This past week the team met with Lara Alonzo from coronastories.world . She alogn with one of her partners, discussed with us among other things, data!  They mentioned constructing their own site and obtaining the project’s main content; videos of people across the world answering two questions relating to their lives during Covid19, by solicitation. They obtained the 30-40 seconds videos through email, social media, even Whatsapp. However, they had to compile each video, catergorize them, and edit them by adding lower thirds graphics and subtitles. The participants consent to exposing their information by submitting their videos.

This conversation got me thinking about the Covid 19 Archive ‘s own data. Similarly, our team will need to collect the media, alogn with consent forms for the participants, and possibly, the school information. This sensative data needs to be organized, and most importantly protected. This week I created a second draft of a consent form that can also act as a way to collect media. I did this on a shared Google Form. What’s great about this form, if we manage to work out the signature component, is how it creates an esay to use categorized spreadsheet.

As the media producer, I will be responsible to collect,and organize raw media from our participant. This one needs to be stored locally, on my computer, to be edited, and exported to the proper format for our plaform and possibly youtube as another hosting site. However, I will be providing the team with all of the raw, drafts, and final products. Therefore, the media data, will be stored and organized on at least three places: locally on my computer, on a server for the team to access, and lastly, the final product, will be stored on our site’s storage and maybe on the Youtube server.

Other possible pieces contructed for promotion and marketing purposes, will be store on my peresonal Canva account, where they can be easily edited, and shared. However,  the final verisons of these these can also be downloaded and stored.

Last week’s presentation by Stephen Zweibel changed my perception of data. Previously (and naively), I considered data to be computer-generated but actually it also includes non-digital items. From his slide “Forms of Data”, it appears that everything is data so therefore, data is everything! Which makes sense – without data, our projects would not exist. Even with our Rebus project, we will be dealing with digital files and code, etc. but even the digital files are based off of actual objects, data in the form of pieces of paper that were printed. 

I also started to think about big vs. small data. Our project is using small data, perhaps even tiny data, for scholarly purposes. On the other side of the spectrum is big data, big tech, AI, IoT- types of data, analytics and data used for profit and marketing. What about medium data, is there such a thing?

So, a DMP is essential. Our process to follow the checklist was straightforward. Although we “checked” everything off, there are still a lot of unknowns at this point. But, the DMP is now firmly implanted in my head and going forward, obtaining and preserving data will be a constant concern.  If my team finds that we’re unable to manage the data, that’s a major hurdle to overcome. I can already see how all the files in Google Drive can become uncontrollable if we don’t stay organized! Meanwhile, who knows how Google is profiting from the data we’re storing on their servers.

It’s one thing to lose a computer file or for that matter any hard-copy documents related to one’s personal affairs.  It’s another thing to lose files and data which other people depend on.  I’m reminded of the fires that destroyed the warehouses of Universal Studios in the San Fernando Valley in 2008. According to news reports, original master recordings of over 800 recording artists were destroyed in whole or part, almost a complete who’s who of American popular music.  The fire reportedly destroyed recording data of rock-and-rollers like Buddy Holly, country icons like Dolly Parton, jazz virtuosos like Aretha Franklin, blues giants like Muddy Waters, among many others.  Clearly the first and foremost principles of data management deserve to be data preservation and data integrity.

Unfortunately the mindset needed for assuring the satisfactory exercise of these principles has often been adopted momentarily at best.  The destruction of many libraries throughout the ages suggest we have been doomed to repeating the same mistake, again and again.  Perhaps one of the many curses of the human condition is the tendency to substitute aspiration for principle.

source: Global Datavault, https://www.globaldatavault.com/blog/information-destruction-history/, accessed 03/09/2021

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In terms of research itself, research practices tend to be most effective when information is available and easy to retrieve.  While the Internet has generally opened up previously closed avenues to knowledge and information, one of the drawbacks of using the Internet as a tool for research is the over abundance of data storage locations.  When research data is stored in more than a couple of locations, data becomes difficult to keep track of and use effectively.  Critical evidence can be lost not because the data has been erased but because its location is no longer known or insufficient cataloging occurred.  Using only one tool for research such as Zotero, in which data is stored and centralized in on place and cataloging can be semi-automated, mitigates the risk of loosing track of references, internet resources, and other research upon which one’s current research depends.

A second problem involves the double-edged nature of digital media.  As easy as it is to duplicate digital data, it can be just as easy to delete.  Depending on the time table of the research, internet pages can suddenly disappear without a trace, leaving the visitor watching in dismay a 404-page-not-found animation.  Depending on the value of the missing information, a search in the Wayback Machine may or may not yield the version of the page initially accessed.  To some extent the ephemerality of the web poses a serious risk to the quality of research.  As a result, an additional evaluation of internet data comes into play in terms of determining the need for redundant data preservation by downloading the web page.

While automated redundancy more broadly has gotten better since the early days of the Internet, we are still not at that point when all applications automagically save all significant versions into a 100% redundant versioning system.  Total and automated redundancy goes against the right to be forgotten, the right to be anonymous, and the right not to be tied to a moment in the past.  Control over the degree and nature of redundancy to some extent offers freedoms at the cost of the discipline and responsibility to judiciously save a version.

As research goes beyond the work of a single individual to encompass group collaboration, effective data management takes on an even greater importance.  Without clear roles for  managing data, the likelihood of encountering problems will persist.  Rock-solid technologies may be in place, but if the responsibilities for the management of data are not clearly defined and assigned, state-of-the-art storage technologies will not by themselves prevent data loss or the reduction of data integrity.

Because my group will be handling the sensitive personal information of students under 18, thinking about the safe collection, maintenance, and storage of our data has been top of mind. We want to be smart about what information we collect from students during their submissions and not just collect personal information for the sake of it. After chatting with Rebecca Banchik last week, we were relieved to hear that we wouldn’t need to go through the IRB process. The meeting was not only productive in relieving us of the potential IRB complications and delays, but also because Rebecca was able to help us work through what kind of information we would be collecting and how we would display it.

We knew that we would require parental approval in addition to the student consent, and Rebecca confirmed that. However she explained that we have a few options for displaying student information on the site. We could give students the option to use a pseudonym or only display their first name rather than first and last names. We could also keep the geographic location very broad at a state or country level, rather than zoom into a smaller school district. She explained that we want to follow the HIPAA guidelines: any details that would fall under that HIPAA umbrella (zip code, last name, date of birth) are off limits. We don’t want anyone to be able to plug a few of these personal identifiers into a search engine and find the student. This level of flexibility in how we present the student’s info as well as clear language on exactly how we will be using their info will need to be presented to the student and parent.

Needless to say, the consent/submission form has been our biggest hurdle to work through so far. Maggi set us up with a wonderful draft that she based on her own professional experience working with obtaining permission. We made some tweaks, including adding in our questions/prompts to spark student inspiration, and are using this in our first phase of outreach this week. We decided to use Google Forms to gather the student info which will then be automatically populated into a spreadsheet for us. This makes it easy to manage and reference the gold source list of entries all in one place. Phil brought up the excellent point that we’ll need to be able to migrate this list once the project moves beyond this semester’s prototype phase. Learning about the care needed here has been enlightening, and it’s certainly made me a better researcher.

In addition to this front end data collection, we have a lot of behind the scenes data decisions to make in regards to our categorization and metadata practices. As someone who spends professional time to come up with the best labels for audience and product tags in the content I manage, this kind of organization work really excites me! Consistency will be key here. We’ll need to come up with a clear labeling system for each submission type (video, poem, audio interview) along with other identifiers like geography (state country) and student grade level. That way entries are searchable not only by us, but also by the user via our project’s search bar.

We’ve made really fantastic progress so far with all of these careful data considerations, and I feel good knowing my team is up for handling the next sticky decision to work out.