As part of the standard proposal process in our doctoral program, we have to list the sources we use for research and the most common search terms or combinations of serch terms. At its best, this requirement is a way to help students be aware of potential conversation partners for their project. The danger is, this kind of listing can foster a research disposition of totalizing comprehensiveness that simply isn’t possible and can get in the way of closely engaging a few interesting conversation partners. I offer this list of datasources and possible search algorithms as hints at possibilities and hope that others will share conversation partners along the way. For a discussion of the processes guiding my curation of a proximate bible, see curating the conversation.
datasources The mentions, notes, and echoes of the artifacts, textual or otherwise, I encounter along the way are my primary datasource. The vast majority of the video I use comes from youtube, which is also where I house my own video and audio recordings. When I am searching for images, I usually begin with my own photos. If I have nothing of my own that works for a particular use, I search flickr creative commons licensed images to embed. If I am searching for ideas of images to use in the project, I often search AP Images, ARTStore, Rhizome, and google images. Once I get a better idea of the image type that will work for a particular need, I look for a creative commons licensed or public domain image that is similar.
When I search for monographs, I use WorldCat and Prospector to balance both breadth and availability. The databases I begin with are ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, Old Testament Abstracts, New Testament Abstracts, JSTOR, Academic Search Complete, and ProQuest Religion. When I have specific inquiries into Jewish Studies or Philosophy, I will search Index to Jewish Periodicals and Philosopher’s Index, respectively. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses and Religious and Theological Abstracts also provide some possible points of conversation. For general media studies resources, I use Communication & Mass Media Complete and Sage’s Communication Studies full-text collection. The open access journal Kairos provides a marvelous source both for meaningful conversation partners for this kind of digital humanities project and for examples of practicing scholarship in a medium that is otherwise than print.
Without a doubt, even with all of these datasources and the search algorithms outlined below, I have missed or underrepresented more potential conversation partners than I can count and that number grows every day.
search algorithms I am experimenting with an aggregation of social media streams realted to the search terms below. I use the social media aggregator rebelmouse to aggregate twitter feeds based on hashtags constructed from the search terms below. I will continue to tweak the feeds and filters to be more selective based on the evolving focus of my research. This aggregate feed can be found at religiobooks on rebelmouse. Some of the hashtags used are
#materialbible #bookhistory #digitalreligion #simulacrum
Here is a representative sample of the search algorithms I use when exploring potential conversation partners in the datasources listed in the previous section.
anarchic meaning making Levinas + bibl* (bible, biblical) Levinas + book Levinas + proximity Levinas + anarch* (anarchy, anarchic) thirdspace Soja + thirdspace thirdspace + bibl* (bible, biblical) thirdspace+ religion thirdspace + book thirdspace + practice thirdspace + media simulacrum Baudrillard + simula* (simulation, simulacrum) simulacrum + religion simulacrum + bibl* (bible, biblical) simulacrum + book simulacrum + (new) media Benjamin + fragment Benjamin + arcade
material bible material + scripture material + bible material + book bibl* (bible, biblical) + book bibl* (bible, biblical) + codex bibl* (bible, biblical) + internet bibl* (bible, biblical) + mobile bibl* (bible, biblical) + technology digital + book digital + religion digital + bibl* (bible, biblical) media + bibl* (bible, biblical) media + religion cultural history cultural history + bible moses + paul + veil