April 23rd:Available Tools:

Free, Cheap, and Premium(and how to navigate choosing between them)

While there are many different digital

platforms you can use, in the end, all tools are

visualization tools.

When you choose a tool, you’re choosing how you want to see

your data.

You may work with many tools/platforms in

the lifespan of your project.

Important Considerations

Ownership• In what space was your project built?

• Your personal site?

• The university’s webspace?

• Where is the project supposed to “live” after completion?

• Where did the funding for the project come from?

• Was the project produced in the context of your teaching responsibilities?

Hosting

• If a platform is web-based (sometimes referred to as “server-side”), then someone else is making sure that the platform works, and gets upgraded.

• Pro: you don’t have to install or maintain it.

• Con: you’re dependent on being online for the platform to work.

Hosting• If the platform is locally hosted (sometimes referred

to as “client-side”), then it’s on your computer.

• Pro: you don’t have to be online! (this is handy anytime you’re demonstrating your project outside of your home institution)

• Con: you may need to have more programming skills to install and maintain the platform on your own machine/server.

• Con: other people may not be able to access the content you produce (because it’s only located on your machine).

Licensing• Did you pay for the tool/platform that you

want to use?

• Did you have to pay for it once, or do you have to renew it annually?

• Do your users need a license to interact with what you produce?

IP Resources• MILO (McMaster Industry Liaison Office)

• McMaster Policy on Ownership of Student Work (http://www.mcmaster.ca/policy/faculty/Research/OwnershipOfStudentWork.pdf)

• CAGS Guide to Intellectual Property for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers (http://www.cags.ca/documents/publications/working/Guide_Intellectual_Property.pdf)

Flexibility• Can you import your data (i.e., prepare it

outside of the platform?)

• Can you export your data?

• In a way that allows other people to see what the platform does?

• In a way that allows you to use the data in other platforms?

Robustness

• For a platform to be “robust,” it needs to be able to handle unexpected input or actions in a way that allows the user to fix the problem and continue with minimal fuss.

• While this definition of robust is generally agreed upon, the precise standards for robustness are essentially subjective.

Is it robust?• If something goes wrong, does the platform return a blank screen, or crash entirely?

• If something goes wrong, does the platform provide an error message that allows you to figure out what part of your input caused the problem?

NOT ROBUST!

ROBUST!

Platform Support & Lifespan• Who made the platform you want to use?

• Is it open source?

• How is maintenance of the platform (not your project, but the platform itself) funded? (Grants? Donations?)

• Is it new and shiny? Or old and reliable?

Average lifespan of Google projects

“Google Keep? It’ll probably be with us until March 2017 – on average” – Charles Arthur, The Guardian, March 22, 2013

Platform Support Community• Does the platform have a support system

(i.e., a contact for troubleshooting or a message board)

• How active is the message board?

• Are there discussions of the platform at broad support sites like StackExchange?

• Can you find blog posts where people write about using/troubleshooting?

Audience• You

• Specialized scholarly audience

• Other digital/multimodal scholars

• Search committees/hiring representatives

• Students

• The general public

Audience

• How easy will it be for members of your audience(s) to access your project?

• What can you assume about the technical knowledge of your audience?

• Alternatives: screenshots, screencasts

Visibility• Some platforms may allow you to use them

for free, provided you make your data public:

• Are you concerned about other people accessing your data?

• Could your data be considered someone else’s property?

Accessibility• Can your project/platform be accessed by

people with disabilities and/or using assistive technologies?

• Universal design: creating content and tools for people with the widest range of abilities possible.

• Accessibility is easier to implement when planned from the beginning, rather than retroactively.

Transparency

• How much documentation is available about the platform’s continuing development and its creator’s goals?

• If the platform creates data visualizations or other assessments, how visible is its internal logic?

Alpha & Beta(useful vocab)

• Alpha: programs and platforms that are in early development, and are still highly error/crash-prone. Usually alpha programs are released to a limited audience who agree to provide feedback.

• Beta: programs that are still in development, but released to a wider audience. These programs may not have full functionality, but are meant to be relatively error-free.

The choices you make regarding platforms are an

essential part of your documentation and your

scholarly output.

On with the tools!

• Display (Scalar, Omeka)

• Mapping/GIS tools(Google Tools, CartoDB, Neatline, Quantum GIS, ArcGIS)

• Data visualization (Prism, MIT Simile, Google Fusion, Gephi)

Display Tools

Scalar (Free)

Scalar (free)

Pros

• Free Web-based• Unique in its capability for

creating non-linear paths.• Customizable• Supported by investment and

use of multiple organizations.• Actively expanding cross-

platform functionality with other tools.

• Requires you to host material on the Scalar website.

• Documentation is still being created

• Export functionality exists, but is unwieldy

• (Somewhat) dependent on continued funding.

Cons

Omeka (free/cheap)

Pros• Available free (if you have

your own server), or hosted for a small fee ($49 annually).

• Robust functionality, full documentation available.

• User-friendly interface• Compatible with Neatline

GIS suite.• Large community of

individual and institutionally-based users.

• Works best with data that is a mixture of images and texts (i.e., it’s less effective for data analysis projects)

• New features are released while in development, and may still be buggy at first

• (Somewhat) dependent on continued funding

Cons

Mapping Tools

Google-based Mapping Tools

• Google Maps (support ends in January 2016)

• Community Walk (runs on Google Maps Engine API) http://www.communitywalk.com

• Google Earth Pro (free as of January 2015; limited support for third-party apps)

Quantum GIS (free)

Pros• Has all the functionality of

ArcGIS in an open-source format

• No ads

• Robust functionality

• Compatible with Google Earth (unclear how long this will last)

• Large user community

• Not compatible with ArcGIS (i.e., very difficult to import/export between the platforms)

• Shorter development history (displays typical open source bugginess)

Cons

ArcGIS (free / super-premium)

Pros

• It does EVERYTHING you could want a mapping program to do.

• Robust functionality

• Free (no ads) web-based version available through arcgis.com

• Downloadable version is expensive! ($$$$ annually)

• Web-based free version requires you to make content public/accessible to all other ArcGIS users

Cons

Neatline (free)

Pros

• Allows tracking and display of points in space and time

• Creates flexible custom timelines, maps

• Highly compatible with Omeka

• Not standalone (i.e., you need to be working with Omeka in order to run it)

• Still in development (but generally well-supported)

Cons

MIT Simile Widgets (free)

Pros

• Free!

• Easy to use for group collaboration

• Web-based or locally hosted

• Highly customizable• Data can be stored in

GoogleDoc

• Open access and always in development (stability issues)

• Requires HTML, more programming skill for customization

• Documentation is spotty

Cons

Google Fusion Tables (free)

Pros

• Simple to set up and highly portable – based on Google Doc spreadsheet data

• Lots of flexibility in terms of visualizations (maps, charts, graphs, histograms, etc.)

• Easy to use for group collaboration

Cons

• The more data you have, the more effective it is.

• Low levels of support

• It could eventually be abandoned (like other Google projects)

Gephi (free)

Pros• Free!

• Works with data that you create yourself (from any source), or download from sites like Facebook

• Will produce complex visualizations if you devote time to learning how to structure your data

• How-to posts available from various sources online.

• Intermediate learning curve: requires time and experimentation to produce sophisticated visualizations

• Occasional compatibility conflicts with various Apple OS releases.

Cons

Just a few of the many places you can check for tools:

http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/

http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/

Choosing between free, cheap, and premium

• Will paying for a cheap version of a tool allow you better backup/export/sharing functionality?

• Will paying for a cheap/premium version of a tool allow you to show it to others when you’re going on the job market?

• Does your local/academic library have the tool available? (Can you ask them to purchase it?)

• Can you ask for a non-profit/educational account and get a discount?

• Are there any open-source versions available with similar functionality?

Using (new) digital tools means that you

will inevitably need help at some point.

Learning how to ask for help is important.

Learning how to Google for it is vital.

In the end, you are only as good as your data

set and your platform.

While there are many different digital platforms you can use, in

the end, all tools are visualization tools.

Flashback: Slide #2

“Even something as simple as colour scheme can have a marked impact on the perceived credibility of information presented visually - often a considerably more marked impact than the actual authority of the data source.” –John Burn-Murdoch, “Why you should never trust a data visualisation”, The Guardian, 7/24/13

The Dangers of Data Visualizations

https://litvisuals.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/pride-and-prejudice/

Further reading on dataviz critiques

• Annie Swafford on Matthew Jockers’ Syuzhet Package: https://annieswafford.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/syuzhet/

• Robert Kosara on “Visualization Criticism: The Missing Link Between Information Visualization and Art: http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/vaccine/assets/pdfs/publications/pdf/Visualization%20Criticism.pdf

• Critiques (and resources) at The Digital Panopticon: http://www.digitalpanopticon.org/?page_id=216

Using tools doesn’t make you a digital

scholar – the critical thinking does.

(But what about pretty/shiny websites?)

User experience/interface

design is its own complex field.

(Flashy content isn’t everything – but it’s not

nothing, either.)

Graphic design tools in the Adobe Creative

Suite can help with this.(Creative Suite is available on Lyons

Media Lab machines)

Lynda.com (also available in Lyons) provides tutorials for working with CS tools, and

for graphic design in general.

Graphic/Info Design resources• Go: A Kidd’s Guide to Graphic Design (Chip Kidd)

• Designing the Editorial Experience: A Primer for Print, Web, and Mobile (Sue Apfelbaum, Juliette Cezzar)

• Visual Display of Quantitative Information; Envisioning Information; Visual Explanations; Beautiful Evidence (Edward Tufte)

• Look around you – notice designs that are appealing to you, and think about why.

Graphic/info design may be most useful for

poster presentations – but posters can be a significant contact

point.

What can the Sherman Centre do to help?

The Sherman Centre can…• Provide access to a wide range of non-free tools at 3 high-

powered workstations

• Help you think through questions of which platform to use; and how to plan a learning agenda

• Connect you with other people with similar interests and potential collaborators

• Provide opportunities for you to speak about your work/project to larger audiences

• Help you think about how your project fits into your larger career/research agenda

• Offer support through annual graduate fellowships

What do you need, as possible practitioners of digital scholarship?

Thank you for attending this year’s Demystifying Digital Scholarship series!