Since most of my research will be done online through TPL's online catalogue, I do not expect there to be much research that cannot be easily documented and kept over a long period of time. I plan to use Excel sheets to document research so that can easily be stored in the cloud (i.e. Dropbox) where it is most likely safe from computer crashes. As for the interview part of my research (the more epistemology aspect), transcripts of the interviews done between myself and TPL librarians can be typed on a Microsoft Word document and also put into the cloud. Furthermore, idealistically if my research was to be approved and implemented, depending on the results discovered, the TPL catalogue might change to reflex my findings. In this sense, the online catalogue (for LGBTQ children's books) will always reflex my findings because changes would be made to have subject searches which were not in place before.
On a totally unrelated note, this week's topic reminded me a lot of a movie I recently watched,
Hector and the Search for Happiness (which is also a book, just FYI!). In the movie, Hector travels to China to search for happiness and tries to document what makes people happy. I think it relates to this week's topic because happiness can arguably be something that is ultimately not measurable and unable to be document as concrete research to prove something. It reminded me of David Philip's performance-based research and how it is very unique to the research and academic world.
(Retrieved from: http://dailynova.org/movie-review-hector-search-happiness/)
Hey Eleni, I like your thinking in storing information in places that wont crash, like dropbox. My only concern with that would be privacy and ethical concerns. I'm not sure if this is too much of a concern for your project, but if there was a way to encode dropbox or password protect the certain files you upload so that they for sure could not be accessed by anyone else, might be a thing to look into. Or not, I guess it depends on how much this concerns your project! Just a thought.
ReplyDeleteI think a common idea that's dispersed through our group's blog is the benefits that come with data storage in a cloud. Generally, I suppose the benefits are derived from the idea that this is a more protected way of data storage - water damages books, but can't ruin clouds. This always makes me consider the other side - what happens if a cloud goes down? In this case, what happens if Dropbox shuts down? What happens to all of the content? I guess I'm not 100% convinced of the security of digital storage.
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