Are We Ready for the Digital Humanities?

(1)

Are We Ready for the Digital Humanities?

Atlantic Provinces Library Association Lisa Goddard

Memorial University Libraries May 2011

Atlantic Provinces Library Association Lisa Goddard

Memorial University Libraries May 2011

(2)

What are the Digital Humanities?

How can libraries support DH?

(3)

Humanities

• Philosophy, literature, religion, art, music, history and language.

• Core library users.

• Core print users.

(4)

Digital Humanities

Opening up new knowledge and new ways of learning through the application of digital

technologies to any humanities subject.

DH is about creating digital toolsets that allow users to undertake new forms of research in the humanities.

Growing interest and investment.

(5)

George Mason: CHNM

(6)

Stanford Literary Lab

(7)

U Virginia Scholar’s Lab

(8)

Digital Humanities in Canada

• U Alberta

• U Toronto

• U Victoria

• UNB

• U Montreal

• McMaster

• McGill

• York

(9)

Digital Humanities Projects

(10)

Thematic Digital Archives

(11)

Virtual Anthologies

(12)

Aggregate, Annotate, Review

(13)

GIS & Mapping

(14)

Clustering & Visualization

(15)

Text Transcription & Markup

(16)

Edition Comparisons

(17)

3D Sculpture Modeling

(18)

Tool Building

(19)

Anatomy of a DH Project

Dunning et al,

“Freeing up digital content with text

mining”,

Serials. 22(2), July 2009

(20)

Text Corpus

• 17^thC English news pamphlets

• Dec 1653 to May 1654

• British Library electronic texts

• 312 documents, 800 000 words

(21)

CLAWS: Part of Speech Tagging

• Grammar parsing tool (Linguistics)

• Identifies proper nouns, common nouns, plural nouns, adjectives, prepositions…

• 95–97% accuracy

(22)

Geographical Analysis

(23)

Geographical Analysis

(24)

USAS: Semantic Parsing

... two_N1 ships_M4 from_Z5 Dunkirk_Z2 have_Z5 brought_M2 Men_S2.2m

Arms_B1 ,_PUNC and_Z5 Ammunition_G3 to_Z5 Middleton_Z1mf

Ships = M4 (shipping, swimming, etc.) Men = S2.2m (People:-Male)

Ammunition = G3 (warfare, defence and the army;

weapons)

(25)

GIS Mapping: Topic ‘War’

(26)

GIS Mapping: Topic ‘Money’

(27)

DH Growing Pains

(28)

DH Library Fears

The Humanists are leaving us for the Computer Scientists.

(29)

Digital Humanities Sources

(30)

Primary source materials

(31)

Primary source materials

(32)

Primary source materials

(33)

Primary source materials

(34)

Large text corpora

(35)

Large text corpora

(36)

Large text corpora

(37)

Large text corpora

(38)

Large text corpora

Proposed settlement

In-copyright works owned by universities Non-consumptive purposes

One or two centres

(39)

Linguistic Corpora

(40)

Historical Linguistic Corpora

(41)

Historical GIS Data

(42)

Historical Census Datasets

(43)

Etext Preferences: Cost

(44)

Etext Preferences: Quality

(45)

Etext Preferences: Availability

(46)

Licensing & Rights

• Multi-layered sources with different licensing conditions.

• Copyright over annotations, data sets, other user-generated information.

• Need for clearly expressed rights info.

(47)

Copyright review project

(48)

Library Role: Sources

• Acquire & preserve primary sources

• Digitization & transcription

• Open, flexible formats

• Large text aggregations

• Data sets

• Licensing & copyright

(49)

Digital Humanities Metadata

(50)

Traditional Metadata

• Access to print collections

• Authorities

• Thesauri

• Bibliographies

• Indexes

• Concordances

(51)

Finding Aids: Primary Sources

(52)

Finding Aids: Data Sets

(53)

Name Authorities

(54)

Name Authorities

(55)

Specialized Thesauri

(56)

Full Text Markup

Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

(57)

Metadata: TEI

<div n="castlist” type="DramatisPersonae"

org="uniform" sample="complete"> <castList>

<head>Dramatis Personae</head>

<role xml:id="wag">Wagner</role>

</castItem>

…</castlist>

</div>

(58)

Metadata: TEI

<p>For is he not

Corpus naturale

</foreign>?

</p>

</sp>

(59)

Metadata: TEI

<l xml:id="l26">Nothing so sweet as

<orig>Magicke</orig>

<reg>magic</reg>

</choice> is to him;</l>

(60)

Metadata: TEI

<metSym value="+">metrical prominence</metSym>

<metSym value="-">metrical non-prominence</metSym>

<metSym value="|">foot boundary</metSym>

<metSym value="/">metrical line boundary</metSym>

</metDecl>

(61)

Metadata: TEI

<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(- 26px)">prosecute</l>

(62)

Controlled Vocabularies

(63)

Controlled Vocabularies

(64)

Metadata: Library Role

• Metadata crosswalks

• Controlled vocabularies

• Thesauri & taxonomy

• Name authorities

• Text mark-up

(65)

Digital Humanities Preservation

(66)

Preservation: Library Role

• Storage infrastructure

• Digital objects & texts

• User generated annotations

• User generated data sets

• Software environments & tools

• Preservation metadata

• Long term access

(67)

Library Support for Digital Humanities

• Sources

• Licensing

• Digitization

• Metadata

• GIS & Data

• Sharing

• Preservation

(68)

Thank you.

Lisa Goddard

Scholarly Communications Librarian lgoddard@mun.ca

http://www.library.mun.ca/goddard.php