Category Archives: Participant Posts

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Mining data

Reading the articles for Monday on mining data reminded me of the “revolution” in Classics in the late 80s and early 90s when Perseus was first introduced. At the time, it revolutionized the field: before Perseus, a brilliant classicist was a scholar who knew all the iterations of a particular aorist verb form in Aeschylus and thus knew the meaning and context of the verb. His knowledge (and it was usually his) was based on years of reading Aeschylus (and the other tragedians for context), spending long hours writing verb forms on notecards, and publishing esoteric articles on the language. (We are philologists!) After Perseus, it became so much easier to just find all the iterations of a particular word or words, collate them, contextualize them, and analyze them.  But had the field gone farther?

But first, let me take you to the way back machine. In college in the 70s, I used a typewriter and wrote in by hand my Greek passages for my essays; my husband, who is a sociologist, used punch cards for his research and was considered cutting edge sophisticated. In the eighties, my friends and I in Classics and Art History hacked our machines and got our dot-matrix printers to print Greek AND EVEN THE DIACRITICS!! We were cool, or thought we were. And then came Perseus.

The Perseus project itself recognizes that digital humanities has changed and that there is a huge need for clean data and machine actionable knowledge. It looks like that is happening  at the Perseus site, but not that Classicists are following, at least that I can find. Only last January (2014) was there the inaugural meeting at AIA/APA for the Digital Classics Association; the title of the panel was “Getting Started in Digital Humanities.” There is a CFP for NELA on digital humanities and the classics for May 2015.  Here is an interesting video about the use of computational photography. But this seems to be the seeds of the revolution.

There is lots more that could be done using Perseus digital repository, and it not just focused on Greek and Latin areas of research.

 

Source: Mining data

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Space & Time

Carl Sagan

Millions & billions

Spatial humanities: not the final frontier, but ripe with millions & billions of possibilities. Certainly an exciting prospect for the visual-minded humanist, geospatial visualization comes in many formats. One of the tools we tried, StoryMap, is a narrative tool that demonstrates how powerfully maps can tell stories, especially for communicating with the non-scholarly audience (at least that was my impression). On the other end of the academic scale, the Fletcher & Helmreich project tantalizes with its amazing use of historic maps to reexamine the business of selling art in London through the latter nineteenth century. But isn’t mapping, after all, just another form of data visualization? If data and your research questions are solid, geospatial visualization should be a great vehicle (but Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps demonstrates just how easy it is to twist your data through cartography), but there are always pitfalls. I’m struggling with the prospect of mapping (that is, geolocating) social data. It would be possible to extract references from city directories and census, but that’s not enough (as the Digital Harlem project shows us). It would take so much more, beginning with information from handwritten archival sources. Amassing a large enough volume of research to reflect meaningful social connections—well, it would take millions & billions of brain cells, more than anything else.

Source: Space & Time

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Mapping Artamanoff

Today was about mapping. We played with several different ways to map and to tell stories with maps. This example was produced in an alpha version of a program called StoryMap. I’m not crazy about it, but it was interesting to make.

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Spatial humanities for an architectural historian

The main reason I am interested in Digital Humanities is because of spatial technologies, in particular mapping and the ability to overlay different data (from demographic information to literary references) over historical and contemporary maps. I have already posted about this regarding my project on the “urban world of Brazilian modernists.” I would also like to apply mapping to a couple of other projects. One of them is on informal urban and architectural projects in Sao Paulo (grassroots urbanism) in the last ten years. I want to plot these projects onto a map of the city and correlate them to socio-economic data and to sites of political street demonstrations. And another project is to map present and past sites of alternative living and art projects in Berlin. Both of these projects are tough in the sense that there isn’t a lot of documentation or data (digital or otherwise) because these were often temporary, ephemeral, and illegal initiatives. Data collection will be one of my biggest challenges; much of it will have to be done analogically and then digitized in some way (entered manually or scanned, depending on the data). I think the mapping platforms we explored (geolocation, Google Maps) will be helpful to create prototypes or early versions of these projects, but I suspect that I might have to explore GIS or maybe a custom solution (in collaboration, of course).

Source: Spatial humanities for an architectural historian

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Day 5

Learning how to use Google Map Engine Lite to map… stuff. Anything with geographical points that are map-able. I created a small Excel spreadsheet with addresses and created this test map of some public sculptures in Bogotá, Colombia. Then I added pictures. Click on the points to see the pictures and addresses! (I did this quickly and couldn’t find the exact address for Bursztyn’s Homenaje a López Pumarejo, so it is not completely accurate.)

Another cool and powerful and easy to use tool.


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Sink or swim

Throwing kid into pool

 

When I was a wee lad of six or so, the intrepid counselors at Robin Hood day camp taught me to swim by a method that, while impressive in its simplicity, would no doubt have made the helicopter parents of today hyperventilate (and, most likely, follow up with a lawsuit): they unceremoniously tossed me into the deep end of the pool. In retrospect, their chosen method must have been an effective one, since I did learn to swim (though I’ve mercifully blocked out the details about how exactly I did so).

The organizers of our summer institute in digital art history at the Center for History and New Media are clearly the successors to those camp counselors of yore. Although it’s only been four days thus far, the group has already been introduced to a dizzying array of new information and resources and we’re tossing around terms that would have drawn a complete blank for me just a few short days ago: CMS, metadata, VRA Core, Omeka vs. Scalar vs. Drupal, and on and on. Along with giving me a whole new set of skills to use in my teaching, there’s another outcome that has delighted me as well: amidst all the technical insights I’m acquiring, I’m also thinking in new ways — and with renewed energy — about my work, after a few months of feeling rather uninspired in that respect. I’m jotting down all sorts of notes about my research and noticing connections I hadn’t before considered, and I’m even thinking about a quick research trip I’d like to squeeze in before the beginning of the fall semester (which will arrive way too soon for my liking!). This is just to say that, while prior to my arrival I was worried that the process of learning about these new digital techniques would totally tamp down my energy for my own (analog, archival, close looking-based) research, the end result has been quite the opposite. It’s always a relief to find that, rather than flailing wildly, one is doggy paddling quite happily around the pool.

Source: Sink or swim

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Blogging Homework – Day 4

Can it REALLY be only Day 4? Sheila Brennan and Sharon Leon have done a remarkably amazingly fantastic job of putting together this seminar. I really CAN NOT fathom that it has been only four days; I have learned so much.

Which is also why there is no way I’m going to be reading How to Lie with Maps, a book about mapping as a resource and research platform written by Mark Monmonier (second edition even!). I want to. Oh, do I want to! But I reckon I have about an hour’s worth of battery life left in this brain and I want to get some thoughts down and answer the questions for today.

The first issue we were asked to think and blog about tonight is this: “Consider how to incorporate different types of resources into your digital project for analysis.”

First off, I need images. I learned how to use TinEye to find images (though it has yet to work for me; I have such weirdo images). I have been able to find several through searches on museum databases and through other web searching tools I’ve learned this “week” (as in four days). So, my site will need images.

I had originally thought I might need some kind of mapping. I still might. I will know more after tomorrow’s discussion (and when I  eventually read  How to Lie with Maps).  I had originally thought to “plot” the images in Tuscany on a map. But the reading I *did* do tonight, by Richard Wright “What is Spatial Mapping” makes me wonder. I took two things from this reading that makes me stop and think:

1. Mapping is about moving through space. I am dealing with paintings and in many cases the provenance is etchy-sketchy (yes that is an industry term). If I am not even sure where the images came from, and mapping is about spaces, then maybe this is not the best tool for my project.

2. Wright ends his piece by saying : “Visualization and spatial history are not about producing illustrations or maps to communicate things that you have discovered by other means. It is a means of doing research; it generates questions that might otherwise go unasked.” Do I really need a map to see the Byzantine influence in the panel paintings produced by Italian artists in the thirteenth century? Does a mapping tool communicate that influence and no other means can? Clearly that is not the case, since I have already identified some iconographic markers that demonstrate influence. So…I’m now rethinking the mapping issue. Hopefully tomorrow will shed light on what such a tool can – and can’t or should not – do.

And this leads me to something I was thinking about earlier today when I was coming back on the bus: you should not let the tools – as totally freaking cool as they  are – guide the research. You still need to ask the disciplinary questions and then see if there are the tools that will answer them. So, is mapping a useful tool? I still think it might be. But just because I WANT to use a mapping tool (and I will learn how to do it tomorrow) does not mean that it is necessarily the best tool for my project. I think the use of the newest shiny toy just to use it might be at the core of why many scholars are skeptical or outright hostile to the idea of digital humanities research and publication. And the answer of “but it is up on the web and therefore digital and for the public” is not a good enough answer. It has to be solid scholarship – that is enhanced or actually created by the digital tools. Thus, I need to figure out what my project is really about and find the best tools to help it develop.We were also asked to think about our home institutions and how much support or lack thereof we will find there. I am REALLY lucky. I have a lot of support at my home institution in the form of tech people. I am very lucky in that I have great librarians with whom to partner, as well as Instructional Technologists (yes, I’m talking to you Steve Kerby!), as well as others who are very digitally inclined (like the Social Media Ninja, and he knows who he is). Yet, I do believe I might be The Only faculty member who will be attempting digital research. I think some are embracing digital tools for teaching (and one thing I LOVE LOVE about our group is that when we learn a tool, you hear a ripple around the room of, “oh, I could so use that in class!” The energy is really great). But I think I will be a Lone Wolf back at McDaniel when it comes to the research angle. But that is OK. I predict this group will stick together digitally for some time forward. And we have our awesome website and Twitter hashtag: #doingdah14. Could there be more money? Sure. Could it be helpful if there were more staff? Yeah. But I’ve got good people and enthusiasm. And that’s carried me through on other projects before this one. Bring it on Day 5!!!

Source: Blogging Homework – Day 4

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Platform salad

Each platform offers possibilities for different aspects of my project:

1. I want to be able to have annotations that appear if you roll over tags; in these annotations I want to be able to include text, images, maps, links to other pages etc. ThingLink was wonderful for this, especially because it is embeddable. It is so great when these platforms can “talk to each other” and work together, which doesn’t always seem to be the case.

2. I didn’t get a chance to explore Scalar, but from the demo it looks very appealing as one way of presenting my project as a text rich with media, annotations, and dynamic features. I am not sure that I could build my whole project there. Right now I see it as a way to make a “book version” of my project, so to speak–with a sustained analysis, argument etc etc but not with all the interactive features of the map-based idea. I don’t mind thinking of this as a companion platform that could be linked to the map site.

3. I like OHMS for a different research project where one of my sources is a video on Youtube made by a Berlin collective, which is an oral/video history of that community. I’ve been annotating it manually by writing down the minutes and seconds of important passages and transcribing them, but OHMS would make the work so much easier.

4. Animoto was super fun, but I probably would only use it to make vignettes for teaching. I like the ease of adding content, but perhaps this ease is precisely what makes Animoto limited for me: I can’t control the timing of each shot, the templates are very formulaic and rigid (and most of them a bit campy!), and I can achieve similar results when I record a slideshow on Powerpoint–except that I can easily add my voice-over, control timings etc. Powerpoint is admittedly much slower and clunkier, and the final file is gigantic and not easy to share, so I suppose Animoto could be best in some situations.

5. Omeka 2.0 looks promising! I tested Omeka yesterday and liked it as a teaching tool, for building my course website and for having students work on their own. Omeka 2.0 seems more flexible, visually appealing (not just on the dashboard side but also on the “user view” side), and easier to work with.

I am not sure what is available at my home institution because I’m joining them in the Fall. It’s a big university and I suspect there might already be resources, people, platforms etc. available. I also think they would be open to new projects and suggestions.

Source: Platform salad

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Day 4: Drinking from the Firehose?

Confession: There was a moment today when I felt like I was drinking from the firehose. While the embedded video below doesn’t entirely capture the feeling, it does allow me to showcase my newfound abilities:

I left today’s institute meeting feeling like a giddy child, one who has boxes of chocolates and sugary candies and who doesn’t even know where to begin delighting in the sugary sweetness. After learning about Scalar, Omeka, and Drupal Gardens yesterday, I woke this morning hoping we’d have time to explore them further. The day turned out so much better than I imagined, as we discovered numerous tools to annotate images and videos. Thinglink became my new favorite tool (scroll over the images here). I enjoy annotating images, especially those that are unfamiliar to students (e.g., the Aztec “Calendar Stone”).

Operation_Crossroads_Baker_EditI’ve always done it in Photoshop or some other image editing software, where I draw arrows and include text, but it is always somewhat messy. Thinglink allowed me to annotate with not only text, but also links and videos. And it was easy to use. Come Fall semester, I will use this in my classes and ask students to annotate images. It will be a wonderful way to encourage close looking at images, even if it is a different type of close looking than we might normally expect. I know that I will also employ this tool for my project on Mexican deathways for the same reason that I will use it with students. I can embed these annotated images into my websites as well. For all these reasons, Thinglink ranks as my number one tool of the day.

We also explored Animoto. I must confess that I am normally dismissive of videos made from powerpoints or the like–I find them distracting. Yet Animoto has potential for both my teaching and project on Mexican deathways, particularly because it limits text, focuses on the visual, and displays a clean finished product.

Learning to annotate in Youtube was also wonderful. I feel sheepish that I didn’t know how to to this before today. And what wonderful possibilities it has. I can also download (for free) my Animoto videos and then upload them to my Youtube channel.

Surprisingly, by 4 PM I felt energized and ready to keep exploring all these new tools. They were all simple enough to guide students and colleagues who might want to use digital tools for their own projects or research.

A final note about today’s learning: the new Omeka 2.2 platform that we installed is much better than the earlier version I used yesterday. With a few changes to the hex color codes and a header image, I had a decent looking website in a couple of minutes vs. the earlier version. I plan to use this new version for the deathways project. In particular, it will work well to create exhibitions of objects.

Resources at Brooklyn College and CUNY

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There are a few helpful resources at Brooklyn College beyond Artstor, WorldCat, etc. I found some excellent resources on fair use, as well as some individuals who might be willing to help me get clearances. Within the CUNY system, I imagine the CUNY Commons will use useful for making connections with people interested in digital humanities and digital art history, finding different platforms (or at least others who use them), and experimenting with other platforms and tools. I also discovered that Brooklyn College has a list of OERs that could aid my project. I didn’t find anything about specific CMS platforms, but it is possible that this information is not well represented online. I’ve no doubt that CUNY Graduate Center has amazing resources for those interested in digital humanities. Now I just need to find and access them.

Source: Day 4: Drinking from the Firehose?

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Platforms, Functionality, Usability

omekascreenshot_smWell, platforms. I guess “out of the box” is helpful & gets your project off the ground quickly. But it boxes things up, too. I experimented this afternoon with Omeka.net. It has an impressive structure that yields some astonishingly quick results and offers simple-to-activate plug-ins. I created a collection & tried adding a few items manually and by ingesting from a csv file, then created an exhibition. It seemed as if the easiest way to pull data from Zotero in (at least according to the Zotero forum discussion that @magpie found, you can export Zotero data as a report (html), then open that file in Excel, then save as CSV. Fine, but the table needed a 90 degree rotation, and I’m Excel-phobic enough to let that deter me. So I ended up hand editing the table, but was able to save it as a CSV and pull the data into Omeka. I’m sure there’s a better way to do that, but it was worth investigating. Omeka.net was, however, a bit disappointing from a visual and usability standpoint. Not sure why each item needs to proclaim so loudly its metadata format. And when navigation is largely verbal, rather than visual, it affects usability. The template styles, while limited, definitely work. Apparently, Omeka.org solves all these issues with lots of customization options, as is clearly apparent in the stunning Peacock Room site. There is much more that can be done with omeka.net, of course, and a two-hour experiment gave only time to explore it briefly—hoping for more hands-on soon!

Perhaps Drupal would provide a more flexible, tabula rasa-style platform for my project. My experience with Drupal has been from a “consumer” point of view, managing the construction of (and providing content for) a web site developed by others with time constraints, rather than from the “producer” perspective, from which all things are possible.

 

 

Source: Platforms, Functionality, Usability