Discover Top Posts Tagged with #his115

It’s All About the Stuff: Collections, Interfaces, Power, and People by TIM SHERRATT

“It’s All About the Stuff: Collections, Interfaces, Power and People, article by Tim Sherratt explains the processes of organizing and digitalizing data records and collections. The way this article is bought about is by using works of ‘The Real Faces of White Australia’, ’London Lives’, ‘Remember Me?’, and ‘Invisible Australia’ to explain everything.

The Real Faces of White Australia: takes photos of certificates and changes them from the ‘remnants of bureaucratic processes’ to ‘windows into lives of people’. This interface presents data that displays more personal records of individuals before impersonal records. The Real Faces of White Australia was done first by digitalizing the certificates, then using a facial detection technology to obtain the photographs from the certificates, then clearing the database, continuing by linking the photographs to the original certificates and then lastly by creating an interface to store the data.

London Lives: is a project which searches for individuals who were commoners in the 17th century in London through a manuscript of 240,000 pages. The London Lives project has been very successful and it has created a way to view the lives of the London people during the 17th century deeper.

Remember Me: is a project which shows who survived and misplaced children from the relief forms produced after the World War II. The project was done by using a crowdsourcing format. This project which was done by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum helps to bring families back together, it helps to fill historical gaps.

Invisible Australia: is the project that comes from The Real Faces of White Australia. The Invisible Australia project takes the biographical information from the certificates and records, records about family and local historians, records of cemetery register, family trees, and newspaper articles to put together the identities of persons affected by the White Australia Policy.

The article by Tim Sherratt explains processes of organizing and digitalizing data records and collections by using articles of ‘The Real Faces of White Australia’, ‘London Lives’, ‘Remember Me?’ to explain this better.

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Conversion of Primary Sources by Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner

Primary sources of information are those that provide first-hand accounts of the events, practices, or conditions you are researching. Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner explain to us that these types of sources come in many forms and are important to humanists or any person doing research on a topic. This type of source can also be digitized to attract a larger audience.

Documents come in a wide variety and come from all epochs of history which include both manuscript and printed artifacts. The manuscript documents which humanists will want to be digitized maybe have issues because of how certain texts is written they may require certain special software to be able to get them to display properly. With the printed materials there will be a wide range of font and typesetting issues. Visual materials for humanists will be manuscript images, paintings, drawings, many different types of photographs, stained glass, fabrics, maps and architectural drawings.Three-dimensional objects and artifacts will not show exactly how we are humanists want them to show however, there are now three-dimensional modeling techniques that give a good representation. Types of three-dimensional objects and artifacts include museum objects, sculpture, architecture, buildings, and archaeological artifacts. Time-based media can be seen as film, video, and sound.

The nature of digital data is very complicated as stated by the author. It is made up of bits, bytes and pixels, as humanists in doing research you have to get accustom with the nature of digital data or this will be very complicated for you when digitizing your work. Furthermore, all information and sources we will be using for your research is either represented by the bits, bytes or pixels.

Digital conversion when done properly is difficult, time-consuming and costly business. In digital conversion it can be seen that it has a lot of disadvantages and advantages in it. Digital conversion has a lot to do with technology and when it comes to technology there are a lot of risks and anything can happen such as work material can disappear from a flash drive, flash drive or CD can crash and work can be lost during this process and as humanists we have to start from the beginning. However, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages which include:

• The ability to republish out-of-print materials

• Rapid access to materials held remotely

• Potential to display materials which are in inaccessible formats, for instance, large volumes or maps

• "Virtual reunification" – allowing dispersed collections to be brought together

• The ability to enhance digital images in terms of size, sharpness, color contrast, noise reduction, etc.

• The potential for integration into teaching materials

• Enhanced search ability, including full text

• Integration of different media (images, sounds, video etc.)

• The potential for presenting a critical mass of materials for analysis or comparison

Including primary sources conversion can be done in many different forms however, there are a lot of ways and they were difficult when converting and can be faced with a lot of difficulties along the way. As humanists it’s good to get accustom to the conversion of this will be very difficult in the long run.

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What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities By William G. Thomas

This article ‘What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities’ by William G. Thomas is written and presented in a form of an essay. This article first gives us a view that when digital humanist set out to do a project that what they think they will build and what they build are often quite different, and unexpectedly so. But this article is mainly based on answering three main questions which is: Is an archive an argument? And a related question, where is our scholarship? How do we work in teams of scholars in the humanities? What does scholarly argument look like in digital form?

Question 1: Is an archive an argument? And a related question, where is our scholarship? Thomas states that most projects in digital humanities begin as an archive. When archives are collected they must first be analysed and organised according to how important they are to make it easy access and usability by the widest audience possible. Where is our scholarship? Means they are in the libraries that help in the preserving, modelling of the scholarships.

Question 2: How do we work in teams of scholars in the humanities? Digital humanities projects were seen as collaborative or could be seen as something done as a team. But digital humanities projects before was done by sole-author and sole-researcher and this was seen as an opportunity for hiring, promotion, and tenure for students at universities. However, now we see the collaborative work coming in this day that digital humanities in teams where you have people from different work areas such as librarians, programmers etc. coming together to work on projects.

Question 3: What does scholarly argument look like in digital form? This view was introduced as a system to scholars to focus on their projects in such a way that it will be interesting and link up with different stuff. This view also bought in a way for further research on the original topics that they were focusing on.

Including, what we think we will build and what we build in digital humanities is often quite different. This article focused on three main questions ss an archive an argument? And a related question, where is our scholarship? How do we work in teams of scholars in the humanities? What does scholarly argument look like in digital form? And this showed how digital humanities research goes on and what makes it exciting and it also shows us how work was done before compared to now.

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What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities

In William G Thomas’ “What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities”, my idea of what I wanted the entirety my group’s area of study ‘Science and Religion’ on the Digital Humanities Project, Resistance and Caribbean Reality, began to shift.

Throughout the course of the passage, my unattainable aspirations of this theme resembled greatly of a poorly constructed building during 8.0 magnitude earthquake. This is due to the understanding that what we envision for our project versus the outcome largely differ.

In the reading, the writer examines multiple questions which include:

Is an archive an argument? And a related question, where is our scholarship?

How do we work in teams of scholars in the humanities?

What does scholarly argument look like in digital form?

The first question proposed was ‘Is an archive an argument?’ This led me to believe that in some instances it may be considered one since in the case of newspapers about slavery. How does one make this searchable when building archives outside of the sole heading ‘Slavery’? As stated in the reading, through the creation of more capacious archives is seemingly appropriate. In this approach, we re-imagine digital archives by making it ‘intentional and interpretive’. The concern ‘Where is our scholarship?’ simply put states that they are in libraries which aid in the availability, modelling and preserving of this scholarship.

The second question was ‘How do we work in teams of scholars in the humanities?’ Upon entering Create Caribbean, I clearly remember Dr. Esprit emphasizing on the importance of collaborating but what truly did that mean? Collaboration is working alongside people in various fields from colleagues to librarians etc. Collaboration is an excellent method of joining the minds of various individuals well versed in your project’s area of study. According to the reading, these teams of researchers create projects which then transform into publication objectives and contributions.

The final question posed by the author stated ‘What does scholarly argument look like in digital form?’ Initially, the view was introduced as a system to inspire investigation and focus attention on projects. The scholarly practice shifted from research available solely for scholars to openly available research. In the use of new models of production: students like myself and citizens can be colleagues. However, the new challenge includes validating and crediting their contributions, incorporating their work and allowing their work to assist in other scholarships.

In conclusion, there may be various factors which affect the outcome of your project whether it may be in the path you intend on it going or not. However, this article helps me understand that although I may want it to be executed the manner in which I initially imagined, the outcome can different and better in many more ways those in which was initially planned and these changes can benefit both the audience and the researchers in various means.

Source: William G Thomas “What We Think We Will Build and What We Build in Digital Humanities”

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Designing Sustainable Projects and Publications

By Daniel V. Pitti

Firstly, Daniel tells us the readers that when designing the projects we must first get familiar with the topic as well as with the technology that is available. The author then moves on to say those scholars should have a clear understanding about the objective and the resources available to be used to achieve them.

Secondly, the author speaks about collaborative design involves iterative analysis and definition, frequently accompanied by prototype implementations that test the accuracy and validity of the analysis. This is further explained by stating that data must not simply be placed unto a computer but it should involve additional information that identify the data components. It’s important that the scholars understand this so that the information they put into the computer well be accurate when testing.

Thirdly, and most importantly scholars need to consider economy/cost. When designing the project the computer hardware, software, maintenance for the computer is very expensive. It should also be consider about human resource because person’s devote their time towards the designing , data production and maintenance, prototyping and the implementation of the projects. It must also be seen that the more detailed and complex that projects get is the more money it cost to keep it going and to maintain it.

Lastly, designing is a very complex. The designing process is iterative, and each iteration leads progressively to a coherent, integrated system and its quite impossible to simultaneously consider all factors. The prototyping of various parts to test economic, intellectual, and technological feasibility is important especially during this process. In the designing is very time consuming and it requires a great deal of persistence and patience in order for the designing of the projects to be great especially as it is complex when designing.

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The Unicorn of The Humanities

During our first Digital Humanities class, we were asked to define Digital Humanities, we defined each of the word. Digital is coded or electronic and then we defined Humanities as ideas and behaviors; humanities and culture or arts, history and/or literature.

Primarily, the blog “What Digital Humanists Do” focuses of a knowledge site, a digital edition of a text, a database, a semi-linear customizable narrative, large scale text analysis etc. Some of those I can honestly say I was unfamiliar with. However, the format was kept quite simple by the author, explaining first the definition, then its purpose and concluding with the use of each category, granting me the ability to easily understand the terms expressed.

Paige Morgan clearly and gracefully expounds on the various categories of digital humanities and used examples and other forms to relay information to her audience. As taught in the last reading ‘Building an Audience’ who explaining in detail methods of developing any media outlet through various skills.

Upon reading the title at first I was convinced the I would have a full and concise definition for the term ‘Digital Humanists’ but a simple answer to the question it that Digital Humanists do whatever they want to do. And this may be a strange definition however this is completely true and complete of an answer.

In my opinion, Digital Humanities is a field with unlimited options and is the only field I’m aware of where the rules can be made up, altered or affected as the field grows in anyway deemed suitable to any member. If this reading has taught me anything is that unlike Natural Sciences, with the field of Digital Humanities, it is dissimilar in nature and unique. From knowledge sites to digital 3-D models to even geo-mapping, Digital Humanities is the only discipline whose limits only exist in the absence of creativity and open-mindedness.

Source: “What Digital Humanists Do” by Paige Morgan

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