombstone project I looked at was the Upper Sect 101 in Alton Cemetery in Alton, Illinois, which was led by someone named Sue Williams.
- What are the sources of their data?
- The web site lists that the source of the data should be the graveyard/cemetery itself, and should be organized according to the layout or plot of the grave. The site explains that cleaning may need to be done in order to accurately plot. Plotting the graveyard or cemetery might need to be done before transcribing the graves, since not every site will have a layout to use.
- Why did they create or compile it?
- There is a stress on compiling data for preservation purposes, as well as for access, but also as a “tribute to our ancestors.”
- How has it been used?
- It seems as if it is primarily used for genealogical purposes, as well as just for data preservation.
- What format is the data set in?
- It is a raw text file that has tombstones labeled by sect, with all included text (name, birth/death dates, inscriptions) and in some of the files descriptions of the stone or marker.
Data set evaluation:
- Take a look at the data itself. How have they structured it? What fields have they chosen? What effect might that have on how it can be used?
- The data is really just a string of data, seemingly dumped into a text file just going down the line, with the first “column” of data having a number to denote the order in which the graves were plotted, and the second “column” containing information about what the text of the inscription says, and maybe a description of the stone or marker. Since the data only has the two columns, it is a little hard to parse through, and difficult to read since it is a very narrow and long “document.”
- Read the creators’ description of the data set. Have they described the choices they made in cleaning the data, and if so, how? What effect might those choices have on the data?
- There are rules for submitting data files on the Illinois county portal (three links are provided, but they all go to the same page). There are multiple types of data submission forms, depending on the way in which the data is being used, and what is being recorded.
- Consider the creators’ identities and goals in creating the data set. How might those things have shaped the data, either intentionally or inadvertently?
- I think that it is heavily focused on preservation for posterity, which is interesting – I would love to know more about the inception of the site, as it started in 1997, and where the person was located. Culturally speaking, I know that there are a few different communities wherein ancestor and family mapping is really popular (The Church of Latter Day Saints/Mormons chief among them) however this is a project that I’m not super familiar with. I know that there are a few influencers on TikTok whose primary content is restoration of stones in graveyards/cemeteries, and in doing so they often will provide information about the person, and their life and death, should they have it. I think that because the project focuses on data consolidation, unintentionally it removes the data from the people it is intended to preserve, as it doesn’t include anything about their lives.
- What would you use this data for?
- As I mentioned, there are people who volunteer and help to restore and preserve the physical graves, so this information would be helpful long term for keeping record of sites that have deteriorated past reading. I think that this is a helpful project for contextualizing death, as a society that has a hard time reconciling death, as a death avoidant culture.
I want to explore the timeline of when libraries were established and built in Madison County and perhaps the surrounding area. I grew up in an area that only had one local library, with the nearest Wisconsin branch being a thirty-minute drive away – and as a child there was no reciprocal borrowing between the branches (at least not in a way that was available to me). When I moved to the St. Louis, I was struck by the number of branches the library system had, though it was more of a necessity with a population as large as the St. Louis region. I never got a card when I lived in STL, so when I moved to Edwardsville I made a point to put my money where my mouth was and support local libraries. I was very surprised when I received my card and was told that my card was able to be used in most libraries in southern Illinois, so long as it was in good standing.
Having worked in libraries now for over five years I’m intimately familiar with the ways in which libraries are connected, and learned – at least in a vague way – the history of the libraries I have worked in. This last October Glen Carbon Centennial Library celebrated it’s twentieth anniversary from being built, and to celebrate the library went through many of its records and compiled a history of the library, and how it was established well before the physical building went up in 2004. I have previously explored the ways in which different library districts may not meet the needs of the population, as districts tend to leave gaps in coverage (Illinois Public Library Service Area Populations). In doing that geospatial project last semester, and in watching my library build its own history, it made me curious as to when and how different libraries in the region came to be – especially considering the politics of the time (e.g., Edwardsville’s library district was unwilling to allow another local library to join the consortium, as tax revenue from participating Glen Carbon residents would be routed away from the Edwardsville Public Library, making the library a contentious topic for the region).
Luckily, as many libraries are subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements surrounding transparency, most libraries have at least a partial history of their building on their website, or listed in their policy/procedure/personnel manuals. Glen Carbon Centennial Library, which of course would be included in my work, has its own webpage dedicated to the history of the library: Library History (glencarbonlibrary.org). In addition, there are some sources that can be found via news articles kept by the libraries in question, as well as histories provided by the Illinois Heartland Library System, specifically about how IHLS was implemented and when (illinoisheartland.org).
I think in terms of this project, it would make the most sense to use either an interactive timeline, such as KnightLab’s Timeline software, or StoryMap, since both would allow for a visual representation of when and how the locations were built. StoryMap specifically might be more visually appealing, but I’m unsure what data I will be able to find outside of date, place, and some basic surrounding information, such as how funding was sourced, so I think I’ll narrow down my focus as I move forward.
I chose to read through the documents from the drive folder, the 1862 and 1879 texts.
When skimming both documents, it seems as if they primarily focus on the agriculture, and description of the land, as well as the resources that St. Louis County had at the time. The 1879 text is very short, so I think most of the popular words will come from the 1862 text, and that it will be mostly based on the manufacturing, agriculture and business side of the city. On skimming, I see very little about the culture, so I don’t see much about that, and the text is very formal. I’m anticipating that there will be fewer positive or negative connotations associated with different terms throughout the text, simply due to the specific talk about the city and what it makes.
When I uploaded them into Voyant, I absolutely was correct that there would be a lot talking about the manufacturing and business side of the city. There was more information about schools, university, and other infrastructure outside of the supply chain than I expected, which does say something about the start of building a public infrastructure.
I was surprised by the number of positive words collated with different terms. When looking at “louis” as a term, it was often paired with terms like “charitable” and “magnificant.” Looking at other terms it is more positive as well, though there are negative connotations with the terms “slaves” and “limits.” I really thought that there would be much more neutral language surrounding the type of text being reviewed.
I chose to look at one of my favorite books from my childhood, and a series that is considered to be a gateway of sorts into fantasy: Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It also helps that part of my job is creating individual item records to match with a parent item for library cataloging, so this feels very familiar, as I mostly looked at the publishing information that libraries use for their Marc reord catologing.
Metadata:
- Title: Eragon
- Creators:
- Author: Christopher Paolini
- Item Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
- Original Publisher: Paolini International, LLC
- Jacket Illustration: John Jude Palencar
- Date:
- Published: August 2003
- Original Text Copyright: 2002
- Format: Hardcover Book
- Description:
- A hardcover book, with a dustjacket. The dustjacket is blue, and on the front includes a drawing of a blue dragon, with the text ERAGON in gold embossing. The back of the dustjacket includes bestseller lists, and quotes about the book from different sources. The book has 509 numbered pages, with some illustrations included. The book was published specifically for teens, and was placed in the categories: Fantasy, Dragons, and Fiction. It is the first book in the Inheritance cycle. The bibliographic summary of the book is as follows: “In Alagaësia, a fifteen-year-old boy of unknown lineage called Eragon finds a mysterious stone that weaves his life into an intricate tapestry of destiny, magic, and power, peopled with dragons, elves, and monsters.”
This was an interesting experiement, mostly because it pointed out that although I have a lot of skepticism toward AI models like ChatGPT, I was still expecting it to do better than it did – particularly in math settings. I was also surprised, and it seemed so was the author, that the model had a harder time with simple arithmetic than harder calculus – this was where I kept assuming the model would fail, but it handled calc better.
It also was interesting that previous successes, such as the success of answering the first tic-tac-toe board question, led me to believe that it would answer correctly about the game in a second follow-up question. I generally went with my first assumptions, and according to the model I was “overconfident” in my responses, so I guess I’m confident it will mostly fail, with an approximate 50% success rate.
It’s interesting reading a classic science fiction story like this one, because it is a look into the time and how technology was viewed when it was published. It stuck out the absolute lack of capitalism until the introduction of the society that builds planets for the ultra-wealthy – I was actually kind of astounded. A lot of modern science fiction revolves around monopolistic industry in space, and the ways in which technology is newly exploited in under policed areas of the universe (thinking of the Illuminae Files, which features another mentally unstable and unreliable AI as well, and that I highly recommend listening to the full-cast audiobook).
I wonder if the recovering economy in Europe, and the growth of technology meant that depictions of the antagonists were different than I am used to reading modern sci-fi. Though there are themes of apathy throughout the novel, in deference to entire planets being wiped out and people dying and the galactic government all being puppets, there was very little in the way of a traditional sci-fi with how the individuals all responded to the technology that was being presented.
“The president in particular is very much a figurehead – he weilds no real power whatsoever. He is apprently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, page 57
I think the most jarring aspect of the AI presented in the book would be Marvin, the depressed, paranoid and suicidal robot that assists the characters – albeit reluctantly – on the ship of improbability, the Heart of Gold. The robot is melancholic, hates everything, and causes a ship to commit suicide simply by talking to it. It’s an interesting depiction because the robot was specifically built with the intent of having this personality trait, and that there were many types of personalities that robots could be given. Though the book doesn’t talk about it, it does make me think about the ethics of giving something artificial a predetermined personality, especially one so negative (though doing the opposite would bring up concerns as well).
The Heart of Gold’s computer also has a personality, though it more lines up with what we might encounter today – a computer that is incredibly eager to please, to the point of annoyance of one of the characters, much as most AI we see today is programmed to help, even if we haven’t opted in to the process.
“’Hi there!’ [the ship’s computer] said brightly… ‘Oh God,’ said Zaphod. He hadn’t worked with this computer for long but had already learned to loathe it.” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, page 131.
The, in my opinion, more important AI that is explored in the book is the computer Deep Thought, which is tasked with mice (an alien species) to answer the big questions of the universe that almost all alien life forms ask: “the Answer… [to] Life… The Universe… Everything!” (Adams 25). The computer acknowledges that it is tricky, and that it will take 7.5 million years to accomplish the equation. Once the answer is given, Deep Thought then goes on to explain that the only one who can actually answer the question is the next greatest supercomputer that will be built at his instruction. The importance of Deep Thought’s answer to the question of the universe couldn’t be overstated – the mice waited millions of years to get a pretty unsatisfactory answer, then built the Earth as a further experiment for determining what the purpose of the universe was – meaning that the final form of AI, according to Deep Thought, was actually the planet Earth. It was an interesting take on what an AI is, and if all AI is can be whittled down to an input-output machine, that has multiple processes done at once and can answer complex problems, then why isn’t the Earth a simulated computer problem? It was an interesting concept, at the very least, and I greatly enjoyed rereading this book.
Works Cited
- Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Illustrated Edition. E-book ed., Random House, 2021.