Why I #dataviz

Cleaning data is not fun at all.  Right now I’m converting the registration lists I found for The Scholar and The Feminist 1974-1984 in Barnard College's archives.  I’m lucky – these are typed in such a way as to facilitate text wrangling into three data sets, name, affiliation, and geographic location.  Still, because I’m looking for the human equivalent of a needle in a haystack, the pivotal, but not often credited or written about, women, I have to hand clean after I OCR the jpgs of archival documents. 

To buoy myself along today I threw the names I have so far (1974, 1976, and 1981, selected for no other reason that I found those files first) into Palladio.

Below is the image of the intersections – the seven women who registered for all three conferences I’ve processed so far (I have the “master” lists that show who actually attended. That is the next to be added to the data)

Two of these names I recognize immediately - Jo Freeman and Amy Swerdlow, are well known in the literature of women’s movements, but I’m excited that five names are unknown to me

Nancy Dean, a Chaucer scholar, playwright and co-founder of Astraea

Maggie Tripp, a women’s studies prof at the New School, NOW member,

Electa Arenal, Hispanic languages & lit prof, women's studies prof at The College of Staten Island)/CUNY, playwright

Inez Martinez, English/women’s studies prof at Kingsborough Community College,

Jane Williamson, librarian, editor, Women's Action Alliance