By Arielle Feuerstein
For my first real task at Remix, naturally I had to pick a direction for my research. I just joined the team this summer, and although I am an avid reader, my previous understanding of how digital technologies can intersect with literature did not extend beyond my experience using an e-reader. When it came time to pick a project, I knew I would need to delve deeper into the Remix blog’s archives to fully appreciate the pulse of the digital humanities.
Professor Warren first pointed me toward Remix’s Wishlist. Written in 2015, near the inception of the entire Remix project, the post lists eleven ideas, with a brief description. It occurred to me that each new researcher that joins Remix likely dredges the same preliminary list from the blog’s archives — I was treading the same ground that past researchers had already walked upon. Even though the list was written nearly seven years ago, the post has longevity, and has been almost immortalized as a guide to new members of the project; it lies dormant until a new researcher once again turns to it for guidance.
While the wishlist is seven years old and may not be the first post that you would stumble across if you were just browsing the blog, it is by no means inaccessible, or even difficult to find. In the main navigation menu of the blog, the Wishlist has its own tab, so I’d be willing to bet that the list is metaphorically unearthed with far more frequency than many of the older posts without near-direct menu navigation. But what about those concepts that never make it to publication?
When I was selecting a project, I was drawn to several different ideas, with various existing research to base my work off. I settled on researching digital transcription tools, with the intent of eventually exploring whether these technologies have the potential to change editorial theory or alter how we understand medieval manuscripts. Professor Warren had told me that another researcher had attempted the project before, but when I searched in the tags on the blog to familiarize myself with the existing dialogue on the subject, I found nearly no published discussion.
However, my interest in the transcription project reminded Professor Warren of a spreadsheet of available transcription tools that one student, Jennifer Zhong, aggregated in 2016. In the process of searching for this elusive spreadsheet, she found an entire Google Drive folder of Remix-related information that had lain dormant and forgotten for who knows how long — including the transcription tools spreadsheet and the beginning of work by another student, Qinyu Wang. Some of the material was so old that the original creators had left Dartmouth, their Dartmouth Google accounts had been deactivated, and there was little digital trace of their identities left.
Although Jennifer and Qinyu never published their digital transcription tools research, it is notable how that work is still guiding me over half a decade later. In revisiting a dormant project, there has been a reconfiguration of digital information related to Remix, and who knows what else we may uncover. For now, I am looking at the thread of explorations that preceded me, and I am excited to pick up that thread where past researchers left off.
