Hammers and Nails

Tools in the Digital Humanities

DAM and Preservation Support for Digital Humanities | February 11, 2013

Elli Mylonas & Jean Bauer (@elli_m + @jean_bauer)

Digital Humanities Librarians,

Brown University Library

The Digital Humanities Spectrum from Projects to Tools

Agnostic

Integrated

Reliant

“Pure Data”

“Pure Tools” Paper Machines

Goal: Explore early American publishing Resource: Dataset, regularized and prepared for a variety of applications—visualization, network analysis, mapping

Books Published in the Americas before 1800

Goal: Collect and disseminate a set of inscriptions Resource: A corpus encoded using the TEI/Epidoc schema accessible through a faceted search interface.

http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/Inscriptions/index.shtml

Goal: A rich collection of resources on the town of Amherst Resource: A collaborative, community based project with 841 catalogued items, and about 40 Exhibits built in Omeka.

http://www.digitalamherst.org

Goal: Explore digital publication using media and interaction Resource: A custom digital essay shaped completely by its presentation.

http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index.php?project=91

Mark Hansen's shi jian : time in Vectors 3.2.

Goal: Enable the exploration of large quantities of documents Resource: A Zotero plugin that performs analyses, topic modelling on OCRed PDFs within Zotero.

https://github.com/chrisjr/papermachines

Paper Machines

So, how do you select a tool/application?

Depends on what kind of project you are trying to

make.

What are your source materials?

text original prose/poetry

images of text transcriptions

time based media sound recordings

video

data numeric

geographic

static media digital photographs

surrogates of artwork

What is your end goal?

How do you plan to transform/analyze your sources? What will the project look like? What will people learn from your project? How will people interact with your project?

What are your technical resources?

What types of technical expertise can you bring/hire? Who will build/deploy the project? Who will maintain the project once it's live? (Not the same as preservation!) How are similar projects developed and maintained?

Narrowing your tool options

Potential Tools

Works with your Sources

Can be implemented with your available

resources

Helps achieve your main goals

Choosing a tool Goal: Visualization, analysis, mapping Tools: Many - Excel pivot tables, D3, GIS, … Skills/Support: appropriate to tool selected DAM/Preservation: Relatively Easy

Books Published in the Americas before 1800

Choosing a tool - Goal: Create, add to corpus. Search and browse using facets Tools: XML dbs (eXist), XML indexers (SOLR), simple pages (HTML) Skills/Support: Good institutional technical support DAM/Preservation: Major goal of the project

http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/Inscriptions/index.shtml

http://www.digitalamherst.org

Choosing a tool Goal: Read, research, browse and add new objects Tools: publication software (WP, Omeka) Skills/Support: Easy to use for authors, attractive interface for users DAM/Preservation: relatively easy for objects. Exhibits, less.

Choosing a tool Goal: Reading, Exploration of visual rhetoric, new media Tools: Custom interface Skills/Support: Dedicated developer and designer DAM/Preservation: difficult. Documentation may be easier http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/index.php?project=91

Mark Hansen's shi jian : time in Vectors 3.2.

Choosing a tool Goal: Analysis, exploration of documentary sources Sources: n/a Skills/Support: Understanding of DH methodologies DAM/Preservation: ? Documentation of methods, results

https://github.com/chrisjr/papermachines

Paper Machines

To continue the conversation …

Elli_Mylonas@Brown.edu

@elli_m

Jean_Bauer@Brown.edu

@jean_bauer

Please fill out the evaluation: bit.ly/nercomp_DigitalCurtain