Time is funny. June 10 was the first day of the Iowa Black History Research Collective's second internship. The summer seemed vast and never ending. Now it is late July, we have about three weeks left, and students will be back to school in roughly a month. This summer it has been a tremendous pleasure … Continue reading 2024 Summer Internship
“Hide Enslavements” – The Plot Thickens
A few days ago, I was in the Des Moines Register archives and noticed a curious new filtering option: A checkbox that said, "Hide Enslavements." Someone from The Register reached out to say that their archives, like those of countless other newspapers across the United States, are hosted by Newspapers.com, and that the offending checkbox … Continue reading “Hide Enslavements” – The Plot Thickens
“Hide Enslavements”
This afternoon I was in the Des Moines Register (a Gannett newspaper) archives and I noticed a new option in my filters. In addition to being able to hide marriages and obituaries, subscribers can now hide enslavements. This is a pretty clear example of systemic racism and systemic erasure in action. Who benefits from being … Continue reading “Hide Enslavements”
How We Work (part 4)
We continue our discussion of applying Agile principles to historic research on this sunny Monday. Today we're talking about lessons learned, and the Agile ritual of a regularly scheduled look-back. The lessons learned exercise is one of my favorites. Each week, Amani, Evelynn and I take a look back at the week and hash out … Continue reading How We Work (part 4)
How We Work (part 3)
In today's edition of "How We Work," I am going to talk about the Agile concept "Definition of Done." What does it mean, "Definition of Done." Well, it's how you know you're done. In software development, whatever you were assigned to do is supposed to do something at the end. Does the thing do what … Continue reading How We Work (part 3)
How We Work (part 2)
In today's edition of How We Work, I'm going to talk about how we apply the Agile concept of "the backlog" to historic research. The backlog is basically the pile of work that is ready to be worked. Our backlog is housed in Trello, a free project management software by Atlassian, and has been a … Continue reading How We Work (part 2)
How We Work (part 1)
One of my old teachers used to tell us that organization was the key to success. 16 year old me found this cheesy and annoying. 46 year old me knows it's true. I chose an Agile-like structure for a variety of reasons, the first of which, is that Agile is familiar to me. Agile is … Continue reading How We Work (part 1)