[en] Archival Liveness: Designing with Collections Before and
During Cataloguing and DigitizationTom Schofield, Culture Lab, Newcastle University; David Kirk, Digital Interactions Group, Newcastle University; Telmo Amaral, Digital Interactions Group, Newcastle University; Marian Dörk, Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, Institute for Urban Futures; Mitchell Whitelaw, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra; Guy Schofield, Digital Interactions Group, Newcastle University; Thomas Ploetz, Digital Interactions Group, Newcastle University
Abstract
[en]
We present “archival liveness” as a concept in design and the Digital
Humanities and describe its development within a Research Through Design
process. Working with a newly acquired archive of contemporary poetry we
produced designs that both manifested and “geared in to”
the temporal rhythms of the work and
infrastructure of archiving. Drawing on user-centred work with participants,
often poets themselves, we focused on marginalia as a material feature of the
archive, developing a drawing machine and live Twitter bot. Our work addresses
institutional concerns for outreach and engagement while also acknowledging and
exploiting the inevitably incomplete or live character of archival collections.
For designers working with digital archives, we demonstrate the pragmatic and
critical value of liveness as a focus of the design process.
[en] Jane, John … Leslie? A Historical Method
for Algorithmic Gender PredictionCameron Blevins, Rutgers University; Lincoln Mullen, George Mason University
Abstract
[en]
This article describes a new method for inferring the gender
of personal names using large historical datasets. In
contrast to existing methods of gender prediction that treat
names as if they are timelessly associated with one gender,
this method uses a historical approach that takes into
account how naming practices change over time. It uses
historical data to measure the likelihood that a name was
associated with a particular gender based on the time or
place under study. This approach generates more accurate
results for sources that encompass changing periods of time,
providing digital humanities scholars with a tool to
estimate the gender of names across large textual
collections. The article first describes the methodology as
implemented in the gender
package for the R
programming language. It goes on to apply the
method to a case study in which we examine gender and
gatekeeping in the American historical profession over the
past half-century. The gender package illustrates the
importance of incorporating historical approaches into
computer science and related fields.Please see the
lmullen/gender-article
GitHub repository for the code used to create
this article.
[en] The Data Sprint Approach: Exploring the field of Digital
Humanities through Amazon’s Application Programming InterfaceDavid M. Berry, University of Sussex; Erik Borra, University of Amsterdam; Anne Helmond, University of Amsterdam; Jean-Christophe Plantin, London School of Economics and Political Science; Jill Walker Rettberg, University of Bergen
Abstract
[en]
This paper documents the results of an intensive “data sprint”
method for undertaking data and algorithmic work using application programming
interfaces (APIs), which took place during the Digital Method Initiative 2013
Winter School at the University of Amsterdam. During this data sprint, we
developed a method to map the fields of Digital Humanities and Electronic
Literature based on title recommendations from the largest online bookseller,
Amazon, by retrieving similar purchased items from the Amazon API. A first step
shows the overall Amazon recommendation network for Digital Humanities and
allows us to detect clusters, aligned fields and bridging books. In a second
step we looked into four country-specific Amazon stores (Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de) to investigate the specificities of the
Digital Humanities in these four countries. The third step is a network of all
books suggested for the Electronic Literature field in the four Amazon stores we
searched, which offers a comparison to the field of Digital Humanities.
[en] A Textual History of Mozilla: Using Topic Modeling to Trace
Sociocultural Influences on Software DevelopmentMichael L. Black, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Abstract
[en]
This essay applies a digital humanities methodology to the study of digital media
by framing software history as a problem of big data and textual criticism.
While many scholars have already identified source code as an important site for
the cultural study of software, this essay proposes that close reading is not
suited to the scale and scope of modern application software. Applying text
analysis tools to large bodies of source code can help address these problems as
well as provide a basis for narrativizing its development and contextualization
amidst a complex network of economic, political, and other sociocultural
processes. Using source code produced over 15 years of development by the
Mozilla foundation, this essay argues that software interfaces act as an
extension of public relations narratives, often representing a developer's
idealized version of their software which may not necessarily correspond with
the state of the application's source code. Topic modeling Mozilla's source code
allows us to explore a more nuanced narrative of development that shows how
Mozilla has negotiated between the political ideals of open source software and
the corporate ideology of its parent companies.
[en] Comparative rates of text reuse in classical Latin hexameter
poetryNeil Bernstein, Ohio University; Kyle Gervais, University of Western Ontario; Wei Lin, Ohio University
Abstract
[en]
This paper presents a quantitative picture of the interactions between poets in
the Latin hexameter tradition. The freely available Tesserae website (tesserae.caset.buffalo.edu) automatically searches pairs of texts in
a corpus of over 300 works of Latin literature in order to identify instances
where short passages share two or more repeated lexemes. We use Tesserae to survey relative rates of text reuse in 24
Latin hexameter works written from the 1st century
BCE to the 6th century CE. We compare the
quantitative information about text reuse provided by Tesserae to the scholarly tradition of qualitative discussion of
allusion by Latinists.
[en] Creating a regional DH community – A Case Study of the
RedHDIsabel Galina Russell, Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliotecológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Abstract
[en]
Although Digital Humanities (DH) has become more established in recent years one
of the main issues that remains is the true internationalization of DH as an
academic discipline. Up to this point the DH community has been mainly focused
on scholars from a handful of English speaking countries and there is little or
no participation from other regions of the world. This paper discusses the
experience of setting up a DH community in Mexico. The aim is to describe the
multi-faceted approach used for DH community building as well as discussing
different strategies employed, difficulties encountered, produced results as
well as areas for future growth. We propose that this may serve as a model for
similar initiatives in other countries.
[en] Intermediality and Cultural Assessment:
Digital Flows in the Global Age, A Review of Digital Humanities and the Study of Intermediality in Comparative
Cultural Studies, edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek. Purdue Scholarly
Publishing Services, 2013, 375 pp. Isabel Pinto, Research Centre for Communication and Culture from the Catholic University of Portugal
Abstract
[en]
A review of Digital Humanities and the Study of Intermediality
in Comparative Cultural Studies, edited by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek.
Purdue Scholarly Publishing Services, 2013, 375 pp.
