digital scholarship seminar: implications of data for the 21st-century humanist
DESCRIPTION
As increasing amounts of humanities data comes online, scholars face new challenges in adapting traditional research, dissemination, and teaching practices. Without pretending to have all the answers, this presentation will address a constellation of related questions:What do humanists gain from using new techniques for quick charting or mapping of their data? How can we lower the technological barrier? Does this compromise the deep analysis so valued in the humanities? How is data in the humanities changing the relationship between researchers and archivists, as well as the nature of scholarly collaboration? How does our evaluation of historical scholarship need to change? How much do algorithms and data literacy need to be a part of humanities courses? What happens when we can’t understand where our data is coming from or what our digital tools are doing? Fred Gibbs is an Assistant Professor of History at George Mason University and Director of Digital Scholarship at the Center for History and New Media. This Digital Scholarship seminar will be facilitated by Kathryn Tomasek, Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College (MA) and will take place online in NITLE’s Virtual Auditorium. For more information, see our instructions on Participating in Online Events.TRANSCRIPT
While a number of free data analysis and visualization tools have become available on the web during last few years (Many Eyes, Tableau, Google docs, etc.), they are not useful unless you have access to large social datasets.
I have no doubt that eventually we will see many more humanities and social science researchers who are equally good at most abstract theoretical arguments as well the latest data analysis algorithms which they can implement themselves, as opposed to relying on computer scientists.
Lev Manovich, Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data
Digging Into Data: Criminal Intent
(voyeurtools.org)
(zotero.org)
(oldbaileyonline.org)
(diggingintodata.org)
Book of Job 5-grams in GB British English 1789-1914
Book of Job 5-grams in GB British English 1789-1914
Some 19th century editions of the Bible…
“…science of…” GB British English 1789-1914
Errors due to missing metadata. Compare locality and country.
Pittier, H. H. F. Pittier Pittier H. H. F. Pittier. Pittier H. Pittier Pittier,H.
much more usable…
Furthermore, XML medium adds a significant twist to this otherwise straightforward analysis. Ayers and Thomas use XML to embrace…the fact that slavery is too tightly interwoven throughout Southern society to stand alone as a unit of analysis.
Is this is a simple, direct presentation? What does this endeavor do better than the standard practice?
http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/essays/thomasessay.php
Conclusions
• Malleable data• How to recombine data from various sources• What form(at)s are necessary?
• Circulation of data• Curation and ownership• Communicating with orbital content/data
• Metaphysics of metadata• What are underlying structures? • What are biases in metadata creation?