New Discovery

I'm having an interesting week with my computer. Knock wood, so far it's only the good kind of interesting. This weekend I was working on a Word document and I needed to refer to something in a window behind it. I clicked the window I was working in and moved it to the side. All of a sudden, I was in this new desktop! It was just me and my active Word document, and nothing else. No browser with 100 tabs open. No Mail. No iCal. 

After I freaked out for a second, I realized that I could just drag the window back towards the edge and return to my original desktop. Upon my "return," the desktop seemed so busy compared to the serenity I had just experienced. I still had no idea what had really happened, so I went to Google and typed in the most ridiculous search term: "second screen feature mac?" Most of the results were actually about using a second monitor with your Apple computer, but this article clarified that what I had stumbled onto was the "multiple desktop" feature within the "Mission Control," which is what Apple calls the window rearrangement function of their operating system. Mission Control is also what enables "corners," which is a feature that allows you to see all the windows open in an application (or on the desktop) just by navigating the mouse arrow to the corner of the screen. Corners is one of the most useful tools in my workflow, because I often move between documents like chronologies or indexes or notes and the document in which I am actively writing. 

There are two ways to access Mission Control. The easiest way is to press F3, but I hate taking my hand off the trackpad so I prefer to swipe three fingers upward. All of your open windows are displayed, and you can move them to the desktop you would like to view them in. For example, over the past few days I dedicated a new desktop to grant materials, but all other Word documents opened in desktop 1 (except for my chronology document, which opened in desktop 3 along with my database). When I was finished with writing and editing, I moved the Word documents back to desktop 1 to turn them into PDFs and email them off. 

Here are some clear benefits to the "multiple desktop" feature that I've seen so far:

1) Escape the web browser. I often have multiple tabs open in my browser when I'm doing research, and they can distract me from writing. I have now set Safari to only open in my "original" desktop (desktop 1) so that when I'm writing in desktop 2 or reading documents in desktop 3, I do not en up checking my email every time I catch a glimpse at my Gmail account. If I do need to look something up on the web, I can easily swipe three fingers left or right to move between the desktops quickly and easily.

2) Isolate projects or tasks. If I need to focus on one thing, It's nice to have it all together in one place without additional clutter.

3) Novelty. Starting new desktops is fun and keeps life feeling fresh. 

There are some drawbacks, of course. When you use corners with multiple desktops you are still shown ALL of the open windows in that application, regardless of which desktop it will open in. If you accidentally click on a window that's active in a different desktop, you get dragged over immediately. So it's not completely isolating or zen. Plus, the icons at the bottom do not disappear when you're not using an app in desktop 2 (or 3, or 4, etc.)--so you are still tempted to click on the Safari compass icon and end up back in the original desktop. 

Also, I really think the best thing I could do to minimize distraction would be to shut down all but the bare minimum of windows and focus on what's necessary to get any particular job done. I usually lack the self control to implement that advice, so this multiple desktop feature gets me a few extra minutes of focus without feeling like I'm denying myself the pleasures of the internet and apps. 

Has anyone else used this feature? Are there other ways to use it to improve a research workflow? I'd love to know!

A Checklist for Historians?

I've been having an obsessive week. In my working hours, I have delightfully obsessed over an amazing report written in 1968 by Irving Brodsky on how JCCs were reacting to the urban crisis. I spent five days poring over each page. In my non-working hours, I could not tear myself away from my SimCity. I played for hours each evening, erecting skyscrapers and stocking cargo ships on a little grid illustrated within my iPad. The final rabbit hole that I fell down was a book I devoured in two days, Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009). 

In this book, Gawande argues that a well designed checklist can help trained experts reduce the potential for failure by highlighting some of the most easily missed steps in a complex procedure. This emphasis on the obvious or routine steps then frees more mental space for experts to consider subtlety, variance, or emergent factors in the given situation. I was familiar with many of the hospital/healthcare systems improvements that Gawande described because of my internship at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, where I observed firsthand how the implementation of checklists improved patient outcomes in hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities throughout Western Pennsylvania. From The Checklist Manifesto, however, I learned about the origins of checklists in aviation and how industries like construction and finance have adapted them throughout the years to improve outcomes, mitigate risk, and increase efficiency. 

All of that was interesting in itself, but the central question that kept me obsessively reading was: could a historian benefit from a checklist? And if so, how? Archival research is incredibly low-risk, for ourselves and others, and most of our work is done solo. We don't have people relying on us for their safety, nor do we often engage in collaborative endeavors that require leadership, team work, and communication. Yet, historical research is a complex, multi-step process that can be incredibly inefficient. 

One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems--on assemblages of people or technologies or both--and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.

My system--which I have written about extensively--must surely have flaws and failures. I may not see them now, but what about when I start writing? Will I find that my notes are inadequate or inaccessible? In what ways? I've decided to spend the next week breaking down my system into all of its essential tasks and outcomes, to see if it will be possible to take Gawande's advice and create a checklist that increases my weekly reading input and writing output.

A Timeless Sentiment...

By its nature, my work requires an emotional investment which at times I am not ready to make. I am concerned that I feel so emotionally spent at the end of the day. It goes against my self-image of being all things to all men to realize that I have only so much to give. I want to save part of myself for my family and my personal interests. I feel bridled by my awareness that at times I am called upon to make a great investment and yet, when needed am reluctant to accept my mountain. I look to the day when I will strike a balance between my expectations and my abilities, and when my concerns as a Jewish Center worker will not all be paradoxical.

Constandino Biris, "The Concerns of a New Worker," (May, 1966). From the National Jewish Welfare Board collection at the Center for Jewish History. 

Why Grants are the Pits

Although getting a grant is a top 10 professional good feeling, the lead-up is really a drag. 

First of all, grants are really competitive. There are more research projects than magic pots of money, and so you are always a loser more often than you are a winner. You also compete against your closest colleagues and mentors. Even the most collegial group of scholars can get bent out of shape when one person appears to be getting a bigger slice of the grant pie. It's also exhausting to put so much effort into applications that you know do not have a good chance of getting funded. 

This competition makes writing grant proposals tedious. It's always important to tailor a proposal to the interests of the granting institution, but there's also a lot of pressure to make your application stand out in the crowd. There's a fine balance that you have to strike between familiar and innovative--you want to propose a project that a funding committee will understand, but that isn't something they have seen 100 times before. It has to appear fresh, but feasible. That's a tall order!

It's hard to stay calm through a process that feels like an exercise in futility, but the good news is that most every scholar hits the jackpot now and then. 

Research Grants: Where to Find Them?

Early in my second year of grad school, the professor teaching my research seminar course assigned us a report on available grants in our field of study. I can no longer recall if there was a minimum number we had to identify, or what the report required as far as a description of these grants, but it was an incredibly useful exercise for learning where to find funding opportunities. Here are some of my tried-and-true sources for finding calls for proposals (CFPs):

1. AHA Today: The blog of the American Historical Association, for me, has replaced the old method of reading the back pages of Perspectives (the AHA's print publication). This blog does not exclusively publish information on research grants but when an exciting funding opportunity arises the AHA usually publicizes it in a short blog post. 

2. H-Net: The best way to describe H-Net is a giant group email (listserv) for humanists and social scientists who study a particular topic. For example, I subscribe to H-Urban and H-Jewish Studies. As a subscriber, I receive occasional email updates about conferences, publications, and grants. There are SO MANY different H-Networks, and thus many different ways to find out about opportunities. 

3. Professional Affiliations: In addition to the AHA, there are many smaller professional organizations dedicated to particular historical subjects. As a member of the Association for Jewish Studies I get access to a Grants Directory that lists all of the CFPs related to Jewish history (note: the directory also includes grants for research in other disciplines). Joining a professional organization usually offers the benefit of accessing aggregated or pre-circulated grants in that field of study. 

4. Google: With the appropriate search terms, it's possible to find grants you may have otherwise missed. Even after a thorough scouring of the sources listed above, it's valuable to do a general search like "civil war history grants" or "funding for oral history projects." It might turn out to be a duplication of effort or redundant, but who knows--it could turn up a more obscure pot of money. 

5. Word of mouth: My advisor has passed on a lot of grants to me over the years, because after 20+ years of scholarship and professing she is on way more email lists than I am. I've also had colleagues pass along opportunities that they thought were a good fit with my research interests. Sometimes those end up being too much of a stretch, but I've applied for several grants that I found that way! It's important to build a strong network, because there aren't enough hours in the day to do research and find all of the various possibilities for how you can fund it. Colleagues help each other out by sharing information. 

Any other good suggestions for where to find research money?