Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "evidence-based-design"
Halfway - Sort Of
As of today, I've written Dad's biography through 1972. He was born in 1927. Which means I've written about 45 of his 93 years. Almost halfway through his life.
Except that his working life was only part of those 93 years. Granted, Dad worked until he was well into his 80s; the last consulting he did was for the Brain Institute in 2010.
Still, I think it's a pretty significant accomplishment to have covered so much of Dad's life. The early chapters, about his childhood, are solely from Dad. He talks about growing up in Louisville and the time he spent on Long Island as a child. He mentions two significant women: his mother and his Aunt Minnie. These two strong women had a profound influence on Dad. His mother, who was a working nurse, nursed Dad through two bouts of rhematic fever as a child. After one of them, Dad had to learn to walk again, having been laid up in bed for months. Aunt Minnie was his refuge, I think, from the complexities of his family, with the seven children and his father, the pastor. Dad lived with Aunt Minnie and her husband, George, during his recovery and "loved her more than life itself".
After his childhood, the rest of the chapters are a combination of what Dad had written in his autobiographical notes and his book "Extraordinary Events in My Life". Interestingly, the stories in each are similar, but not quite the same. I've added my own research, as well, of course. And am including articles, obituaries, and interviews, as well.
So, as of today, the biography covers Dad's career through his tenure as the first-ever dean of architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
But I have to use the term "sort of" because the years from 1972 through 2010 are many and include several more of Dad's "careers" - from the American Institute of Architects Research Corporation to the Brain Institute.
Importantly, I see the thread of Dad's career, not only in terms of being a research architect and pushing always for the science and art of architecture to get better. But also in terms of his desire for "evidence-based design" and ways to measure the built environment's impact on humankind, which culminated in his fascination with neuroscience as a possible avenue for doing just that.
For those who might be reading these blog entries, I will say that I still haven't read my way through all Dad's papers. I have started to archive the articles I've used, and as a result, can see some progress through the myriad of material in that way.
But I've got a long way to go. Even if I am halfway done - sort of.
Except that his working life was only part of those 93 years. Granted, Dad worked until he was well into his 80s; the last consulting he did was for the Brain Institute in 2010.
Still, I think it's a pretty significant accomplishment to have covered so much of Dad's life. The early chapters, about his childhood, are solely from Dad. He talks about growing up in Louisville and the time he spent on Long Island as a child. He mentions two significant women: his mother and his Aunt Minnie. These two strong women had a profound influence on Dad. His mother, who was a working nurse, nursed Dad through two bouts of rhematic fever as a child. After one of them, Dad had to learn to walk again, having been laid up in bed for months. Aunt Minnie was his refuge, I think, from the complexities of his family, with the seven children and his father, the pastor. Dad lived with Aunt Minnie and her husband, George, during his recovery and "loved her more than life itself".
After his childhood, the rest of the chapters are a combination of what Dad had written in his autobiographical notes and his book "Extraordinary Events in My Life". Interestingly, the stories in each are similar, but not quite the same. I've added my own research, as well, of course. And am including articles, obituaries, and interviews, as well.
So, as of today, the biography covers Dad's career through his tenure as the first-ever dean of architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
But I have to use the term "sort of" because the years from 1972 through 2010 are many and include several more of Dad's "careers" - from the American Institute of Architects Research Corporation to the Brain Institute.
Importantly, I see the thread of Dad's career, not only in terms of being a research architect and pushing always for the science and art of architecture to get better. But also in terms of his desire for "evidence-based design" and ways to measure the built environment's impact on humankind, which culminated in his fascination with neuroscience as a possible avenue for doing just that.
For those who might be reading these blog entries, I will say that I still haven't read my way through all Dad's papers. I have started to archive the articles I've used, and as a result, can see some progress through the myriad of material in that way.
But I've got a long way to go. Even if I am halfway done - sort of.
Notability Questions
When I first started writing about my father, John Paul Eberhard, it was to - unfortunately - put together his obituary.
I had actually written an obituary for our mother first, as she died first. She was in hospice for 10 days, which gave me a chance to think about what to write and to do a little research about her. That obituary was published on the Ever Loved website when she died on April 12, 2020. I knew when I wrote Mom's obituary that the only people who would really be interested were family and friends.
However, when I started writing Dad's obituary - shortly after Mom's - I had the idea that, because Dad was well known in his industry, the obituary might get shared more broadly. And therefore, it should probably be reasonably accurate. It also proved fortuitous as Dad ended up dying only two weeks after Mom. I think I've written about that before.
Dad's obituary then became the basis for an article to try to get him into Wikipedia. Now, like most of you, I've always thought Wikipedia was open to any editor, meaning anyone could update any entry. I guess I assumed there would be some kind of control over changes, but Wikipedia also seemed to be "open".
So imagine my surprise when my first draft of an article on Dad was summarily - and probably rightly - rejected. First, the Wikipedia editors - who are a real thing - didn't like that I was Dad's daughter. They prefer that entries come from folks interested in a topic, but not so close as a child. Second, they didn't like my "flowery" language. I talked about Dad being innovative; they didn't like that. I talked about Dad being a visionary; they didn't like that. Third, and most importantly, they didn't see anything about Dad's career that was "notable".
The question of notability is an interesting one, therefore. I did finally get Dad into Wikipedia on the strength of his having be awarded the LaTrobe Prize by the AIA, a biennial $100,000 prize, which was co-awarded to the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) to help fund/start the organization.
But the more I dig into Dad's history and career, the more I would argue makes him notable.
One thing he did early in his career was argue for and find funding for the creation of the National Conference of State Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS).
Before that, he helped drive the development of the first computerized hotel reservation system, in a joint project between Sheraton Corporation and Hilton Hotels.
He testified before Congressional committees at least twice that I've found so far, once on the funding of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and once about plans to create the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS).
Dad was the first-ever dean of architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB), where he started a new concept in graduate school programs to give the students practicum experience as well as classroom instruction at the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (BOSTI), patterned after Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (OSTI) in Cambridge, MA.
He essentially created the American Institute of Architects Research Corporation (AIARC), which had been a sort of "holding company" within the AIA, but hadn't actually done any research. When he left, AIARC had grown to 60 people with a budget of $10 million.
And then there's ANFA and the LaTrobe prize, and a couple of books and, and, and...
But there are other instances of things that, I would argue, make Dad notable.
Perhaps the most interesting one is that there are 21 boxes of his papers, writing, correspondence, drawings, and everything else career-related at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. "Officially established in 1945, the Center now holds over 90,000 cubic feet of historic documents and artifacts in more than 3500 collections—placing the AHC among the largest non-governmental archives in the nation." AHC had contacted Dad in 1981 wanting to see if he would be willing to have them be the archive of his papers as part of their Contemporary History collection. Dad was both "flattered and dismayed" by the request, because he didn't think he was at the point of his career where archivists would be interested in him. However, he sent off papers in 1982 and then more and more throughout his career. The original inventory I have from 1984 said the archive contained 13 boxes. Now, in 2023, it's 21 boxes.
So, Wikipedia, I would think that Dad being one of only 3,500 collections at a place called the "American Heritage Center" would also qualify him as being notable. And, in fact, there's a hyperlink to his collection at AHC on the Wikipedia article for Dad.
So there.
I had actually written an obituary for our mother first, as she died first. She was in hospice for 10 days, which gave me a chance to think about what to write and to do a little research about her. That obituary was published on the Ever Loved website when she died on April 12, 2020. I knew when I wrote Mom's obituary that the only people who would really be interested were family and friends.
However, when I started writing Dad's obituary - shortly after Mom's - I had the idea that, because Dad was well known in his industry, the obituary might get shared more broadly. And therefore, it should probably be reasonably accurate. It also proved fortuitous as Dad ended up dying only two weeks after Mom. I think I've written about that before.
Dad's obituary then became the basis for an article to try to get him into Wikipedia. Now, like most of you, I've always thought Wikipedia was open to any editor, meaning anyone could update any entry. I guess I assumed there would be some kind of control over changes, but Wikipedia also seemed to be "open".
So imagine my surprise when my first draft of an article on Dad was summarily - and probably rightly - rejected. First, the Wikipedia editors - who are a real thing - didn't like that I was Dad's daughter. They prefer that entries come from folks interested in a topic, but not so close as a child. Second, they didn't like my "flowery" language. I talked about Dad being innovative; they didn't like that. I talked about Dad being a visionary; they didn't like that. Third, and most importantly, they didn't see anything about Dad's career that was "notable".
The question of notability is an interesting one, therefore. I did finally get Dad into Wikipedia on the strength of his having be awarded the LaTrobe Prize by the AIA, a biennial $100,000 prize, which was co-awarded to the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) to help fund/start the organization.
But the more I dig into Dad's history and career, the more I would argue makes him notable.
One thing he did early in his career was argue for and find funding for the creation of the National Conference of State Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS).
Before that, he helped drive the development of the first computerized hotel reservation system, in a joint project between Sheraton Corporation and Hilton Hotels.
He testified before Congressional committees at least twice that I've found so far, once on the funding of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and once about plans to create the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS).
Dad was the first-ever dean of architecture at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB), where he started a new concept in graduate school programs to give the students practicum experience as well as classroom instruction at the Buffalo Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (BOSTI), patterned after Organization for Social and Technological Innovation (OSTI) in Cambridge, MA.
He essentially created the American Institute of Architects Research Corporation (AIARC), which had been a sort of "holding company" within the AIA, but hadn't actually done any research. When he left, AIARC had grown to 60 people with a budget of $10 million.
And then there's ANFA and the LaTrobe prize, and a couple of books and, and, and...
But there are other instances of things that, I would argue, make Dad notable.
Perhaps the most interesting one is that there are 21 boxes of his papers, writing, correspondence, drawings, and everything else career-related at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. "Officially established in 1945, the Center now holds over 90,000 cubic feet of historic documents and artifacts in more than 3500 collections—placing the AHC among the largest non-governmental archives in the nation." AHC had contacted Dad in 1981 wanting to see if he would be willing to have them be the archive of his papers as part of their Contemporary History collection. Dad was both "flattered and dismayed" by the request, because he didn't think he was at the point of his career where archivists would be interested in him. However, he sent off papers in 1982 and then more and more throughout his career. The original inventory I have from 1984 said the archive contained 13 boxes. Now, in 2023, it's 21 boxes.
So, Wikipedia, I would think that Dad being one of only 3,500 collections at a place called the "American Heritage Center" would also qualify him as being notable. And, in fact, there's a hyperlink to his collection at AHC on the Wikipedia article for Dad.
So there.
Citations
Today, I spent the first hour of "writing" updating the endnotes in Dad's biography to be formal citations, instead of just hyperlinks to websites or my notes so I would remember where the information came from. I haven't done formal citations since graduate school in 1985. And there was no such thing as websites in those days. So, I actually wasn't sure how to do website citations.
I had been kind of hoping I could just find some app that would go through all the websites and convert them to citations. To be honest, such a thing may or may not exist.
But instead, I used Grammarly. It worked very well for articles and books I'd found through searches.
The only challenge I've found has been, while a lot of the entries on the websites have attribution for the author, many do not. Grammarly didn't have guidance for when there's no author. It also wanted me to put "n.d." for no date, which seemed odd to me. So, I used my best judgment about how to cite a more "generic" page. I think I've gotten to a good place, but it was a bit of a guess.
Another thing I'm going to have to look up is how to cite from personal correspondence or interviews I've conducted. Again, I've come up with my own format for these things in the absence of other sources; Grammarly doesn't have anything on this kind of source material. The reason this is important is I'd like this biography to eventually get published by a publishing house, so I'm trying to do things in the "right way", to make the manuscript look professional - even though I'm obviously not a professional biographer.
Likewise, I'm struggling with how to do repeat citations. Grammarly and other editorial sites said you can use "ibid", which I remember from college and graduate school, if the citation is one that immediately follows the same source. But I remember "opcit" for when it was a citation of a source used before but not immediately above. And neither Grammarly nor other sources had this. Instead, they recommended "Reference #, Page #". I suppose that will work, but it means I have to wait until I'm done with the writing to know what the Reference # should be.
Bottom line is I've converted most of the endnotes to actual citations at this point. But doing so definitely took me back to almost 40 years ago.
I had been kind of hoping I could just find some app that would go through all the websites and convert them to citations. To be honest, such a thing may or may not exist.
But instead, I used Grammarly. It worked very well for articles and books I'd found through searches.
The only challenge I've found has been, while a lot of the entries on the websites have attribution for the author, many do not. Grammarly didn't have guidance for when there's no author. It also wanted me to put "n.d." for no date, which seemed odd to me. So, I used my best judgment about how to cite a more "generic" page. I think I've gotten to a good place, but it was a bit of a guess.
Another thing I'm going to have to look up is how to cite from personal correspondence or interviews I've conducted. Again, I've come up with my own format for these things in the absence of other sources; Grammarly doesn't have anything on this kind of source material. The reason this is important is I'd like this biography to eventually get published by a publishing house, so I'm trying to do things in the "right way", to make the manuscript look professional - even though I'm obviously not a professional biographer.
Likewise, I'm struggling with how to do repeat citations. Grammarly and other editorial sites said you can use "ibid", which I remember from college and graduate school, if the citation is one that immediately follows the same source. But I remember "opcit" for when it was a citation of a source used before but not immediately above. And neither Grammarly nor other sources had this. Instead, they recommended "Reference #, Page #". I suppose that will work, but it means I have to wait until I'm done with the writing to know what the Reference # should be.
Bottom line is I've converted most of the endnotes to actual citations at this point. But doing so definitely took me back to almost 40 years ago.
