Digital Humanities and Digital Mapping

8/8/2019 Digital Humanities and Digital Mapping

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Digital Humanities

and Digital Mapping

Using computing power to bring newinsights to old disciplines

A presentation for LIS 697 - Creating Interactive Websites at Pratt-SILSMarch 1, 2010Jeremy Hutchins and Genevieve Podleski


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What is digital humanities?

Also known as humanities computing, digital humanities is aterm used to describe the use of computers to build newmodels of literary, historical, and cultural texts.

Concordances Language tools Dynamic casts of characters Embedded analysis

Mapping

Digital humanities systems use relational databases andencoded texts to colocate and show linkages among data thatmay be unfindable by unaided human reading.


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What isn'tdigital humanities?

"[O]ne of the many things you can do with computers is something that I would call humanities computing,in which the computer is used as tool for modeling humanities data and our understanding of it, and thatactivity is entirely distinct from using the computer when it models the typewriter, or the telephone, or thephonograph, or any of the many other things it can be." -- John Unsworth, U of Virginia

Texts encoded with HTML PDFs, Word docs, and other untagged electronic documents


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How digital humanities works

Scholars analyze texts to pick out discrete entity types suchas dates, places, names, concepts, or specific words

Each entity is encoded using a standardized markuplanguage (XML or SGML), usually with the TEI schema

Encoded texts are used to populate a database that is builtto collocate conceptual similarities

Texts can be reused (to an extent) to populate new systemsonce a system has reached its ontological limitthe limits of

its ontological structure


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The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

from Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenMy dear Mr. Bennet, said his lady to him oneday, have you heard that NetherfieldPark is let at last?It being one of the principles of theCircumlocution Office never, onany account whatsoever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle said, Possibly.

http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml

Since 1987, the scholars and information and computerscientists of TEI have built standards for encoding texts thatallow for new data models in a consciously hardware- andsoftware-neutral way.


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What's the point?

Seeing old data in a new way

Encouraging collaboration

Enabling sustainability of data

Moving scholarship in new direction

Collating data from texts, images, maps, materials

Breaking down barriers - language, platform, location


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Problems and Issues

Digital projects don't count for tenure

Humanists aren't programmers

Programmers aren't humanists

UK/Europe moving ahead of the US

Visual applications get more attention


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Herodotus' HistoriesInternet Ancient History Sourcebook

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herodotus-history.txt


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Herodotus' HistoriesPerseus Project at Tufts University

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?


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Building systems for research

Relational databases "recommend certain kinds of queries byestablishing relationships between elements of differenttables." (Unsworth, 2002)


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Standards and Authorities

Use of authority files anddefinitions already familiar tolibrarians and informationscientists

Library of Congress Getty authorities ISO

Leads to ...


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GeoReferencing

Previously Cartographic materials were difficultto access. Old Maps are fragile and scholarsused to have to make pilgrimages to map

collections.


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Emerging Possibilities

maps can be converged with othercollections data (text, artifacts, multimedia)

ability to visualize the placement ofinformation retrieved from collection as it isdistributed across a landscape

allows for bridging of language barrierbecause maps are visual

pushes out collections to new audiences


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Case Study 1: The Map of EarlyLondon


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Old Information --> New Discoveries

Early Map from 1560's

Encoding allows for cross referencing of texts and

locations

View cultural aspects of London in geographicalcontext

Contributors are scholars within the humanities,and must be peer reviewed


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Case Study 2: David Rumsey HistoricalMap Collection


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Case Study 3: Hypermedia Berlin


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Case Study 5: Irish-American FictionMaps


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database of more than 600 works of fiction taggedwith geographic identifiers

allows users to access digital map collection andview metadata

allows user to overlay on to Google Earth

able to view using timeline

Through the mapping of literary figures, Jockers isable to make new discoveries about the evolutionof Irish American Authors that defied previouslyheld assumptions.


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Case Study 4: GutenArte


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Shows characters in fiction usinggeographic identifiers

allows user to visualize through thegeographic interface the charactersusing a tag cloud methodology


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Case Study 6: NYPL Map Warper


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allows users to collaborate on geotagging,

rectifying and metadata development

IncludesoBuildingsohistorical architectureoenvironmentally compromised locationso sociological datao transportation networksohydrography


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Potential Problems

collaborative approach allows outside usersto collaborate without administrativecontrols.

Mapping standards for Google Maps andSatellite view or Open Street map are not asrigorous as GIS (geographic informationsystem).

Boundary disputes

Could this compromise integrity of library as guardianof knowledge?


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Further sources

Map of London: http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/

Hypermedia Berlin: http://www.berlin.ucla.edu/

Gutenkarte: http://gutenkarte.org/

David RumseyMap Collection http://www.davidrumsey.com/

New York PublicLibrary Map Warper http://maps.nypl.org/warper/


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Bibliography

1. A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford:Blackwell, 2004.http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/

2. Hill, Linda Georeferencing: The Geographic Associations of Information (2009) MIT Press3. Cane, Gregory. Georeferencing in Historical Collections. Dlib (May

2004). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may04/crane/05crane.html4. Goodchild, Michael F., Citizens As Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography (2007) Geojournal

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h013jk125081j628/5. Rydberg-Cox, Jeffrey A. Digital Libraries and the Challenges ofDigitalHumanities. Oxford: Chandos

Publishing, 2005.6. Unsworth, John. "What is Digital Humanities and What is Not?" http://computerphilologie.uni-

muenchen.de/jg02/unsworth.html7. Burnard, Lou and Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. "TEI Lite: An Introduction to Text Encoding for

Interchange." June 1995, revised May 2002. http://www.tei-c.org/Guidelines/Customization/Lite/teiu5_split_en.html


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Discussion Questions

1. How can we as database designers work to makehumanities computing systems as flexible as possible?

2. Is a MS Access database of information from a set of textsdigital humanities? Why or why not?

3. Digital humanities are very active in the UK and Europe butrelatively obscure here in the US. What can we asinformation professionals do to move these initiatives along?

4. New Technologies enable remote users to contribute todigitized library materials. To what extent is it a library'sresponsibility to have strict administrative controls for peerreview?


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Any more questions?

(Thanks!)

Documents

Digital Humanities and Digital Mapping