- What skills or knowledge from your coursework are you using in your internship? Have you noticed a difference between theory and practice? Why or why not?
The skills for a digital humanities internship that I have learned through this course, including textual analysis and website exhibits are constantly evolving due to new software or programs.As new software and programs are constantly emerging, it is important to be able to adapt and learn new things quickly.
Project management skills are paramount. It is necessary to be able to plan and organize tasks, set deadlines, and manage resources effectively. This includes managing time and prioritizing tasks to ensure the project is completed and I did not fully appreciate how fast these projects should be done in learning the theories of digital humanities work.
In theory, exhibits and writing on websites marketing these exhibits for museums or my work is similar to marketing for a business or marketing in general. The use of social media and marketing skills, in theory is similar to how it is in reality. The significant differences in approach are one person versus a team working on a website and project development.
In the current internship that I am now in, the role of the team is much larger than I had learned in the coursework. It takes many different skills to work on the database, the website, the writing, and the transcribing. In theory, one digital humanities person could do this work, but the speed and diversity of knowledge base shows the large difference in completion of projects and database building that only happens with a team of people.
The skills from my history coursework are the same as in theory and as in practice in writing about research topics I have found within the transcription work. The transcriptions and the database can be used to write and further discover trends of early London and the plagues, geographic differences or causes of death. Individual historians of science or medicine can use their skills of research and apply that in practice as the database and website for the bills of mortality become fully publicly available.
