RK Review of PfF

Evaluation of Project

Best Practices for Digital Humanities Projects with “Petitioning for Freedom”

Summary of Best Practices

Overall the project does not follow all best practices for Digital Humanities projects. PFF suffers from documentation issues, with no planning document, and not sharing their methodology and research steps. “Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924” does have Digital Humanities goals, values, and makes cultural data easily accessible. The lack documentation really stops the project from following best practices.

Best Practices – In Depth

  1. 1 Page Planning Document
    • This project doesn’t provide a 1 page planning document for the research done. The tools and methodologies are scattered across a few different affiliated websites, so if one wanted to look for that information, it’s not as easy as one click.
  2. Research Question or Creative Goal
    • The research question is not strictly laid out, but through reading the related research article, its most likely something along the lines of:
      • “How do the collective experiences and individual petitioners influence habeas procedure and American law and policy?”
  3. Purpose and Audience
    • The purpose is to analyze the use of habeas corpus in the American West, particularly with marginalized communities. The audience for this research is law scholars and those interested in learning about how habeas corpus has affected their area or lineage.
  4. Project Goal
    • The PFF team wants to study how individuals utilized the law and how legal systems developed and have people explore and learn about family or local history.
  5. Data
    • The data is gathered from tons of different sources, including old court records, censuses, autobiographical/biographical writings, and primary sources
    • They give an overview of how data is collected and put into their systems, but it’s not super thorough
    • There are privacy concerns when it comes to sharing biographies and court records. These were real people who experienced these things, and cannot give their consent to the team at PFF because they have since passed away. As far as the team has shared, they did not contact family members either.
  6. Documentation
    • While the tools and the uses behind them are relatively well documented on the CDRH website, the methodology and actual steps behind the research are lacking. A small summary appears in the research article, but not much beyond that is shared with the public.
  7. Collaborators and Stakeholders