Research Tools Category
Digital Humanities: what about making things simple?!
Feb. 19, 2012—Second post in 6 weeks. This is far from what could be called a “proper” Digital Humanist… And yet, blogging is not the only thing that can define a Digital Humanist (cf. my post on Diigo). I have had much thinking about my presence online but also about what it takes to do D.H. Our discussion in class...
More on Inclusive Discourse in DH
Feb. 15, 2012—While reading Rosenzweig and Fitzpatrick’s chapters this week, I was still pondering last week’s question: how can we make our discourse about DH more inclusive? Reading with this topic in mind, I thought of various possibilities to make DH more inclusive, two of which I will discuss here. 1. Fitzpatrick discussed briefly that digital or...
Replacement or supplement?
Feb. 15, 2012—Did anyone else get the vibe that Rosenzweig is pushing the Internet as a replacement for more “traditional” methods of accessing and collecting research (at least in the domain of History)? That archives and non-digital sources are only really valuable once they’ve been digitized? I’ve pulled out the following citations with our DH as replacement...
Good to know: Preserving data
Feb. 15, 2012—One of my recurring concerns ( I try to ignore it, but it keeps coming back!) has to do with the difference in knowledge base between creators and users of digital “stuff”. By that I mean, the people who create the devices/contexts/interfaces we use, make up only a very small, select few. The users, however,...
“Preservation”
Feb. 12, 2012—I have been feeling this way ever since this course started — but now especially, after reading Fitzpatrick’s chapter on Preservation — I know absolutely nothing about how the internet works. A month ago, I happily typed in www-dot, or http-colon, etc., without even thinking, noticing or appreciating that the combination of characters I was...
Pondering the Possibilities…
Feb. 8, 2012—After reading an article on the “Crisis Mappers” in academia who literally map world crisis to be used for research I began to ponder just how many ways GIS can impact our work. While I may not study contemporary crises, there are so many crises that do impact my work, such as The Seven Years...
Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
Feb. 3, 2012—In order to build some background knowledge before introducing an extract from Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir, I’m going to use the two maps April showed in her presentation at the last seminar. (Loved this one – http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/txu-oclc-7293927-africa_interior.jpg ) I wish we already had it fixed up so that I could show them one map, with the...
Excited about GIS!
Feb. 1, 2012—Although I agree with some of the previous posts that Yuan’s article wasn’t as enlightening as I hoped it would be, I am still excited about GIS! I am enthusiastic because of what I think it can do for my research. Since I study the communication between France and the New World I can envisage...
GIS for me
Feb. 1, 2012—Yuan’s article was inaccessible to me. I still have no idea what georeferencing or geoparsing mean. The only example I could vaguely understand was the one used to explain geo-inference, which the author called “a simplistic example.” I suppose I was not their target audience. Consequently, I cannot say with certainty what place GIS can...
GIS for research and teaching
Feb. 1, 2012—I found Yuan’s chapter on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) very stimulation and revealing, as I have never really been keen on geographical spaces and mapping. I fully agree with Yuan, though, that written texts are data-rich documents, whose comprehension, use, and overall value, stand only to be enhanced by coupling semantic analysis with the study...