Had we not taken the time to get to know our data with a data biography, we would never have realized how different all these data points were.
This example highlights how important it is to examine data carefully before drawing conclusions. The researchers initially thought the data showed a clear trend, but after investigating the data’s background, they realized the differences came from how the data was collected. This shows how easily data can be misunderstood without proper context.
For every piece of data you’re going to include in your story, you need to create a data biography — the background, or origin of your data. Just as you’d do a background check on a human source before publishing what they told you, you need to understand your data:
The author explains that journalists need to understand where the data comes from and the context behind it. Looking at the “biography” of the data helps determine whether it is trustworthy and appropriate to use in a story.
Despite the lavish production values, there's a strange sameness to everything. You're always in the same brown war zone.
Modern games and websites may have impressive visuals and high production budgets, but they often feel repetitive and lack originality. For example, COD has changed very little over the years. My main point is that high sales drive a focus on impressive visuals rather than creative innovation.
The OCLC’s definition of “literary greatness” is biased based on the libraries that OCLC represents, the list’s exclusive focus on physical books, and its emphasis on raw number of holdings, which is influenced by number of editions.
If the definition of “greatest” depends heavily on which libraries are represented and what counts as a holding, how much can we trust this list to reflect true global literary significance?
And yet we don’t know what they are actually consuming: the types of content that they are viewing, liking, sharing, or commenting on in the largest quantities.
If platforms refuse to share this information, how can researchers and the public really understand what shapes today’s culture?
In the process, I’ve had the occasion to learn this surprising fact: that it is both unexpectedly and especially difficult to find comprehensive data about the most popular social media content
McNulty notes that while platforms like TikTok reach people around the world, the data on their most-watched content is not available to the public. This lack of access makes it hard to do in-depth cultural analysis.
Born digital culture requires a born digital approach.
She says that our traditional ways of studying culture don’t work for TikTok-era media. Instead, we need methods designed for the internet.
Every week, the New York Times of course releases its famous list of “bestselling” books, but this list does not include individual sales numbers.
If well-known bestseller lists don’t actually show how many copies were sold, how much can we really trust them to reflect what people are reading?
Fortunately, there are a number of forward-thinking people who are already leading the charge for open book data.
Walsh notes that open data efforts, like public library checkout stats, are promising steps toward a more transparent view of how people actually engage with books.
I went looking for book sales data, only to find that most of it is proprietary and purposefully locked away.
The data that would help us understand reading trends and culture is hidden behind paywalls or restricted to industry insiders rather than being publicly accessible.
And data are never neutral; they are always the biased output of unequalsocial, historical, and economic conditions: this is the matrix of domination onceagain.
The authors explain that data shows what is happening in the world it comes from. So, if a society has inequality, its data will reflect that inequality as well.
This is the privilege hazard: the phenomenon that makes those who occupy the mostprivileged positions among us—those with good educations, respected credentials, andprofessional accolades—so poorly equipped to recognize instances of oppression in theworld
I like how this explains why biased systems continue to exist. It is not because people want to cause harm. Sometimes, they just do not notice the problem since the system benefits them. This makes bias more difficult to spot and address.
“What we choose to measure is a statement of what we value inhealth,” he explains.
If something is not being measured, does that mean society has decided it is not important?
Counting and classification can be powerful parts of the process of creating knowledge.But they’re also tools of power in themselves.
I think this is the main point of the chapter. Data is not neutral. Counting can help people get noticed, but it can also be used to control or hurt them. It all comes down to who is counting and for what reason.
Lurk-ing under the surface of so many classification systems are false binaries and impliedhierarchies, such as the artificial distinctions between men and women, reason andemotion, nature and culture, and body and world.
I like how this line makes it clear that categories aren’t just simple labels. They often hide power differences. When we treat something as a strict either/or, we ignore the complexity in between and usually end up privileging one group over another.
“What gets counted counts,” feminist geographer Joni Seager has asserted, andMunir is one person who understands that.
if being counted gives people visibility and resources, how do we balance that with the risk of making vulnerable groups more exposed?
“If everything is an archive, what meaning does the word have? What is so great about being an archive? Why have we given the word such power?”
What makes something truly worthy of being preserved and recognized as history?
In the face of this guilt-inducing backlog, special collections have turned towards digitization as a solution, prioritizing getting images of Black people online and hoping that will be enough.
Putting things online doesn’t automatically fix the problem. It might look like progress, but if there’s no real explanation or context, people still won’t understand what they’re looking at or why it matters. Just uploading images isn’t the same as making history truly accessible.
Academics continuously loosen the concept of the archives in vigorous debate and flowery speech, while hundreds of linear feet of Black history are stacked in secure shelving, unbeknownst and inaccessible to implicated communities.
This part highlights the disconnect between theory and reality. Scholars debate what an archive means, but real Black historical materials are sitting on shelves and not accessible to the communities they belong to. It shows how discussion does not always translate into action.
Most Unix systems are kind enough to allow just about anything in a file name.
This shows that even though systems allow a lot of flexibility, that doesn’t always mean users should take advantage of it without thinking ahead.
This merits a specific mention because detecting that a file name has one is not easy to do visually.
This explains why small details matter, since mistakes that are hard to see can still cause problems when working with files.
ibraries and archivesreally have to keep our roles whole and moving forward because we have a verydifferent point of view than the commercial guys. Wil
This idea directly connects to Besser’s argument that digital libraries should preserve traditional library values like access, ethics, and service, rather than becoming commercially driven platforms.
ickly. The current digi
How can we realistically preserve digital materials long-term if it requires constant attention, money, and people to keep updating them?
o preservation means "make copies."
Kahle is basically saying that the safest way to preserve digital material is to make multiple copies and share them, instead of trusting just one archive to protect everything.
nclusion, I argue for univeris within our grasp financially. It'sour gr
Kahle’s main argument is that universal access to knowledge is not just an ideal, it’s something we already have the tools, money, and systems to achieve if we choose to act on it.
So preservation means "make copies."
Kahle is basically saying that the safest way to preserve digital material is to make multiple copies and share them, instead of trusting just one archive to protect everything.
nclusion, I argue for univeris within our grasp financially. It'sour gra
Kahle’s main argument is that universal access to knowledge is not just an ideal, it’s something we already have the tools, money, and systems to achieve if we choose to act on it.
It is very possible that digital libraries will enable future humanities scholars to engage in new activities that we haven't yet envisioned.
What kinds of new activities might he be imagining, and are scholars actually ready for that shift?
Libraries (either digital or brick-and-mortar) have both services and ethical traditions that are a critical part of the functions they serve.
This highlights that libraries are defined not only by what they contain, but by how they serve users and uphold values like privacy and fairness.
Digital libraries will be critical to future humanities scholarship. Not only will they provide access to a host of source materials that humanists need in order to do their work, but these libraries will also enable new forms of research that were difficult or impossible to undertake before.
The author emphasizes that digital libraries aren’t just about easy access, they change how research can be done. It’s a shift from visiting a library to interacting with the material in new computational ways.
But it’s still not entirely natural, and he sometimes slips. About halfway through a recent nine-month research project, he’d built up so many files that he gave up on keeping them all structured.
I find this interesting and relatable because even people with years of experience can make mistakes. I sometimes give up and just put everything in one folder too. This shows how people often shift from structured folders to a “one bucket” approach when things become overwhelming.
Guarín-Zapata’s mental model is commonly known as directory structure, the hierarchical system of folders that modern computer operating systems use to arrange files.
This explains that computers organize files using folders inside other folders, similar to how people organize papers in real life. It connects back to the drawer analogy.
“I open a drawer, and inside that drawer, I have another cabinet with more drawers,”
I have experienced this when modifying game files on my PC, finding the directory, opening a file, then finding even more files, and even more when opening one of those.