DH101 2013/2014 course 2

Digital Humanities 101 - 2013/2014 - Course 2

Digital Humanities Laboratory

Frederic Kaplan

[email protected]

Structure of today’s course

•Skill: Distinguishing for concepts•Digital Humanities

•Digital Studies

•Humanities computing

•Studies about Digital Culture

•Skill: Writing an academic blog post with Wordpress

•First Assignment (Deadline Oct 16th)

•Exercize on Massive Digitization

my header

Digital Humanities 101 - 2013/2014 - Course 2 | 2013 2o

Skill : Distinguishing four concepts : Digital Humanities,Humanities Computing, Digital Studies, Studies aboutDigital Culture

my header


Distinguishing four concepts

•Only one answer is correct• (1) A=Digital Humanities, B=Humanities

Computing, C=Studies about Digital Culture,

D=Digital Studies

• (2) A=Studies about Digital Culture, B=Digital

Studies, C=Humanities Computing, D=Digital

Humanities

• (3) A’=Humanities Computing, B’=Studies about

Digital Culture, C’=Digital Humanities,

D’=Digital Studies

• (4) A’=Digital Humanities, B’=Humanities

Computing, C’=Studies about Digital Culture,


my header


Distinguishing four concepts: Your answers



D=Digital Studies



Humanities







my header


Digital Humanities

my header


Digital + Humanities

my header


Digital Systems

•Digital systems represent information

using discrete values.

•Ex: Binary encoding (but the digital

systems can also be use other bases)

my header


Analog Systems

•Analog systems represent information

using a continuous function.

my header


Digitus

•The word digital comes from digit and

digitus (finger in Latin) because fingers

are used for discrete counting

my header


What disciplines are covered by the term humanities?

my header


What disciplines are covered by the term humanities?

•ancient and modern languages

• literature

•history

•philosophy

• religion

•visual and performing arts

•anthropology

•area studies

•communication studies

•cultural studies

• law

• linguistics

my header


Disambiguation: Humanist and humanism

•Scholars that work in the Humanities are

called humanists

•The term humanists is also linked with

the Renaissance idea of humanism (e.g.

Erasmus is a humanist)

•Scholars working in the Humanities are

not necessarily humanists in the

philosophical sense.

my header


Digital Humanities is a newword

my header


... essentially used in the US, UK and Germany

my header


The term Humanities computing is declining

my header


Humanities computing was about applying computationalapproaches to humanities research questions.

my header


... Digital methods applied to literature, history, etc.

my header


Digital methods tend to disolve frontiers

•One consequence of the use of digital methods in the humanities was the evolution

of the traditional disciplinary frontiers.

•Various disciplines discovered that they were dealing with similar objects and

methods (databases, pattern recognition, etc.)

•There were more similarities between disciplines tryping to use computational

methods to study their object, then inside some disciplines.

my header


A terminological change

•The terminological change from humanities computing to digital humanities has

been attributed to John Unsworth, Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman, editors of

the monograph A Companion to Digital Humanities (2004)

•Contrary to Humanities Computing, the term Digital Humanities covers both the

methods of contemporary humanities in studying digital objects, and symetrically

the use of digital technology for studying humanities objects.

my header


A focus on practice

•Many researchers in the Digital Humanities field insist on the importance of

practice over theory

•One specifity of this community is the organization of THATCamp, The

Humanities and Technology Camp, open, inexpensive meetings where humanists

and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on

the spot.

•The slogan of the THATCamps is More hack, less yacks

• In the same line, Claire Warwick, UCL London suggests a very open definition: If

you think you are doing it, then you probably are

•This is why this course focuses on skills more than theory

my header


A global phenomena

•Although the Digital Humanities

acamedic world is currently still

dominated by the anglo-american

scholars, there is a clear goal to make it

a global multilinguistic phenomena.

•The Digital Humanities Call for Paper

has been translated in 14 languages by

volunteers.

my header


Lost in translation

•This raises the question on how to

translate the term Digital Humanities in

other languages?

• Italian for instance still use the term

Informatica umanistica which is closer

from humanities computing than Digital

Humanities

my header


The French vs Swiss French debate

•The official translation of Digital in French is numerique. So many French

researcher use the term Humanites numeriques

• In French speaking Switzerland, the term Humanites digitales is preferred because

of the richer reference to digitus (the finger) and the related concepts of doigte.

•Digital Humanities include a lot of hands-on approaches.

•Humanities that you do not only with your brains but also with your fingers.

•Time will tell which term will be preferred by the French speaking community.

my header


Digital Studies

•Bernard Stiegler argues that the term

Digital Humanities is too narrow and

that the effects of digitalization go

beyond the field of the Humanities to

affect all the knowledge fields.

•He prefers to the term Digital studies by

opposition to Analog studies.

•The effects of digitalization must also be

studied on fields like physics, biology,

geology and other natural sciences.

my header


Studies about digital culture

•The Digital Revolution is transforming

all aspects of our culture.

•3.1 Billion social network accounts, 1

Billion Facebook, 425 Million Twitter,

90 Billion emails/day, 325 Millions

photos shared/day, 1 Billion Google

searches/day

•Most DH scholars consider that studies

about digital culture are parts of Digital

Humanities

my header


The right answer is (3)



D=Digital Studies



Humanities







my header


Skill: Writing an academic blog post with Wordpress

my header


FromWikipedia

•WordPress is a free and open source

blogging tool and a dynamic content

management system (CMS) based on

PHP and MySQL.

• It has many features including a plug-in

architecture and a template system.

•WordPress is currently the most popular

blogging system in use on the Internet

(60 millions websites)

my header


FromWikipedia

• It was first released on May 27, 2003, by

founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike

Little as a fork of b2/cafelog.

•As of September 2013, the latest version

3.6 had been downloaded over 6 million

times.

my header


Demonstration : Inside dh101.ch

my header


Assignment

•Write a blog post on dh101.ch presenting a current trend of DIgital Humanities by

presenting three selected abstract from the 2013 conference

•You can have a look at a the trend blog post on dh101.ch

•The abstracts can be found here : http://dh2013.unl.edu/abstracts/

•The blog post must have more than 500 words. It must not be a copy-and-past of

the discussed articles or another blog post.

•The blog post needs to be new and relevant for the global DH community

(remember dh101.ch is followed by many other DHers outside the class)

•This blog post counts for 30 % of your final grade

•As you are a DH101 author, you can publish the abstract when you want on the

website. The Deadline is October 16th.

my header


http://dh2013.unl.edu/abstracts/

Evaluation of the assignment and peer-reviewing

•Each assignment is going to be evaluated by the professor.

• It is the professor’s grade that will count as the official grade.

•For grading, the professor will follow a strict evaluation grid (next slide)

• In addition, each assignment will be graded by five students

•The student will follow the same evaluation grid.

•Students will be graded for grading (10 % of the final semester mark).

• If you do your grading seriously you should all get the maximum of these 10 %

•We will then compare if grading by student is similar to the grading by the professor.

my header


The evaluation grid (0-6)

•The blog post has only original content (no copy-and-paste from the abstracts or othersources)•The blog post follows the guidelines of the assignment (it discusses three articles, it identifies a trend)•Grade will be at least 4, but can go up to 6 if the following requirements are met• (Language) The English of the blog post is correct and clearly understandable +0.5• (Wordpress) The blog post’s keywords are relevant and the blog post layout is adapted to its content +0.5• (Content 1) The blog post is not just a summary of three articles, it really compares them. +0.5• (Content 2) The blog post’s content is well argumented and the identified trend is interesting +0.5•The blog does not follow the guidelines•Grade = 3

•The blog post includes copy-and-paste of other sources•Grade = 0

my header


Next week: Massive digitization

my header


The exercise of today will a collective investigation into aopen complex problem

my header


Objective: Learning to divide a complex problem intosmaller chunks

my header


How canwe digitize 80 km of archives in ten years ?

•Question 1: Estimate the number of

persons to be employed and their

function

•Question 2: Decide on the kind of

scanners to be used

•Question 3: Estimate the size of the

data storage needed

•Question 4: Estimate the overall budget

my header


How canwe digitize 80 km of archives in ten years ?

•Strategy to answer these questions:

Divide them into a set of subquestions

to be checked first.

•Write these subquestions in framapad.

•Put your name under the subquestion

you want to investigate.

•Start searching for information in groups

and write the relevant findings / URL on

the framapad

my header


DH101 2013/2014 course 2

Education

Transcript of DH101 2013/2014 course 2