{"id":1147,"date":"2014-06-03T09:23:53","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T09:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/datablog\/?p=1147"},"modified":"2014-06-03T09:23:53","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T09:23:53","slug":"digital-scholarship-day-of-ideas-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/datablog\/2014\/06\/03\/digital-scholarship-day-of-ideas-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Scholarship Day of Ideas: Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

The theme of this year’s ‘Digital Scholarship Day of Ideas’ (14th May) focused on ‘data’ and what data is for the humanities and social sciences. This post summarises the presentation of Prof Annette Markham<\/a>, the first speaker of the day. She started her presentation with an\u00a0illustration of Alice in Wonderland. She then posed the question: What does data mean anyway? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Markham\u00a0then explained how she had quit her job as a professor in order to\u00a0enquire\u00a0into the methods used in different disciplines. Since then, she has thought a lot about method and methodologies, and run many\u00a0workshops on the theme of ‘data’. In her view, we need to be careful when using the term \u2018data\u2019 because although we think we are talking about the same thing we have different understandings of what the term actually means. So, we need to critically interrogate the word and reflect upon\u00a0the methodologies.<\/p>\n

Markham talked about the\u00a0need to look at ‘methods’ sideways, we need to look at them from above and below. We need to collate as many insights into these methods as possible; we might then understand what ‘data’ means for different disciplines. Sometimes, methods are related to funding, which can be an issue in the current climate, because innovative data collection procedures that might not be suitable for archival aren’t that valuable to funders. The issue is that not all research can be added to digital archives. For an ethnographer, a stain of coffee in a fieldwork notebook has meaning, but this subtle meaning cannot be archived or be meaningful to others unless digitised and clearly documented.<\/p>\n

Drawing on Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind<\/em> (1972), she asked us to think about ‘frames’ and how these draw our attention to what is inside and dismiss what lays outside. If you change the frame with which you look, it changes what you see. She showed and suggested using different frames. For example there are: traditional frames, structures like the sphere, molecular structures. Different structures afford different ways of understanding, and convey themes and ideas that are embedded within them.<\/p>\n

\"Empty-frame\"<\/a>\"sphere-296433_1280\"<\/a>\"Azithromycin_3d_structure\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To use another example, she used an image of McArthur’s Universal Corrective Map of the World<\/a> to illustrate how our understanding of our environment changes when information is shown and structured in a different and unexpected way.<\/p>\n