# Jean Bauer

> [data, design, diplomacy]


## Posts

- [Try to Remember: 20 Years of Living in a Post September 11th World](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2024/09/try-to-remember-20-years-of-living-in-a-post-september-11th-world/): This blog post was written on September 11, 2021. For some reason it did not make the migration to the new website, so I have reposted it on the 23rd Anniversary. This anniversary is not the big one for me. That was last year, the 19th anniversary of the attacks on September 11th. Given all […]
- [When the Void Screams Back: Best Practices for Living with the Risk of Online Abuse](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2024/02/when-the-void-screams-back-best-practices-for-living-with-the-risk-of-online-abuse/): This past Halloween I was a featured speaker in Women in Cybersecurity‘s (WiCyS) CyberSecurity Awareness Month speaker series “Secure You.” WiCyS is an fantastic organization and I was delighted to be able to speak with (mostly) students across the United States about the risk of online abuse and give them strategies to determine their own […]
- [This is why we can't have nice things: Elizabeth Warren, Misogyny, and the Death of Expertise](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2020/03/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things-elizabeth-warren-misogyny-and-the-death-of-expertise/): As I watched the results of Super Tuesday roll in I felt my heart breaking. Elizabeth Warren was my candidate, but she was so much more than that. As a fellow woman and policy wonk, Warren’s compassion, indignation, and attention to the small details of structural change made me believe that there was a way […]
- [Ursula K. Le Guin, Marie Kondo, and moving on](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2019/01/ursula-k-le-guin-marie-kondo-and-moving-on/): A year ago today Ursula K. Le Guin died. I cannot overstate the importance of her work to my life. In her honor, I decided to spend a year reading works by women authors only (with an exception for work materials or other necessary texts). Over the past year I have rediscovered and been introduced […]
- [Digital Humanities, Digital Scholarship, and Digital Libraries: Fuzzy Boundaries of a False Trichotomy](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2018/07/digital-humanities-digital-scholarship-and-digital-libraries-fuzzy-boundaries-of-a-false-trichotomy/): If there is one thing that unites digital humanities practitioners, it is our aversion to defining ‘Digital Humanities.’ I get it. I really do. But defining and redefining DH on a regular and ongoing basis comes with the territory. Especially in today’s academic and GLAM sector [note]GLAM stands for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums.[/note] climate […]
- [Has anyone seen a sheep?: Ada Lovelace Day Tribute to Deb Verhoeven](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2016/10/has-anyone-seen-a-sheep-ada-lovelace-day-tribute-to-deb-verhoeven/): This Ada Lovelace Day I want to stop and thank a woman who is making the Digital Humanities Community a more just and scholarly place: Deb Verhoeven. I have had the extraordinary privilege of working with and for many amazing women in DH.  In fact, I would consider my intellectual DH heritage to be distinctly […]
- [Baking Gingerbread, as a DH project](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2015/10/baking-gingerbread-as-a-dh-project/): Earlier today I was trying to put together slides for a workshop called “Getting Started in DH.” And I just couldn’t get started. For the record, I have given versions of this workshop more times than I can remember.  I have slides from those workshops, and looking them over, I despaired.  DH is so big, […]
- [For the Love of it?: Alt-Ac Reflections on finishing the PhD](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2015/08/for-the-love-of-it-alt-ac-reflections-on-finishing-the-phd/): When I was a bright-eyed and enthusiastic undergrad, I applied to PhD programs in history. I have a very strong memory of sitting in my future advisor’s office and asking him the  most important question I could think of:  “What, in your opinion, makes a good dissertation?” He responded immediately: “Passion.  Passion is what separates […]
- [Ads on LinkedIn targeting women make me want to delete my account](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2015/07/ads-on-linkedin-targeting-women-make-me-want-to-delete-my-account/): I have a LinkedIn profile. As someone who is about to hire three programmers to work in my research center at Princeton University, I may find it helpful in reaching top candidates. That’s assuming I don’t delete my account over the insulting banner ads I am treated to almost every time I log in. First […]
- [The value of non-rare books: paperback musings of a digital humanist](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2015/07/the-value-of-non-rare-books-paperback-musings-of-a-digital-humanist/): Sometime last January I realized I was book-deprived.  Since September I had been shuttling back and forth among my new office in Princeton, my rented room in town, and the apartment I used to live in with my husband in Boston. One Saturday morning in snowbound Boston I awoke in my old bed to a […]
- [Desiderata for A Digital Humanist: My Ada Lovelace Day Tribute to Elli Mylonas](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2014/10/desiderata-for-a-digital-humanist-my-ada-lovelace-day-tribute-to-elli-mylonas/): So I always forget about Ada Lovelace Day.  Maybe it’s because my childhood hero was Marie Curie . . . and Madeline Albright — clearly I was always going to end up in DH. But this year is important, because I want to highlight a woman I have worked with for three years, and who […]
- [Some thoughts on "Niceness" and the Yack-Hack Cycle](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2013/09/some-thoughts-on-niceness-and-the-yack-hack-cycle/): So apparently Twitter exploded yesterday, in that way that Twitter has of “exploding.” I missed it thanks to back-to-back meetings, a long commute, and a desire to spend time with my husband rather than check social media. On any other day, I would probably be pissed as hell. But it’s not any other day. It’s […]
- [Network Analysis for Humanists](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2013/03/network-analysis-for-humanists/): Today I am teaching a workshop called “Network Analysis for Humanists” at Northeastern’s NULab for their Boston Area Days of DH. If you attended my workshop (or are just interested in learning more), here are a few suggested readings. I would include more, but following the links from Scott Weingart’s blog posts will help you […]
- [Tales from the Port: Part 2 -- Migrating the Database](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2012/10/tales-from-the-port-part-2-migrating-the-database/): In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have promised to write a blog post every night this week. The port has been going well, but I’ve been working late each night, and it’s just too hard to write clear English prose starting at midnight. So here, at last, is the promised post on migrating Project Quincy’s database […]
- [Tales from the Port: Day 1 -- Dry Dock](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2012/10/tales-from-the-port-day-1-dry-dock/): Welcome to my one week blog series, Tales from the Port, chronicling my rewriting of Project Quincy from Ruby on Rails to Django. This series may be a little rough around the edges — I’ll be writing it every night after I accomplish my goals for that day. But I wanted to give people a […]
- [Safe Spaces and Kind Words](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2012/03/safe-spaces-and-kind-words/): Every generation has to kill the dragon, or so the saying goes. I disagree. I may be starting a new chapter in my life, but I refuse to slam the door behind me. If I am privileged, then I owe that privilege to my teachers — female and male — who took time out of […]
- [Long Live the Library](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/11/long-live-the-library/): Just yesterday I read that Johns Hopkins Medical Library has decided to close its physical location on January 1, 2012. JHU embedded its subject librarians in their respective departments years ago, and after reviewing the relative use of print and electronic sources, decided to shut down the main building but have no plans to lay […]
- [Who you calling untheoretical?](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/11/who-you-calling-untheoretical/): I’m sorry. I need to vent. If you think you will be offended, continue at your own risk. You have been warned. Several weeks ago, the whole Digital Humanities Theory, or Hack vs. Yack, debate sprung to life once more with a post by @ncecire. I have since read several other posts on this issue, […]
- [Am I even qualified?: Writing about Digital History](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/10/am-i-even-qualified-writing-about-digital-history/): About two weeks ago, my article “Fielding History: Relational Databases and Prose” went online for open peer review and possible inclusion in the open access essay collection Writing History in the Digital Age, edited by Jack A. Dougherty and Kristen Nawrotzki. If you haven’t heard about Writing History in the Digital Age, you owe it […]
- [Ten Years Gone](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/09/ten-years-gone/): Ten years ago it was Tuesday. I was riding my bike along Long Island Sound, saying goodbye to one of the few things I knew I would miss about living in Connecticut. Ten years ago my family was three days away from moving into Brooklyn. We were finally going to be city dwellers again for […]
- [Alt-Ac: The First Month](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/09/alt-ac-the-first-month/): On August 1 I joined Brown University as their first Digital Humanities Librarian. This job is a dream come true. I was hired to help cultivate Digital Humanities projects by working with faculty, students, and staff, and serve as an ambassador for the great digital work already being done by the Brown University Library. I […]
- [Abigail and Thomas](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/04/abigail-and-thomas/): I probably can’t call Thomas Jefferson a metrosexual in my dissertation, but that’s why I have a blog. Abigail Adams is famous for bringing out the best in her correspondents, but Thomas’s letters to her are particularly striking, perhaps because we have so little to compare them to. He burned his wife’s letters shortly after […]
- [Republicans of Letters](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/02/republicans-of-letters/): Here are the slides for my January 26th talk at Brown University’s Center for Digital Scholarship, “Republicans of Letters: Historical Social Networks and The Early American Foreign Service Database.” The abstract ran as follows, “Jean Bauer, an advanced doctoral candidate in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia and creator of The […]
- [In Pursuit of Elegance](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2011/02/in-pursuit-of-elegance/): I wrote this for the HASTAC Scholars’ forum on Critical Code studies, which I co-hosted in January. To see the post in its original context, click here. *********************** One of the older jokes about programming states that every great programmer suffers from the following three sins: laziness, impatience, and hubris. Laziness makes you write the […]
- [Leaks in the Age of Sail](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/12/leaks-in-the-age-of-sail/): As a diplomatic historian I have been meaning to write something about the Wikileaks debacle for some time now. However, my good friends at Monticello beat me to it when they interviewed me and then put the podcast online. So head over to their site and check it out. Listen to the podcast
- [Do You See What I See?](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/11/do-you-see-what-i-see/): This is the abstract for my talk, “Do You See What I See?: Technical Documentation in Digital Humanities,” which I gave at the 2010 Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science. The actual presentation was more informal and consisted of a series of examples from my various jobs as a database designer. The slides […]
- [Into the woods we go (again)](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/10/into-the-woods-we-go-again/): I owe an apology to woodcutters everywhere. After my misadventures yesterday (see previous post), I confidently announced that Google Earth had allowed me to find the missing entrance to the original Blue Ridge Tunnel. Luckily for me, I blogged about my experience and was thus kept from making (yet another) critical error. My friend (and […]
- [A Walk In the Woods](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/10/a-walk-in-the-woods/): I am revising my opinion of friendly woodcutters. This afternoon, I was out in the woods by Afton, VA looking for an abandoned railroad tunnel from the 1850s. My plan was to photograph the tunnel entrance, so Will Thomas could use the image in his new book. When it was completed in 1858, the Blue […]
- [Partial Dates in Rails with Active Scaffold](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/10/partial-dates-in-rails-with-active-scaffold/): As a historian I am constantly frustrated (but bemused) by how computers record time. They are so idealistically precise and hopelessly presentist in their default settings that creating intellectually honest digital history becomes impossible without some serious modifications. In designing Project Quincy, my open-source software package for tracing historical networks through time and space, I […]
- [It's [A]live!](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/10/its-alive/): It is with great pleasure, and no small amount of trepidation, that I announce the launch of the Early American Foreign Service Database (EAFSD to its friends). While the EAFSD has been designed as an independent, secondary source publication, it also exists symbiotically with my dissertation “Revolution-Mongers: Launching the U.S. Foreign Service, 1775-1825.” I created […]
- [As We May Code](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/08/as-we-may-code/): Since the debut of the iPad, I can’t stop thinking about path dependency. These virtual keyboards separate letters from numbers from symbols onto three distinct screens. While using my iPhone, I find myself spelling out words like “between” because I’d rather keep to the letters keyboard than switch back and forth to write “b/w.” Everyone […]
- [Introducing DAVILA](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/04/introducing-davila/): I have just released my first open source project. HUZZAH! DAVILA is a database schema visualization/annotation tool that creates “humanist readable” technical diagrams. It is written in Processing with the toxiclibs physics library and released under GPLv3. DAVILA takes in the database’s schema and a pipe separated customization file and uses them to produce an […]
- [Trees](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/04/trees/): (with apologies to Joyce Kilmer) I think that I shall never see A graph as lovely as a tree. A tree whose thick, strong root is prest Against the lower bound at rest; A tree that looks a little strange While its data does self arrange; A tree that may grow up or out But […]
- [The Design Bug](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/01/the-design-bug/): Edward Tufte should come with a warning label. Since I took his course a year ago last October, I have been bitten by the design bug. I realized the depth of this obsession last night while putting together a projected syllabus for a summer course in the History Department. Just a simple word processing document, […]
- [Great Teachers Never Die](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/01/great-teachers-never-die/): A new semester starts tomorrow, and I’m thinking of my grandmother, Marjorie Good. She was an artist, whether she held a paintbrush in her right hand or used her left hand to play boogie-woogie on the piano. I’m thinking of her right now because she was also a teacher. She taught English for nineteen years […]
- [The Cloisters, Part I](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2010/01/the-cloisters-part-i/): On the fifth day of Christmas, my husband and I took the A train the length of Manhattan up to one of my favorite spots in New York City — The Cloisters — home of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Medieval Art Collection. Even more than the art, I love the building, a medieval-style cloister […]
- [Control your Vocab (or not)](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/11/control-your-vocab-or-not/): I am a NINES Graduate Fellow for 2009-2010, and this post was written for the NINES Blog. To see it in its original context, click here. Yesterday I had two conversations about controlled vocabulary in digital humanities projects (a.k.a. my definition of a really good day). Both conversations centered around the same question: what is […]
- [Loss](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/11/loss/): When a person dies, it’s as if a library of irreplaceable volumes has burned to the ground. My grandfather died this past Saturday. He was an extraordinary man who escaped Nazi Germany and survived the blitz in in London. He worked on antidotes to nerve gas, helped build the first production sites for antibiotics in […]
- [and the name of a good book](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/11/and-the-name-of-a-good-book/): When you leave a message on my friend’s voicemail, she asks that you give your name, your phone number, and the name of a good book. Since I’m in grad school for history, I tend to end my messages with phrases like “if you suddenly need to know about balance of power politics at the […]
- [Aristocrats, Agendas, & Adams](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/10/aristocrats-agendas-adams/): Some days I think the biggest problem facing digital historians is our workflow. We are already expected to juggle archival research and secondary readings with teaching and writing. Add a digital project into the mix and the temptation to pull out one’s hair becomes almost irresistible. The madness increases when you are the primary programmer […]
- [Scholar != Island](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/09/scholar-island/): I am a NINES Graduate Fellow for 2009-2010, and this post was written for the NINES Blog. To see it in its original context, click here. I recently gave a presentation on letters as primary sources — their format, use in historical inquiry in general, role in my dissertation research (and database design) specifically, etc. […]
- [A Gem of A Letter](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/09/a-gem-of-a-letter/): While working on People of the Founding Era: A Prosopographical Approach, I came upon an unexpected gem in the Papers of George Washington — a letter written by Washington to John Marshall on April 11, 1789. At the time, Washington was President of the United States and Marshall was the young (but promising) Virginia lawyer […]
- [Troubleshooting Rails Migrations](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/09/troubleshooting-rails-migrations/): I’m not sure why this worked, but if it can help anyone else then here it goes . . . My rails app decided to throw a hissy fit at me by refusing to let me run rake db:migrate because (as it claimed) rake aborted! An error has occurred, all later migrations canceled: Mysql::Error: Table […]
- [Normality: For or Against?](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/09/normality-for-or-against/): I wrote this post a year ago, when the Scholars’ Lab Blog was just getting off the ground. To see the post in its original context (including the interesting conversation it sparked in the comments), click here. ****************** I’m a historian who is currently designing and/or building four databases. As I work through the complexities […]
- [Maiden Voyage](https://jeanbauer.com/packets/2009/09/maiden-voyage/): Welcome to the Maiden Voyage of Packets: Musings on Information Exchange, Historical, Digital, and Otherwise.  Here you will find posts on a range of issues, including: history, database design, digital history/digital humanities, and web/graphical design.  I will do my best to post regularly (read: twice a month), but I am currently writing my dissertation, so […]

## Pages

- [](https://jeanbauer.com/): [data, design, diplomacy] Though a combination of formal training and curiosity, I am a database architect and developer, data ecosystem designer, historian of power and communication, and a photographer.
- [Packets](https://jeanbauer.com/writing/packets/): Musings on Information Flows Past, Present, and Future In the 18th Century, packet ships carried the mail. In the 21st Century, data packets flow over the internet. In these packets you can expect to find my thoughts on data, design, and diplomacy with a liberal helping of historical anecdotes.
- [Photography](https://jeanbauer.com/photography/): Artist Statement We spend so much time caught in the stream. Photography is a way to see the world anew by stopping. By taking our surrounding and transforming them into a single fraction of a second. A chance to be still and reflect. I need more of that in my life, maybe you do too. […]
- [Writing](https://jeanbauer.com/writing/): Looking for my 15+ year blog Packets: Musings on Information Flows Past, Present, and Future? Come find it in its new home at www.jeanbauer.com/packets. Current Project(s) N.B. I have a fulltime job so the following are done in snatches of spare time as other responsibilities allow. Databases: A Feminist Introduction (femDB) will be a companion […]
- [Portfolio](https://jeanbauer.com/data-design/portfolio/): Tools I am an open source developer with a special interest in relational databases and data visualization. All my code can be found on my github page. I am the lead developer on two open source tools, but development is paused given constraints on my time. Project Quincy is a Django application with a MySQL database that […]
- [About](https://jeanbauer.com/about/): I am a Product Architect at Akamai Technologies in the Compute division, focusing on database schema and internals for our persistent data stores. Prior to going corporate, I spent over 15 years in the academy as a director, technologist, researcher, and consultant in digital humanities—the application of computational tools and methods to traditional humanities disciplines […]
- [Speaking & Teaching](https://jeanbauer.com/speaking-teaching/): Talks and Workshops I am available to speak on a number of topics to technical and non-technical audiences either as an invited speaker or as a workshop leader. Topics include: To discuss a talk or workshop please contact me directly: jb [at] jeanbauer [dot] com for scheduling and speaker fees. Courses I have designed three […]
- [Consulting](https://jeanbauer.com/data-design/consulting/): From 2019-2021 I ran my own consulting company, Lemon & Eggs Data Design. I am now happily employed at Akamai Technologies and am not taking paying consulting clients at this time. I do, from time to time, take on pro-bono consulting for digital humanities projects and cultural heritage groups with a strong social justice mission. […]
- [Data Design](https://jeanbauer.com/data-design/): I call myself a data designer because I am as interested in why a project has this data set (as opposed to some other) as I am with the data structure I’m creating or the algorithms I plan to run. I care deeply about workflows, cleaning pipelines, provenance, ethics, and security. I start every project […]


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