This presentation was a partnership between Folger Shakespeare Library and JSTOR Labs, describing and presenting Understanding Shakespeare (http://labs.jstor.org/shakespeare), including the innovative "flash build" method of building it, in which the bulk of the work to complete the site was done in one week.

1. FLASH BUILD:
UNDERSTANDING
SHAKESPEARE
October 21, 2014
Eric Johnson, Folger Shakespeare Library
Alex Humphreys, ITHAKA
Sustainable Scholarship 2014

2. You have an idea.
How can you find out if
it’s worthwhile as quickly
and cheaply as possible?
This is how Folger and JSTOR did it.

3. FOLGER
HOLDINGS
The Folger’s collection contains the
world’s largest and most important
collection of Shakespeare-related
materials.
It also has a vast array of other rare
books, manuscripts, and works of art.

4. PRIMARY
SOURCES
In most cases, the Folger has the
first printed editions of
Shakespeare’s works.
In their original form, they are
not always palatable for modern
audiences.

5. FOLGER
EDITIONS
The best-selling editions of Shakespeare in
North America.
Contains the complete works, along with
glosses and explanatory materials.
Some plays are available as audio
recordings, and the first Kindle versions
are now for sale.

6. FOLGER
DIGITAL
TEXTS
An electronic version of the
Folger Editions texts that is free
for non-commercial use.
Available in HTML, XML, and
PDF formats.
Coming soon in MS Word and
plain ASCII.

7. JOURNAL
The foremost journal in its field,
Shakespeare Quarterly has been
published since 1950 and is part
of JSTOR.

8. What if Shakespeare Quarterly could
cross-reference quotations in the
Folger Editions?
How can we find out as quickly and
cheaply as possible?

9. THEPARTNERSHIP
Folger Shakespeare Library
• Folger Digital Texts
• Shakespeare Quarterly
• Scholars and students
Objective: demonstrate the
value of Folger Digital Texts to
scholars and students and
demonstrate how it can be
cross-referenced with
Shakespeare Quarterly.
JSTOR
• The full archive run of SQ
• 2000+ other journals
• A newly-formed Labs team
Objective: validate the value of
using a primary text as a portal
into secondary literature.

10. LABS
A new team at ITHAKA
Mission: to seek out new concepts and
opportunities, to refine and to
validate them through research and
experimentation.
Among our methods: Flash Builds
(or a version of them)

11. WHAT’S A FLASH BUILD*?
Like a flash mob,
but with coders
Time-bound,
usually one week
Team collocated
No distractions
Daily access to end users
* We first heard of Flash Builds from Marty Cagan, describing the work of the Nordstrom Innovation Lab.
You can see an example of that work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szr0ezLyQHY

12. THE FINISHED PRODUCT
http://labs.jstor.org/shakespeare

13. HOW WE
GOT THERE
Prior to the Flash Build:
1. Interviews with scholars
2. Create the data & infrastructure
During the Flash Build (w/c Sep 29)
3. Design Jam
4. Paper prototypes
5. Low-fi prototypes
6. Working site
Interviews
with scholars
and students
every day

14. 1. INTERVIEWS
Exploratory interviews with
Shakespeare scholars and students
Example questions:
Tell me about a time when it was fast and easy to make
connections between a play and what’s been written
about it.
If you had a magic wand to make it easier to make it
easier go between the play and what’s written about it,
what would you do?
Conducted in person or over Skype
Entire team participates

15. 2. CREATE THE DATA
& INFRASTRUCTURE
Exploration informed in part
by interviews with scholars
Selected candidate articles first
by a Topic Model and then by
full text search
Quote-matches found by fuzzy-
text-matching the candidate
articles with the Folger digital
text
Skeleton site created
{
"quotes": [{
"is_match": true,
"lines": [79, 81],
"matched_line_numbers": ["5.1.37",
"5.1.41"],
"bounding_box": [1322, 6998, 4405, 4681],
"matched_text": "fie my lord fie a soldier
and afeard what need we fear who knows it when none can
call our power to account yet who would have thought
the old man to have had so much blood in him",
"quoted_text": " Fie, my lord, fie, a
soldier and afear'd? What need we fear? Who knows it,
when none can call our pow'r to accompt? Yet who would
have thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him?",
"page": 3,
"mismatch_ratio": 0.016853932584269662
}
],
"id": "10.2307/2871155"
}

16. 3. DESIGN JAM
Organized brainstorming
Began with “personas” that
were based on initial
interviews
Objective: design as many
means of solving this problem
for these people
Two rounds. On the second
round, steal other people’s
ideas!
Best with a diverse set of
participants

17. 4. PAPER
PROTOTYPES
Inspired by the design jam
Used to test wildly divergent
directions
Users “click” with their finger
Test as many as possible, as
quickly as possible!

18. 5. LOW-FI
PROTYPES
Used to refine ideas before
building
Test multiple approaches to the
same idea

19. 6. DESIGNED
SITE!
A live data, high-fidelity
prototype, which has been
validated by users
A little visual design goes a
long way
Lots and lots of good ideas are
put aside to get working
software in this timeframe!

20. THANK YOU
Eric Johnson
Director of Digital Access
Folger Shakespeare Library
http://www.folger.edu
@osshakespeare
eric.johnson@folger.edu
________________________
Alex Humphreys
AVP, Labs and New Business Development
ITHAKA
http://labs.jstor.org
@abhumphreys
alex.humphreys@ithaka.org