Digital_Humanities, Weekly Update 10/27: Hitting Walls

I've been progressing through the most recent work in my Digital Humanities course fairly smoothly, so of course, there is some other aspect that is proving difficult. In the class, we are putting together a website about the history of the Albuquerque Sunport, and my initial goal was to find some oral histories that pertained to the topic and shed some light on what the airport meant to different people in Albuquerque. However, as I've discovered, my topic has resulted in more dead ends than a horror movie.

Not only did I hit walls in the difficulties of posting oral histories online, which was one of the reasons why I pursued the topic in the first place, I've also had general complications on finding the oral histories I need. I've yet to find an oral history that specifically addresses the Albuquerque Airport, and half the time, I feel like I'm fishing for small tidbits or soundbites that at least mention the airport and generally come out with nothing useful.

Because of this relative lack of success and overall failure, it has become far too easy for  me to put off even working on the project because of the walls I've already hit. While it would be nice to listen to every single oral history in the Center for Southwest Research or spend countless hours shifting through transcripts, it is far easier to put off the useless fishing and work on other, more pressing, and productive work instead. 

It wasn't until this week that I really decided to, instead of working through hours of material which may or may not prove useful, broaden out my topic and change my overall goal for the sake of producing at least something small by the end of the semester which is fast approaching. Instead of strictly looking for oral histories, I'm now going to look at newspaper articles and try to find sections which address the airport, which can then be put online either in a PDF/image, transcript, or as a sound recording. It is a bit of a cop-out, but at this point in the semester, I can't really afford to be picky. 

This adjustment, I feel reflects in other work in the Digital Humanities. Sometimes, it is better to just reorient your question or whatever attempt you are working on and try something else, or at least expand what you are trying to accomplish. It is a constant cycle of working and reworking until something sticks and works out. The small failures are meant to reorient how we think and adjust our approach in order to eventually achieve success, however small that success might be.