UCLDIS Goes Viral

It started at a meal for PhD students in the Centre for Digital Humanities, based here at the Department of Information Studies.

A discussion of the importance of being able to state your research aims in a concise manner led student Susan Greenberg to tweet on the way home

Fun #ucldis dinner tonight for research students. Chat included usefulness of summarising your thesis in one sentence #tweetyourthesis

Meanwhile, Head of Department Claire Warwick asserted

If u can’t summarise ur research in a tweet u need to do a lot more work on ur question #ucldh #tweetyourthesis

which sparked some debate on the possibility and desirability of expressing a major research question in 140 characters or less.

To widen discussion out to members of the department who are not in  UCLDH but are active on twitter, yesterday morning I tweeted from the UCLDIS Student account, asking our students to take up the challenge:

One for the #UCLDIS research students: MT @clhw1 summarise ur research in a tweet #ucldh #tweetyourthesis #UCLDISstudents

Since then there have been hundreds of contributions worldwide to the #tweetyourthesis hashtag. I thought, for the record, it would be useful to collate tweets from research students here at UCLDIS, where it all began:

Here’s a more serious effort… The Hidden Art: editing and meaning #ulcdh #tweetyourthesis

— Susan Greenberg (@sgediting) January 11, 2012

 

Large-scale digital collections: how and why are they being used for research, and by whom? #ucldh #UCLlDISstudents #tweetyourthesis — Paul Gooding (@pmgooding) January 12, 2012

How, where & why is Public Archaeology using Internet technologies, and if not, why not? #ucldh #UCLlDISstudents #tweetyourthesis — Lorna Richardson (@lornarichardson) January 12, 2012

 

How Does Digital Technology in Museums Impact on Visitor Experience?#ucldh#ucldis #tweetyourthesis — Claire Ross (@clairey_ross) January 12, 2012

 

How is Canada’s Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement impacting recordkeeping ideas and practices?#tweetyourthesis #ucldis — Melissa A (@missy1763) January 12, 2012

 

What impact does online user participation have upon archival theory & practice?#tweetyourthesis But think I need to write the thing 1st. — Alexandra Eveleigh (@ammeveleigh) January 12, 2012

And one from a recent alumnus:

I’m alumni but anyway: How tech define(d) comics as media and publication types, from press to apps #ucldh #tweetyourthesis #UCLDISstudents — Dr Ernesto Priego (@ernestopriego) January 12, 2012

If you’re a UCLDIS research student or PhD alumnus and haven’t tweeted yet (or if I’ve accidentally missed your tweet), comment here, @, DM or # UCLDISstudents and I’ll add you to the summary here. As Claire Warwick has put it

Goodness, #tweetyourthesis has rather taken off and indeed caused controversy. Academic heaven really 🙂 #UCLDH #UCLDISstudents

— Claire Warwick (@clhw1) January 12, 2012

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Image: Snapshot of the dinner where it all started, by Dr Melissa Terras