Karalee Harris on Research Fellowship with UW Humanities Data Science Summer Institute
Today on the blog, we’re highlighting UW Textual Studies student, Karlaee Harris’ Capstone research undertaken with the Humanities Data Science Summer Institute (HDSSI). HDSSI is a program at the University of Washington that brings together undergraduate and graduate students with UW faculty and staff in collaboration on humanities data science research. Over summer quarter, Karalee worked with a team of students led by iSchool and Textual Studies faculty, Melanie Walsh. Together, they completed a data-analytical study of the Seattle Public Library’s checkout data, which asked the question: Which canonical American authors are the public reading, and why?
In their own words, Karalee describes the collaboration with HDSSI and the process of researching and digitizing Seattle Public Library’s checkout data. Read on to find out more!
Textual Studies Capstone with Humanities Data Science Summer Institute
My capstone was completed through the Humanities Data Science Summer Institute, which is a research fellowship that supports digitally-centered humanities research. I worked on a small team under the guidance of Melaine Walsh. Our goal was to identify trends in library check-outs for postwar American authors that were mentioned in the Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Visualizations of top reading trends from 2005-2025.
Additionally, we specifically looked at check-out trends for James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Sandra Cisneros, Chris Kraus, and David Foster Wallace as well to develop a deeper understanding of these trends which we could compare with a broader variety of authors. We used check-out data from the Seattle Public Library (SPL), which is one of the only publicly available sources on library check-out data in the United States.
Cleaning and Visualizing SPL Data
I was primarily focused on cleaning the SPL data so that our data will be easier to make visualizations with and so that it can be used easier by other researchers. Library data frequently has redundancies in “author” and “tile” fields. For instance, if you were looking for the checkout data for every copy of every book by Toni Morrison in the SPL, you would have to search “Toni Morrison,” “Morrison, Toni,” “Morrison, Toni, 1931–2019,” and “Morrison, Toni, 1931–2019.” These inconsistencies cause problems when we are looking at many authors at once, or many titles at once, which was necessary since a major deliverable of this project was a visualization of an author’s monthly checkouts over time. I spent a lot of time on this project writing code to remove these inconsistencies and manually going through the data to ensure that no inconsistencies remained.
Working with Seattle Public Library Checkout Data
I am deeply interested in data surrounding libraries in particular, so this research project was a perfect introduction to professional research, and it made me want to continue pursuing similar research in the future. I think that it is really important to consider how humanities and textual research is changing as the world becomes more and more reliant on online technology, and I believe that this experience prepared me well to make research contributions to this field in the future.
Line graphs depicting checkout data for Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Karalee’s team drew on circulation data from 2005-2025 from the Seattle Public Library, focusing on the 93 authors included in the post-1945 volume of the Norton Anthology of American Literature. Their analysis comprised data on 1,603 works by the 93 authors, which were checked out a total of 980,620 times since 2005.
The team created an interactive tool which allows users to explore this data. You can also read more about their work and findings in their recently published article, “The Canon in Circulation: Tracking the Reception of Norton Anthology Authors in Library Checkout Data.”
Capstone Opportunities in the UW Textual Studies Minor
The Capstone is the culminating project of the Minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. It is undertaken during any quarter of the academic year and is designed to bring together the minor’s learning goals with the skills gained during the course of the program. Working alongside a faculty member, a librarian, or an organization like HDSSI, students can explore their individual interests and build skills to support them in their future careers and studies.
Congratulations to Karalee for this fascinating work and for completing this Capstone requirement! To find out more about the Minor in Textual Study and Digital Humanities, Capstone requirements, and upcoming TXTDS courses, you can explore our website or email text@uw.edu.
Explore more recent Capstone opportunities on our blog.
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