Prior to our class where Steve Zweibel presented on data management plans I hadn’t really thought much about the data of our project. I still imagine data as rows on a spreadsheet (maybe they are??) and not as the programs, sheet music, photographs, and audio recordings. So it was helpful to get a sense of the full breadth of data and then the considerations in managing it. I feel like I have a lot to learn as far as documentation in a digital space, which is both exciting and daunting depending on the day. My team is patient and always willing to answer any questions I have about the technical lingo and what it all means, which helps it feel less overwhelming.

The exercise of doing the data management plan made me realize how much information we have and the importance of how we’re going to organize it, for both ourselves and for outside folks who may be interested in the dataset. Understanding and being able to navigate the data will be integral to the longevity and preservation of the project. Having these things in place as we’re beginning our research means we’re able to collect data with this goal in mind.

Melissa McDonald (she/they) is a part time masters student at the CUNY Graduate Center in the Digital Humanities program and works full time as a Paralegal. They have their undergraduate degree in History and English, with interests in feminist theory, intersections of identity, queerness, and twin studies. Her academic career includes a proposal for a twin research database and an interactive fiction that explores identity in twins. They are a researcher, content editor, and social media/outreach specialist on the Women in Bandura project. When she’s not at school or working you can find her hanging out with her sister, watching movies with her wife, having a salon with friends, and staring longingly at her cats.

Over the last 2 weeks we worked on editing and finalizing our proposal, workshopped a new name for the project, met with WBENA and introduced ourselves, chose potential scholarly advisors to reach out to, started to construct on our work plan, and started to navigate working together. We have been meeting on Thursday evenings to touch base and figure out our work flow.

After class 2 week ago we met with Teryn, WBENAs concert mistress and our contact for this project, her mom, Irene, who is the president of the ensemble, as well as some other WBENA board members as they jumped onto the call for their own meeting after ours. Teryn and Irene both seemed really excited about the project which in turn was exciting for me! I was already interested in the project, but talking to WBENA made it real.

Our conversations around how to name the project have been really interesting and thoughtful. The team is taking care to not be too limited in our language, but we’re also bumping into the limitations of English. I think we are looking for a more inclusive term than women, but Non Men in Bandura doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. We put the question to WBENA and Teryn liked Women of Bandura. Personally I think the focus on women is the heart of the project, but I would also hate for anyone to feel left out/excluded by that language. This isn’t the first time I’ve wrestled with this question of language and I am sure it won’t be the last.

I reached out to 3 possible scholarly advisors on Friday – Dr. Marina Berezutskaya (a Ukrainian scholar of Ethnomusicology who has written about the bandura), Dr. Maria Sonevytsky (an Anthropology and Music professor at Bard who was recommended by a friend of Lini’s, her research focuses on post-Soviet Ukraine with interests in folklore), and Dr. Marcia Ostashewski (a Canadian scholar at Cape Breton University who wrote a piece on women in bandura that we used as a resource in our proposal). I was absolutely delighted to hear back from Dr. Ostashewski! She is interested in our project and included her project coordinator in her email response in order to set up a time to meet. I am looking forward to sorting out the next steps with the team in class Tuesday and getting a meeting with her on the calendar.

I think we’re on track so far, though experiencing a bit of an unanticipated (we knew WBENA would be busy in March, but are figuring out what we need to prioritize first in order to prevent later hiccups) crunch since WBENA will be unavailable for much of March, preparing for an upcoming concert. We’re trying to get some basic wire frames ready for them to review and make sure we have all the materials we need from them before they will be too busy to assist us. Tasha created an Asana board for project management, which so far has been satisfying in terms of seeing what we have crossed off! And what is yet to come. I think it will be a good tool for us to keep up with each other as the semester gets busier and this project gets rolling.

This week we voted on which projects we would make this semester. I’m interested in archiving and digital exhibits, so I was initially drawn to Tasha’s proposal “Bandurapedia” and thrilled when a group started to coalesce around the project. I am taking on a researcher/outreach co-role with Lini. I’m looking forward to learning some development and UX skills from shadowing Alex and Tasha.

In our first zoom meeting at the end of last week we tossed around new names for the project, discussed how to revise the proposal, and the collaborators agreement. I volunteered to start looking for a professor or doctoral student who could advise us. There is a professor in the CUNY Grad Center’s Ethnomusicology department who I thought could be a good fit, but her area of expertise is South Eastern Europe, which does not include Ukraine. Lini reached out to a friend who recommended we connect with a Bard professor – Dr. Sonevytsky, who specializes in post-Soviet Ukraine and music. This is a great recommendation and based on her bio I think it’d be a really exciting opportunity for us if we get to talk to her. I am anxious to reach out to her – I am sure she’s very busy with her own projects, course load, etc. and since she is outside of our institution I feel like even more of an imposition. I have drafted an email to her that I want to go over with my teammates. I thought that my outreach skills were fairly strong, but I am finding this email intimidating and feeling frustrated by my lack of confidence. Too vulnerable?

Right now we’re keeping a shared google drive and communicating via signal. From this weeks reading/resources I hope we can add a project management tool like Trello or Asana to our arsenal. I feel a sense of anxious anticipation as we begin this project. Ultimately, I’m really excited to be working with Alex, Lini, and Tasha and I can’t wait to grow and learn alongside them this semester.