Project Management for Book Traces
From 2015 to 2017, I was the project manager for Book Traces @ UVA, a research project at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library. Under a grant proposal titled “Hidden in Plain Sight,” this project was funded by CLIR. I managed a staff of student workers and volunteers to methodically search the library’s circulating collections for pre-1923 books bearing unique evidentiary traces of their history: marginalia, gift inscriptions, old photographs tucked into the pages, and so forth. The U.Va. Today news site has a great article about the inception of the project.
Project Management in Digital Humanities
I worked for Performant Software Solutions from 2011 to 2015, holding the title of Project Manager starting in 2012. With an academic background in English literature, I specialized in guiding the development of digital humanities projects. I collaborated with professors and librarians at major research institutions, analyzing the requirements of their projects and steering day-to-day software development work in an agile environment.
Following is a partial list of digital humanities projects that I managed or significantly assisted (reflecting project status as of the time I left Performant in 2015):
BigDIVA (Big Data Infrastructure Visualization Application), directed by Laura Mandell at Texas A&M University
Book Traces, directed by Andrew Stauffer at the University of Virginia
BRANCH (Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History), directed by Dino Felluga at Purdue University
Connecting Presidential Collections*, directed by Sheila Blackwell at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia
DM (Digital Mappaemundi)*, directed by Dot Porter at the University of Pennsylvania and Martin Foys at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
eMOP (Early Modern OCR Project), directed by Laura Mandell at Texas A&M University
Juxta (legacy desktop software)*, directed by Andrew Stauffer at the University of Virginia
Juxta Commons, directed by Andrew Stauffer at the University of Virginia
Juxta WS (web service), directed by Andrew Stauffer at the University of Virginia
MESA (Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance), directed by Timothy Stinson at the University of North Carolina and Dot Porter at the University of Pennsylvania
ModNets (The Modernist Networks Project, forthcoming), directed by Pamela Caughie and David Chinitz at Loyola University Chicago
Notes on the State of Virginia (iOS app)**, directed by John O’Brien and Brad Pasanek at the University of Virginia
Realms of Earth and Sky (iOS app), directed by Daniel Ehnbohm and Jennifer Farrell at the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia
The Siege of Jerusalem Electronic Archive (forthcoming), directed by Timothy Stinson at the University of North Carolina
Studies in Radicalism Online (forthcoming), directed by Michael Rodriguez at Michigan State University
TextLab*, directed by John Bryant at Hofstra University
TypeWright, directed by Laura Mandell at Texas A&M University
Viral Texts*, directed by Ryan Cordell, Elizabeth Dillon, and David Smith at Northeastern University
* On these projects, the Performant Software team played a supporting role, such as improving existing software or providing advice rather than developing software from start to finish.
** Unfortunately the app was never published for reasons beyond the control of anyone on the project team; the project directors wrote about their experience in an article on ProfHacker.
Selected Publications
“Rapid Collections Surveying with Book Traces @ UVa” (PDF link), co-authored with Carla Lee, Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference, 2015.
“Juxta Commons,” poster co-authored with Dana Wheeles, Journal of Digital Humanities 3:1 (2014).
Editor, The Diary of a Dean: Excerpts from the Private Journal of William Minor Lile, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Law Library Special Collections, 2012. There is no online copy of this book but you can read a detailed interview about the project.
“Reforming Character: William Law and the English Theophrastan Tradition,” Eighteenth Century Fiction 22:3 (2010).
“Becoming an E-Bookworm,” Literature Compass 1 (2003).