https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/categories/research/ Recent content in research on Dressing Up Data Hugo -- gohugo.io Copyright © 2008–2018, Steve Francia and the Hugo Authors; all rights reserved. Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2026-03-17-seeking-validation/ Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2026-03-17-seeking-validation/ The time has come for me to reckon with EAD. EAD, or Encoded Archival Description, has been in my life for a couple of years now. During grad school, I did a lot of experimenting with converting the hierarchical, tag-based XML data of EAD into tabular data. One of the outputs of this was a paper in which I visualized metadata from a Smithsonian Folk Life archival collection as a spatial network, and analyzed the geographical spread of various genre tags assigned to audio recordings. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2025-03-10-revisiting-my-personal-covid-archive/ Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2025-03-10-revisiting-my-personal-covid-archive/ When was the last time you went through your 2020 camera roll? For me, it was last week, when I was putting together my presentation for the Lancaster University History Department postgraduate conference. This was an opportunity for all of us current MA students to present the current state of our dissertation research in a friendly, low-pressure environment. Since my dissertation research focuses on evaluation of digital archives of the pandemic, I wanted to include some photos from my own COVID experience in my presentation. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/sentiment-lexicons/ Mon, 25 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/sentiment-lexicons/ “Wow, that book was great!” said Grace as she wrapped up another installment in the Nancy Drew Files series. “Nancy’s life is so exciting, but it seems like she’s always getting herself into trouble.” Grace didn’t remember there being this much mortal peril in the original Nancy Drew Mystery Stories! If you can’t already tell, this post – and more to come – is about Nancy Drew, and is heavily inspired by the Data-Sitters Club. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2024-10-29-code-switching/ Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2024-10-29-code-switching/ I don't generally consider myself to be stubborn. I am very open to trying new things -- in fact, I love trying new things! I have no problem going off on my own to see a new place, I'll ask questions even if it feels like I should already know the answer, I'm very open to being taught or corrected. Figure 1: Just last week I went on a solo adventure to Heysham, where I found this ruin of an 8th century chapel and learned all about Viking gravestones from a lovely docent at a local historic church! https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2024-05-08-presenting-my-thesis/ Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2024-05-08-presenting-my-thesis/ After a year of unboxing, researching, cataloging, photographing, rehousing, and, yes, writing, my thesis project is complete. I'm extremely proud of my end products: the physical and digital forms of the Bates College Clothing Archive, accompanied by a written portion explaining the reasoning behind the choices I made in the process of developing this archive. I'm also immensely grateful to all of the people who supported me during this year -- thank you! https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/hunting-and-gathering/ Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/hunting-and-gathering/ I’ve been an explorer the past few weeks. As I begin working with my thesis collection, I am in a rather puzzling position: nobody actually knows what is in the collection. That’s the whole point of my thesis; the Bates College theater department owns boxes and boxes of historic dress, but there are no records or institutional memory of what is in those boxes. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/bates-donations/ Fri, 05 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/bates-donations/ This is a project I worked on in a course I just finished, called Archives, Data, and Analysis. It explores the early donations to the Maine State Seminary, the precursor institution to Bates College. Introduction When thinking about the financial history of Bates College, there is one name that immediately comes to mind: Benjamin Bates. In recent years, Benjamin Bates’s life and legacy has become a point of interest as we, like other colleges, grapple with our early history. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/zooniverse/ Tue, 04 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/zooniverse/ Time to venture into the Zooniverse! On Friday, I had the privilege of presenting my ongoing work with the Bates Museum of Art at our annual student research conference, the Mount David Summit. I was placed in the Research in STEM presentation session, which I found a bit funny. The two presentations before me were on biology and neuroscience thesis research, so my talk was certainly something different! To refresh your memory: I'm currently working with the Bates Museum of Art to develop a digital crowdsourcing platform to collect keyword tags for the almost 10,000 works in the Museum collection. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2023-03-12-back-to-the-murals/ Sun, 12 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2023-03-12-back-to-the-murals/ I presented my first webinar! I was so happy when the Rufus Porter Museum reached out to me last fall to ask if I'd be interested in presenting my summer project as part of the Museum's virtual lecture series! I was honored to have this opportunity to share this project with a bigger audience, and to have a reason to expand my research. Thank you again to the Rufus Porter Museum for inviting me to speak! https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/v4h-nd-rankings/ Sun, 05 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/v4h-nd-rankings/ Let’s do some Nancy Drew analysis! Back story: I love Nancy Drew - the character, the books, and especially the point-and-click adventure games by HerInteractive. Even though these games are by no means the world’s most well-known computer games, there is a vibrant online presence of ND fans, including, for the past couple years, Vote4Holt. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/new-project/ Thu, 05 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/new-project/ Long time no see! Friends, it’s been a very busy semester and holiday season. But, I want to share some updates before the winter semester starts next week! New Digital Exhibit I took two wonderful history classes this semester. Taking Technology in US History was an absolute highlight for me; the course started out solidly in my 18th and 19th century comfort zone, covering railroads, mills, and agriculture, but by the second half we were talking about modern technology that I regularly use but hadn’t thought about critically. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2022-06-14-to-shiny-or-not-to-shiny/ Tue, 14 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/2022-06-14-to-shiny-or-not-to-shiny/ That is the question… Shiny is one of my favorite R packages. For those who aren’t R enthusiasts (or those who are but haven’t yet been introduced to Shiny), Shiny is an R package that allows you to create interactive applications. With a single script, you can super easily create a UI and server that will take user input and generate graphs, tables, text, and even maps. So far, I’ve mostly used Shiny to level up my leaflet game. https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/rpm-week-one/ Sat, 04 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://dressing-up-data.netlify.app/post/rpm-week-one/ Figure 1: Mural from the Francis Howe House, painted by Rufus Porter and Stephen Twombly Porter in 1838. Photo by David Bohl via the University of Maine. Happy summer! This week I started my summer internship at the Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity in Bridgton, Maine. The RPM is a very small museum - I’m one of three employees at the moment - so I really get to see all the different sides of running a museum.