Episode #1: Have You Heard of This Yahoo?!

Stacy Snyder started library school around the same time the World Wide Web was getting started. In our pilot episode, Natalia talks to Stacy about this has led to a widely unexpected career path. We also talk about minimal computing, questionable online universities, and whether Natalia can say the word "cognizant." 

Transcript

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Natalia: Hello, and welcome to Digital Explorer, where I talk to people about digital scholarship and our relationships with computers, I'm Natalia Estrada.

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Natalia: Do you remember your first time encountering a computer? The first time you got to play around or complete a task on one? How about the internet? Do you remember what that was like for the first time being online? I'm a person who thinks about these things a lot. And as an academic librarian who spends a good amount of time in the digital realm, it helps to know about how people interact with computers, and the internet on an academic level, and the whole, but I always wondered whether your introduction to this space has any effect on your research your teaching, or just you in general.

Stacy: I have a memory and I don't remember if this was in high school or in college, of being in a room full of Apple II E's and learning how to do Basic programming. I mean, like programming in Basic.

Natalia: This is Stacy.

Stacy: I’m Stacy Snyder, I am co-director of the Digital Scholarship Studio and Network and Digital Scholarship Specialist working with open access publishing.

Natalia: Stacey and I work together at the University of Buffalo's libraries system. She's also had a relationship with computers that not only coincided with major shifts in the information sphere, but also impacted her career path. I talked to Stacy about this, and how her experiences also shaped her views on equity and inclusion.

Stacy: Actually, now that I'm thinking about it in high school, we didn't have in some classes, we had access to computers. And again, Apple II E's for things like like to augment, I wouldn't say history class, maybe I don't know, it's been a very long time. And then when I started college, I started as an engineering major, which is a whole thing. But one of the prerequisites that I had to have was an introduction to computers class. And it was very, very introductory. And I think that the the person who was teaching it read ahead in the book, like one chapter before we did. You know, it was, yeah, so that was a very, very rudimentary kind of work.

Natalia: But did you ever feel like it was one of those tools or like something that felt like, there was a steep learning curve, and only a few people got to learn about at that time?

Stacy: Um, well, yes. And not only because of the definitely a learning curve thing, because like, having to know, programming, and because I was in an engineering major, one of the very first semester I had to take programming. And that experience showed me very quickly that I am not a programmer. So anything that was anything that dealt with having to program I just stayed away from because I just, I can't wrap my brain around that. Another barrier. It for me at that time was socio economic. So I knew there were some people that I went to school with who had computers at home, but they were the exception because this was in the 80s. And, you know, the one guy that I can think of, both of his parents were professors, and they had, so he had a computer at home. And, you know, I imagine was much more fluent in it, then I was, you know, that I would become eventually but not at that point. So, you know, being having access to computers, once I got to college was, you know, finally, like opening that door.

Natalia: That felt like a common trope that I've noticed, were like, early on. So like, there's that characterization that like people who are really good at computers are really gatekeeping about it. And people have made the theory that it can be tied to the fact that they had the advantage of having access at home And so they want to be able to continue having that privilege that exclusionary privilege in comp sigh at that time. I don't know, if you would agree with

Stacy: I wonder if that is sort of a legacy sort of idea. Because, you know, I don't remember off the top of my head when the first personal computer was widely available. But it wasn't that long before I was in high school. So I think that I think that that idea that exclusionary thing is maybe something in large part in the past, but because I think that computing devices are so ubiquitous now, that you know, even though and I certainly don't mean to imply that everyone has equal access, because that is not the case, of course. But I think that it's that people have more access than they ever have in the past. So I think that that's, you know, something like, when I was in high school, I could never have imagined that we have that we would ever have the computing power and capacity and ubiquity that we have now, like, my first the computer that I had in library school, had to have you had to do something to the BIOS to get it to accept a hard drive are larger than 540 megabytes. So I'm completely aging myself, and…

Natalia: That's fine. It's, it's fine. It actually provides really good context.

Stacy: Yeah. Yeah.

Natalia: So do you have a similar memory? Or a very vivid memory of your first interaction with the Internet?

Stacy: Yes, that was in library school. Well, actually, yeah, I would say library school because before that, in undergrad, you know, I was using computers for, you know, word processing and things like that. But there were, I wasn't online, per se, because at that point, it was, most people went online for gaming, or for like, chat rooms, and, you know, message boards and stuff like that. And, and I just wasn't, that wasn't my thing. Not that I didn't game, but I did, you know, like standalone install on your computer, play by yourself, you know, kind of games like Tetris, and you know, stuff like that. So when I got to library school, I got started library school in 1994. And that's about when Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. So I remember vividly, you know, learning about that, because it was synchronized. So closely to when I was in when I started library school, it kind of followed me along. So, you know, I, one of the library, school faculty, her husband worked in CIT. And so he was, you know, a computer guy. And he puts got it together a group of student library school students who are interested in learning HTML. That's how I learned HTML. And I remember taking an advanced cataloguing class and the professor coming in and she was just, well, she was a, she could be a flamboyant person to begin with. And she walked in and just slammed her books down on the desk at the front end said, “Have you heard about this, Yahoo, we will no longer be necessary.” Like, yeah, who is going to catalog all of the web and they won't need librarians anymore? So those are two very big memories for me. And then, right when I finished library school, you know, I was, you know, looking around for a job and I got so weird. I got a web development job, like a freelance thing with this. Looking back on it, so sketchy guy and like, couple who were starting like an online university, and put quotes around that entire thing, like an online university. So they're like, well, we want a website. So you know, I knew HTML, I could do it. And, you know, thinking back on it, you know, it was a typical 1995/1996 website. It was not pretty, but I got paid and then I you know, finally got a real job and gladly left that behind because I pretty sure that they probably would have gotten arrested at some point. And…

Natalia: So you're saying that the online university is not open anymore?

Stacy: I you know, I haven't looked for it, but I would suspect

Stacy: …but wouldn't it be wild but we're still there and it still had my…

Natalia: it's still giving out degrees. It's accredited now.

Stacy: Yeah. You know, anyway, so yeah, that was then I got my first one of my first positions at UB was as a webmaster in the School of Management.

Natalia: So, so that leads to my next question, how do those experiences influence your, you know, your work experience or your research, your projects, any of the stuff that you're working on now? How does that shape you?

Stacy: Um, I think that just the path that I ended up taking out of library school with the working first in the School of Management is their webmaster. And, and that evolved into, including technical support and stuff to my next position was in the Educational Technology Center, which was doing, you know, creating a lot of websites for faculty and, and that evolved over time into learning management systems and content management systems, like content, DM, and just everything that I have done in my career has somehow involved the web. And whether that was, you know, creating websites for faculty or creating digital collections, or, you know, in my position now, you know, kind of more of a web based applications kind of thing of, you know, not, rather than creating websites, myself, using applications that other people have created on websites that are that are run online, you know, things like Scalar, and Omeka.net, and things like that. So it's just I can't, I think that I wouldn't, I would have my career, I think, would have taken a completely different path. If it hadn't been for my experience with the web, I think I would have been, you know, somehow managed to become a, you know, regular librarian instead of, you know, this sort of hybrid thing turned out to be, you know, and in some ways, it's only incidentally, that I'm actually working in the libraries. Because, you know, some point in my time in the Educational Technology Center, the director, the second director of the Center was a librarian. And at that point, the center came under the libraries. And that's the only reason that I am in the libraries now.

Natalia: That's actually pretty great. So, to go back a little. If someone were to ask you, what, what is it that you do? I know, because you cover a lot of things. Would you be able to describe it?

Stacy: Well, I've actually tried to do this with my kids, because occasionally they'll be like, what do you do? Like, stuff? So the things that I do with the DSSN I view kind of like being a matchmaker.

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Stacy: Finding out or knowing what one faculty member is working on with a project and seeing if there's anyone else in the university who's working on a similar thing, and could they collaborate.

Natalia: So imagine, if you will, though, you have a project on the history of loganberry drink. It's a regional drink flavor that was first served at the Crystal beach amusement park in Ontario, Canada, and then spread throughout Western New York. And although the park is shut down, you can still get the flavor and a bunch of places in Buffalo and in the rest of the area. I recommend the loganberry ice cream flavor from Lake Effects Ice Cream on Hertel. It's kind of like the best part of a semi melted red icee.

Natalia: Anyway, imagine that you want to set up a history project on the history of the loganberry drink flavor, because it is very specific to Western New York and you think it should be shared. And you have set up a digital exhibit. You have set up an oral history collection of those that remember their first time drinking loganberry drink. But you also want to do something that shows the spread of its influence. And you want to do a map. You have no idea how to do a map. And so what Stacey can do is you can say hey, I know someone who's great with mapping but also loves regional food history, they might be helpful. So that's what she means by matchmaker.

Stacy: And sometimes that is, you know, a specific request from faculty a to find, you know, someone else, sometimes it's just, you know, having conversations with people and having that, you know, that spark of Oh, you're working on this? Oh, did you know that so and so is working on this part? And, you know, maybe you might want to talk so, and I think that probably that informal? Oh, yeah, did you know is probably happens more often than a formal, let's go out and find you a partner. And the presentations that we have in the DSSN are? Well, a large part of them is to just educate people on what digital scholarship is happening at the university. Another part of that is the hope that it will engender these partnerships, you know, that maybe someone will see a project that they find really interesting and, and, you know, contact the faculty member that's working on it, or, you know, might see a relationship research that they're already doing. So that's part of my job. And, you know, and there's the, you know, the, the persnickety things with that, and like, you know, making sure the website is updated. And sometimes I do that sometimes we have a student assistant who does it and, you know, making sure the calendars are updated, and that the registration works. And the, you know, the Zoom stuff is all created for the presentations and things like that. So that kind of like, you know, hands on just getting the details worked out kind of thing is something I do.

Stacy: And then the other part, honestly, is something that I've been kind of figuring out over the last couple of years, because I've only been then I started in this position in April 2019. And so both the DSSN part and the scholarly communication team part are kind of have been evolving, I would say over that time. So I've been doing a lot to educate myself about open educational resources and open access publishing, and, you know, kind of trying to figure out where I fit in that and how I can contribute to the team and to the libraries and the university as a whole with that. So a lot of what I've been doing is just educating myself, as much of that, as I can, you know, broadly, you know, scholarly communication broadly, as well as you specifically are we ours, open access publishing and stuff like that. And now I'm, I guess I'm the UB lead for the SUNY Create project. So that is, you know, trying to get the Domain of One's Own applications available to anyone. And so that's just a matter of getting the word out, really. And I think, you know, since I'm the the main contact person, I kind of welcome a trickle of interest, I don't want to have a flood of interest, because I'm one person. And I don't think that I would be able to manage that appropriately if it came as a flood. But, you know, I think we're doing well with, you know, starting out with faculty who are using press books, and getting them up to speed with that. And we have one faculty member who was using Candela with through Lumen. And it became apparent fairly quickly what the limitations for that were. So I was really, really excited when I found out about SUNY create, and that we would have access to actual press books with that, and you know, everything that one can do with press books that you can't do with Candela because of the way it's been sort of locked down and optimized for them.

Natalia: And can you talk about SUNY Create and Domain for One’s Own for someone who may not be familiar with those projects and why they're important?

Stacy: Sure. Domain of Ones Own is hosting service, basically, where, you know, any individual can pay a fairly small amount every year, I think it's under $50 a year for domain hosting, and it gets you get access to I think hundreds of applications and you decide what application you want. So for example, if you say, are a faculty member and you have a project that involves images and you want to be able to present those images in some sort of a like an exhibit or you know, some other way so that people We'll can see the images, your metadata for them that kind of thing. You could go in to Domain of One's Own, or in this instance, sorry, back up a little bit. SUNY create is SUNY’s instance of Domain of One’s Own. So SUNY has put in the money to pay for, I think it's 1000 users to use Domain of One’s Own. So if it were UB faculty or any SUNY faculty, they could request their own spot in SUNY Create, they would get their own account, they could go in and then say, I want to use omega, so they would install Omeka, and when they install it, it's installed in the cloud, it's not something that's on their computer. And then they can use it, put their images up, create their exhibits, whatever it is that they want to do with that, and then that becomes available, and they're not paying out of their own pocket for that.

Stacy: There are a lot of other applications in there, there's PressBooks, like I mentioned, so if you wanted to write a textbook, could just do that, and PressBooks. And that's, you know, fairly straightforward. There is, let's see, I mentioned Omeka, there's something called Scalar, which is for it's hard to describe Scalar. It's sort of a multimedia multimodal textual interface where you can tell stories and create timelines and things like that. And it's just, it's very fun to explore and put content in there and see how it can work. And there, there are loads of other applications that I can't even remember things that are very, very specialized to things that are more general, like you could do a WordPress site from there, things like that.

Natalia: I think one thing you brought up also is that there's a lot of things around researchers, there's like so many options, so much information out there. And I think one important role you play and feel free to, you know, either agree or disagree with me is that you help it make it easier for people to find these things. Because we expect a lot of people to be able to use the internet and just be able to just find it very easily. But there's so many layers, and there's so many routes that people can take, finding information, that they can take a little bit longer or get really frustrated or just not be able to find it.

Stacy: Right. Yeah. And I, I do think that that is something that I tried to do. And thank you for mentioning that, that to you there, there's so much available, you know, just speaking specifically about tools that can be used for digital scholarship, you know, even that, you know, narrowing the web down that much, there's still so much out there. And it seems like there's something new being brought out every day. And there's the that kind of the path of do I like I want to do this thing? Can I do this thing? And how what what are the tools for that. And finding that on your own can be just mind boggling, so hard sometimes. So it's nice to be able to go to someone and say, you know, this is what I want to do, can I do it and have that person have an understanding not of not necessarily everything that's out there, because that's impossible, but to have some sense of like, the best ones to choose for any given application, like you know, if you want to do GIS, then you want to look at these things, if you want to do exhibits of images, then you want to come over here and and like to give some options and you know, pros and cons for different things, rather than trying to swim through it all on your own, you know, having a guidance, useful thing. And as the person who was trying to keep up with that, and you know, to be able to recommend the best things, it's, it can be overwhelming at times, which is why having colleagues like you who can say, “Hey, I found this isn't that cool? And you know, I'm gonna look into this more,” is it's very useful.

Natalia: It helps having people around who could be like, “I found a thing on yeah, here you go. Do you like it?”

Stacy: Yeah. And then you get someone like me who, you know, as I said, I don't program and it's just not in my brain. And so I'll see something. It's like, oh, this is really, really cool. And then I'll go look at it. And it's like, oh, it's very cool. If you know how to do Python and, you know, or you know, some other programming or you know how to, like when it becomes word soup, what I'm reading, because it's like I need to back away from this. This is not something that I can recommend to a faculty member if I don't understand what they're talking about.

Natalia: I think that's another thing too that we you know, A lot of people don't consider when it comes to things that can be made on the internet, or things that are digitally made is the level of accessibility. You can say like a person who's completely new to something, be able to use these tools, we see all these new software that are coming out. But then, you know, you already have to have an experience understanding what they're talking about, like, “here's this new static website generator, you may want to understand what Ruby is.” And for. And for a lot of people, they don't get that exposure.

Stacy: Yeah, exactly. And like we I know, you and I have talked about the like the more basic computing like…

Natalia: Oh, minimalist computing!

Stacy: Minimalist computing, thank you.

Natalia: So a bit about minimal computing. It's a set of principles in which computing is done under a series of constraints, whether it's the type of hardware you have, or the lack of access to certain software, lack of training, or just the lack of power, maybe in your area. There's a group of practitioners and digital scholarship that have been putting out tools and ideas around the practice, we'll put a link in our list of references, and you should go check it out.

Stacy: And a lot of this, yeah, like you said, it's like, well, “yeah, it's minimalist. If you know how to script.” Yeah, you can make that it's like, give me minimalist, where I can use something that I already know, like, create a spreadsheet, and then upload it. And it magically transforms into a static, minimalist website that I can do. Most people in academia, I think, understand how to use a spreadsheet, it at least basically, they probably have looked at Excel and maybe used it for something whether they used it properly or not, is, you know, another question, but you know, the at least it's not like, You're not telling someone to, you know, sit down and learn how to do this, learn this programming language before you can start working on the project you actually want to work on, we're saying open up Excel, or Google Sheets and start from there. And you know, those are the applications that I appreciate both because for myself, because it's easier for me to use. And because I know that I can, in good conscience, recommend it to a faculty member who does not have a program or on their payroll.

Natalia: And what's interesting is that, so we have that side of the argument. But then we also have this whole discussion around people who use like a graphic interface, graphic user interface, or GUI, as we'll keep calling it, where it is much easier and much more approachable. But you have one this distance between how you are interacting with the computer. But also, there's also this question of like maintaining it, and like all these extra levels of work. And so, you know, there is all these drawbacks to being able to do certain projects, but also different advantages. It's really dependent on like, how much are you able, like, what are the restrictions that are placed on you to be able to complete these projects?

Stacy: Yeah. And I think in a way that goes back to that sort of the gatekeeping, that you were talking about earlier, that those of us see who use the programs, like someone else has written this, I'm using it, whether it's a Microsoft product, or omega or you know, something in Google or you know, something like that, but it's like something with the GUI, give me the GUI, I will work with it. And I will make it do what I need to do. So there's that. But then there's that gulf between that and the people who are programmers, and who can get into the the nitty gritty background of it not with you know, Microsoft products, of course, but with like open source software, things like that, where they could get in and, and yeah, maybe they can do things that I, as the user of the GUI cannot do. But though, it's sometimes comes across as the programmers are better than the people who just use the interface, because they can get into the guts of it. So it makes them somehow better people or more professional or whatever. Like if you have to resort to using the GUI, then you're not really using it properly. And that's something that I have seen over and over over the years. And it's like, well, you know, it's a democratizing thing. Having the GUI, it's like, if I want to create a spreadsheet, I don't want I don't need to know how that spreadsheet does what it does. I just need it to do what I need it to do.

Stacy: I'm reminded also back in the, you know, the early days of the web, there was a big, you know, once, once there were HTML editors available there became, you know, and then so you got the basic text editor were like, yeah, maybe you don't have to type the entire tag, maybe you can just, you know, click and select a tag or something. And then it got into things like Dreamweaver and things like that, where you were, where it was a completely graphical interface. And you could create an entire website without ever touching HTML. And so, you know, there, I lived through that progression, you know, I learned how to write HTML from scratch, it takes a while to type all those tags. And I went through, like, various iterations. And I remember creating macros in Word to put in tags, so I didn't have to type the same thing over and over again.

Natalia: So I think one topic that we're kind of skirting a little. And I know you've done a lot of work in is in social justice and equity and inclusion. Can you talk about more of your work and how this also ties in?

Stacy: Oh, gosh!

Natalia: Hey, so just cutting in for a moment here. Stacy does a lot of work with our equity and social justice group, which include forming a faculty hiring taskforce, a facility taskforce looking into retention of staff in the library, specifically stuff of color and making library more welcoming. But I figured, because it was such a lot of work, I wanted to make that its own separate minisode. But I do want to connect it back to the topic of our relationship with computers and digital scholarship. So look out for that in the future. In the meantime, we're going to go back to what we like to call very intense work. Thanks.

Natalia: Let's get back to it.

Natalia: It sounds like there's a lot of intensive work going on here in terms of equity and inclusion. But I also kind of want to tie into the fact that it's good that it's really intense. And especially if you think about your work with the DSSN, where there is this old tired idea that would comp sci fi or like programming or whatnot, this, it's fairly neutral, it doesn't see color. But we know from like much smarter people than then like Safiya Noble and Ruha Benjamin, that there have been a lot of groups have been left out of computational work. There's more promotion of Black DH and Latinx DH, but also your earlier statement of making it more welcoming, if you want to elaborate a little bit more about how that it's all connected. But I feel like with the way that the DSN is showing some of these programs and some of these projects, if feels like you don't have to know these things already. Please come and experiment with us.

Stacy: Yeah, and a lot of I mentioned the presentations that we do, and we do try to make sure that we have a varied slate of presenters each semester. And I think that we've done a pretty good job of that, you know, there have been a couple of semesters where Cris, my co director, and I have looked at the list, it's like, wow, this is very white male. So who can we get to kind of shake things up a little bit in the you know, make it not quite like that. And and we have, I think that we've done well, we've had our symposium and spring of 2021 was about algorithmic bias. And we had, let's see, all of our speakers identify as female and We had one of our speakers was left next queer woman, we had a native faculty member who was, she was a visiting faculty member. Now, I think she is actually here, here. Now, she was not a moderator, she did an introduction. And then she was, you know, heavily involved with the discussion afterwards. So we've really concentrated on that. And having this spring, our symposium is on indigenous access and indigenous rights to their own information, basically, and so that we're hoping to have tie ins with the new Indigenous Studies Department in somehow, whether it's just their stamp of approval on it, or activities, and coordinating depending on you know, whether we can do it in person or not. So, you know, we're trying to one thing that I try to do myself when I'm working on something, is to try to look at it, and figure out if I'm excluding people, inadvertently, and if there's a way for me to open that up, and there are some things it's like, yeah, if you're just like writing an email, that's nothing but you know, somebody that's going to be out there, it's like, am I being, you know, even if it's something like, Have I done all of the accessibility checks on a Word document, before I convert it to PDF, to make sure that it's that it's usable by a screen reader, you know, things like that, that I think just need to become part of the everyday process for people.

Natalia: So I do have one more question. Because I want to be [mumble]… cognizant of time. I know words. Is there anything that you see in the future of the digital space and libraries that you're excited about, or that you want to explore more?

Stacy: I'm excited about digital scholarship, I just think that there's so much potential there. And that I think that librarians are working on that maybe more than we realize, because maybe they're not the main person doing the work, but they're supporting faculty who are doing it. And so their fingers are in that. And I'm also really excited about the potential of OER. And open access publishing, just, you know, the, the cost of textbooks, as we know, is just ridiculous. And anything that we can do to try to ameliorate that, I think is huge. And that's an accessibility issue from any number of angles, whether it's, you know, an ability issue of, you know, making sure that things can be read in multiple formats, to accessibility by people who don't have the means to purchase that $500 textbook, and reaching out with to the global sells and all of this, there's so much round equity involved with open access and OER of it's just, you know, I think that that can only get better the more people become aware of it.

Natalia: I think that's fair. I think more people are starting to get more aware of it, but I think more promoting of is going to be super useful. Also. Yeah, talking to your librarian.

Stacy: [laugh] Yeah.

Natalia: Stacey, thank you so much for joining me and for talking with me about digital space and scholarship.

Stacy: Oh, you're welcome. And thanks for asking.

[jingle]

Natalia: That was Stacy Snyder, co-director of the Digital Scholarship Studio and Network at the UB libraries.

Stacy: And talk to people at parties would be my one of my niece's brought a friend with her to our family Christmas gathering, and he's an engineering student here. And we were chatting and he asked what I did and I was talking about, started talking about OERs with him and open access. And I said, you know, being an engineering student, you know, how expensive textbooks are. And so I was explained to him what those are and you know, I should probably apologize to him and I hadn't even been drinking. It was just…

[laughter]

Natalia: …Sober, sober Stacy talks about OER!

Stacy: Sober Stacy trying to you know, evangelize. OER at the Christmas party. I am a lot of fun at a party

Natalia: I want to hang out with!

Natalia: Digital Explorer was produced, written and hosted by me, Natalia Estrada. Support provided by the UB libraries. We have a list of the resources mentioned in the episode including where you can find them in the UB Library's Special thanks to Omar Brown, Nicole Thomas, Stacy Snyder, Chris Hollister, Matthew Faytak, and the cat, Jasmine. Thank you and we'll see you online