Research Questions

Our meeting this past Monday concluded with a series of ideas for framing basic research questions in both the Year of the Bay (YOTB) and Railroads projects.  In attendance were: Jake Coolidge, Ryan Heuser and Matt Bryant from CESTA staff, plus Richard White and yours' truly, ZLF, representing Stanford.  Jon Christensen, UCLA, and leader for YOTB joined remotely, as did Erik Steiner of CESTA based in Eugene OR.  Jon Voss played the central part, orchestrating a discussion from his seat in San Francisco.  Almost a crowd.

The primary focus of the meeting was planning for the launch of phase 2 of YOTB and phase 1 of Railroads.  In addition, important ideas relating to the Novels project came to light toward the end of the meeting.  Without further ado:

Research Questions--YOTB
Riffing on the ideas that he's developed over the past six months in prepping for phase 1, Christensen indicated two primary lines for research: 1) can the local crowd in the Bay Area assist in filling in information in order to answer questions we already have about the environment, urbanization, etc?  2) can the crowd, with its knowledge, help us to generate new questions, to ask things we might not have thought of or thought possible without their help?  We also broached the issue of engagement strategy--how to use the traditional press to get the word out, how to tap into social media.  This led to a discussion of metrics.  How to measure "success" in getting a crowd, holding its attention, and generating powerful research results.  Answers to any of the three components would be valuable.

Research Questions--Railroads
First thing, we came up with a better name for this part of the project: "Living with the Railroads"  The new name puts an emphasis on the kinds of questions we'd like to ask.  White formulated a series of questions he thought the crowd might be able to help answer:
1) basic questions drawing on specific knowledge, such as "can you identify the kinds of trees in this photo taken next to the railway line?" or "what kind of crop is growing next to the tracks?"  The idea is not going to be to identify railroad minutiae per se--what kind of locomotive, etc., but to get the crowd to add information about the environment (natural and built) around the railroads in the 19th century.
2) questions regarding life around the railroad and the towns it passed through, perhaps focusing first on the Southern Pacific.  These might include questions that would draw on the expertise of genealogists as well as railroad buffs; on local history societies as well as institutions such as the CA Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

Finally, Ryan Heuser put forward an idea for using the power of the crowd to read and interpret passages of novels referring to geographical places.  This would use the existing strengths of Historypin and also allow the crowd to jump in and contribute something useful without necessarily having to read a whole novel or even more than a few hundred words around the place name.

...

Today we meet with Dave Martens, railroad expert and potential contributor.  To be continued...

ZLF