For readers of this blog within easy travel distance of Charlottesville, Virginia, I’ll be giving the keynote address on May 19 at the second annual New Horizons conference at the University of Virginia, showcasing technology in teaching, research, and scholarship. My talk is entitled “Creating Scholarly Tools and Resources for the Digital Ecosystem,” and will include much of what I’ve learned in the Zotero project.
If you’ve been interested in CHNM’s Omeka software but would like to try it before you buy it (for $0 since it’s open source), there’s now a demo version for you to check out. While you can already find many examples of Omeka in action on the web, the sandbox allows everyone to play with the administrative interface behind Omeka, including collections management and exhibit construction. That back end is, of course, as well designed as the front end due to our great design and development team.
On this episode of the Digital Campus podcast we wrestle with how to keep open access/open source educational resources and tools sustainable for the long run. Mills elaborates on some of his ideas about a “freemium” business model for higher ed, and Tom and I explain the dilemma from the perspective of large academic software projects. We also debate whether laptops are a distraction in the classroom, among other topics in the news roundup and picks of the week. [Subscribe to this podcast.]
The Center for History and New Media has just publicly launched a massive, multi-year project and website: the National History Education Clearinghouse.
With major funding from the U.S. Department of Education, the Clearinghouse is designed to help K-12 history teachers access resources and materials to improve U.S. history education in the classroom. The project builds on and disseminates the valuable lessons learned by more than 800 Teaching American History projects, which the Dept. of Ed’s Office of Innovation and Improvement underwrote to raise student achievement by improving teachers’ knowledge and understanding of traditional U.S. history. At the Center we have done five of these TAH projects, using new media to enhance and rethink the acquisition of historical knowledge and theory.
As you can see on the site, the Clearinghouse will cover not only rich, open-access historical content and learning modules, but also useful material for professional development, including best practices and policy briefs for teachers. CHNM has partnered with the Stanford University History Education Group to produce the Clearinghouse.
Congratulations to all of the CHNMers who have been burning the midnight oil and a lot of CPU cycles to get this beautiful and enormously helpful site up in only three months: Director of Education Kelly Schrum, Director of Public Projects Sharon Leon, Project Managers Lee Ann Ghajar and Teresa DeFlitch, Project Associate Jane Heckley Kon, Lead Web Designer Laura Veprek, Lead Programmer Jon Lesser, and of course our trusty (and overworked) Webmaster, Ammon Shepherd.
[N.B.: I accidentally leaked this launch notice a month ago for a few hours, so this post might look familiar to those who check their RSS reader frequently. The NHEC has now, truly, launched.]
Looks like a good and timely topic for this year’s Chicago DHCS Colloquium:
The goal of the annual Chicago Digital Humanities/Computer Science (DHCS) Colloquium is to bring together researchers and scholars in the Humanities and Computer Sciences to examine the current state of Digital Humanities as a field of intellectual inquiry and to identify and explore new directions and perspectives for future research. In 2006, the first DHCS Colloquium examined the challenges and opportunities posed by the “million books” digitization projects. The second DHCS Colloquium in 2007 focused on searching and querying as tools and methodologies.
The theme of the third Chicago DHCS Colloquium is “Making Sense”- an exploration of how meaning is created and apprehended at the transition of the digital and the analog.
Brett Bobley announces a new program from the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities: the Humanities High Performance Computing initiative. There was an inkling of this program at last April’s Digital Humanities Summit, when the Department of Energy noted it was willing to donate CPU cycles on its supercomputers for humanities scholars.
Last summer, a few blocks from my house, a new pub opened. Normally this would not be worth noting, except for the fact that this bar is staffed completely by pirates, with eye patches, swords, and even the occasional bird on the shoulder. These are not real pirates, of course, but modern men and women dressed up as pirates. But they wear the pirate garb with no hint of irony or thespian affect whatsoever; these are dedicated, earnest pirates.
At this point I should note that I do not live in Orlando, Florida, or any other place devoted to make-believe, but in a sleepy suburb of Washington, D.C., that is filled with Very Serious Professionals. When the pirate pub opened, the neighborhood VSPs (myself very much included) concluded that it was strange and silly and that it was an incontrovertible fact that no one would patronize the place. Or if they did, it would be as a lark.
We clung to this belief for approximately 24 hours, until, upon a casual stroll by the storefront, we witnessed six pirate-garbed pubgoers outside. Singing sea chanteys. Without sheet music. The tavern has been filled ever since.
Such an experience usefully reminds oneself that there are ways of acting and thinking that we can’t understand or anticipate. Who knew that there was a highly developed pirate subculture, and that it thrived among the throngs of politicos and think-tankers and professors of Washington? Who are these people?
My thoughts turned to pirates during my experience at a workshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a week ago, which was devoted to the digitization of the unparalleled Southern Historical Collection, and—in a less obvious way—to thinking about the past and future of humanities scholarship. Dozens of historians came to the workshop to discuss the way in which the SHC, the source of so many books and articles about the South and the home of 16 million archival documents, should be put on the web.
I gave the keynote, which I devoted to prodding the attendees into recognizing that the future of archives and research might not be like the past, and I showed several examples from my work and the work of CHNM that used different ways of searching and analyzing documents that are in digital, rather than analog, forms. Longtime readers of this blog will remember some of the examples, including an updated riff on what a future historian might learn about the state of religion in turn-of-the-century America by data mining our September 11 Digital Archive.
The most memorable response from the audience was from an award-winning historian I know from my graduate school years, who said that during my talk she felt like “a crab being lowered into the warm water of the pot.” Behind the humor was the difficult fact that I was saying that her way of approaching an archive and understanding the past was about to be replaced by techniques that were new, unknown, and slightly scary.
This resistance to thinking in new ways about digital archives and research was reflected in the pre-workshop survey of historians. Extremely tellingly, the historians surveyed wanted the online version of the SHC to be simply a digital reproduction of the physical SHC:
With few exceptions, interviewees believed that the structure of the collection in the virtual space should replicate, not obscure, the arrangement of the physical collection. Thus, navigating a manuscript collection online would mimic the experience of navigating the physical collection, and the virtual document containers—e.g., folders—and digital facsimiles would map clearly back to the physical containers and documents they represent. [Laura Clark Brown and David Silkenat, "Extending the Reach of Southern Sources," p. 10]
In other words, in the age of Google and advanced search tools and techniques, most historians just want to do their research they way they’ve always done it, by taking one letter out of the box at a time. One historian told of a critical moment in her archival work, when she noticed a single word in a letter that touched off the thought that became her first book.
So in Chapel Hill I was the pirate with the strange garb and ways of behaving, and this is a good lesson for all boosters of digital methods within the humanities. We need to recognize that the digital humanities represent a scary, rule-breaking, swashbuckling movement for many historians and other scholars. We must remember that these scholars have had—for generations and still in today’s graduate schools—a very clear path for how they do their work, publish, and get rewarded. Visit archive; do careful reading; find examples in documents; conceptualize and analyze; write monograph; get tenure.
We threaten all of this. For every time we focus on text mining and pattern recognition, traditionalists can point to the successes of close reading—on the power of a single word. We propose new methods of research when the old ones don’t seem broken. The humanities have an order, and we, mateys, threaten to take that calm ship into unknown waters.
[Image credit: &y.]
We were incredibly lucky to get two of the most sophisticated programming gurus in the humanities, Bill Turkel and Steve Ramsey, on the podcast this week. Bill and Steve are both committed to teaching other humanities scholars how to get started with programming, and they provide a number of terrific points and insights into the process in our feature story. If you’ve ever wanted to pick up programming or know someone who does, it’s definitely worth a listen (or worth passing on the link). We also take a look at the launch of Google App Engine, which raises questions about outsourcing, and myLOC.gov, which raises questions about whether digital collections should have their own personalization tools. [Subscribe to this podcast.]
This is obviously a critical position at an incredibly important institution for the future of the digital humanities. I hope someone in the audience for this blog—or someone you know—is up to the task and the calling.
The Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) in the Center for the Study of the American South seeks a Coordinator of Oral History Digital Initiatives to oversee the SOHP’s participation in a three-year, cross-university collaboration focused on “the long civil rights movement,” stretching back to the 1940s and continuing with the extension of struggles for social justice into new arenas after the 1960s. Competitive applicants must demonstrate expertise in oral history research and the use of digital technologies in the humanities. Reporting to the SOHP’s Director and working alongside the Associate Director, the Coordinator will help to plan, supervise, and evaluate student fieldwork conducted throughout the project. The Coordinator will assume primary responsibility for the creative use of digital technologies and of new forms of collaborative research, interpretation, and ultimately publication. Tasks will include managing relationships with on-site and virtual scholarly collaborators and the selection, scholarly annotation, and contextualization of oral history materials for use in digital archives and other publishing experiments. In addition, the Coordinator will help to plan and implement a conference on the long civil rights movement in the spring of 2009. The ideal candidate will have both academic and administrative experience and must be able to work independently on long-term projects, while at the same time performing an array of short-term tasks in a collaborative setting. The position requires excellent oral and written, interpersonal, and organizational skills; familiarity with new media; and the ability to build cross- and off-campus partnerships. PhD in U.S. history preferred or MA and two years of relevant experience. Salary Range $50,000-$55,000. To begin fall 2008. Candidates should be aware that this is a time-limited position and funding is not assured for longer than three years. Please submit a letter of application, c.v, and three letters of recommendation to: Search Committee, Coordinator of Oral History Digital Initiatives, Southern Oral History Program, Love House and Hutchins Forum, 410 East Franklin St., CB# 9127, UNC-CH. Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9127. Review of applications will begin March 15 and continue until the position is filled. UNC is an equal opportunity employer.
Take a look at this list of free and open textbooks. (Found this page a couple of clicks away from a helpful post at Peter Suber’s Open Access News.) Now note the stark imbalance between the number of science textbooks listed here and the number of humanities textbooks. Why is this?
It seems to me like there is a great opportunity here for funders, with potentially an incredible return on investment. Texas alone spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on textbooks like the U.S. History survey. For less than a million dollars a high-quality free and open textbook could be produced, with print on demand producing paper copies where needed and with a slight markup on those printed versions possibly covering ongoing expenses for updating the work.
[More on open source textbooks from Inside Higher Ed today.]
[Creative Commons image credit.]
Every year George Mason University has a 5K race/walk, and the Center for History and New Media always has a good showing. We had 21 participants this year (4 runners, 17 iPhone-and-coffee-wielding walkers), but were edged out by the athletics department for the highest participation rate (no surprise there).
We also like to design t-shirts for the event each year. Generally the designs are Photoshopped movie posters with CHNMers inserted, but this year race chair James Halabuk and designer Jeremy Boggs came up with a nice, simple M*A*S*H substitution.
Beautiful day for a 5K, and great fun to get away from the monitors for an hour.
On the first podcast of our second year of the Digital Campus podcast, we discuss some of the legal constraints and threats that academic content providers and digital tool builders face—namely, an increasingly confusing and nightmarish patchwork of regulations from copyright to patents. We talk about the ways in which we have tried to pursue fair use and new technology without getting sued. In the news roundup we cover the launch of offline Google Docs and Internet safety classes for kids. [Subscribe to this podcast.]
It’s time to subscribe to the blog of CHNM’s Creative Lead, Jeremy Boggs, if you haven’t done so already. Jeremy is ramping up for what promises to be a very important blog series on how to create and execute a digital humanities project, from conception to design to coding to maintenance.
An incredible new piece of art is enlivening the main lab at the Center for History and New Media—a mammoth (5 feet by 7 feet) scrap metal sculpture of the United States. Many thanks to CHNM Project Manager Sheila Brennan’s husband, Ian, for this stunning work of art! (With some witty touches if you look carefully.)
[Yes, we’re hiring again. Come join us if this sounds like you!]
The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University is seeking a postdoctoral fellow to work on a new text-mining initiative supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. ABD candidates are also strongly encouraged to apply. This is a grant-funded, two-year position that is particularly appropriate for someone with interests in computational linguistics, machine learning, or technology and the humanities and social sciences. Specific background and experience is less important than the ability to learn new technical skills quickly. Knowledge of some combination of the following would be particularly helpful: Java, JavaScript, MySQL, PHP, or object-oriented programming. Ability to work in a team is very important. CHNM (http://chnm.gmu.edu), known for innovative work in digital media, is located in Fairfax, Virginia, 15 miles from Washington, DC, and is accessible by public transportation. Please send a cover letter and resume, including relevant programming projects and experience, to chnm@gmu.edu with subject line “Text Mining.” We will begin considering applications on 5/1/2008 and continue until the position is filled. Applications without a cover letter will not be considered.
Andy Guess of Inside Higher Ed uses the announcement of the National Endowment of the Humanities’ new Office of Digital Humanities to explore the rise of digital humanities in general—the challenges it faces but also the possibilities it brings to academia. A great summary of the state of our field.
The Maryland Institute of Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the
University of Maryland in College Park is seeking a full time
programmer for at least a year to work on the NEH/JISC funded
Shakespeare’s Quartos project. This exciting digital humanities
initiative, an international collaboration among MITH, the Folger
Shakespeare Library, Oxford University, the British Library, the
Huntington Library, and the Scottish National Library, aims to create
a digital archive of all the extant quartos of Shakespeare’s plays
beginning with Hamlet. The successful candidate will at the minimum
have a bachelor’s degree and be an experienced web programmer familiar
with PHP, JavaScript, MySQL, XML, and XSLT to develop both the user
interface and the database back-end for this interactive archive.
Ideally, the candidate will also have a background in textual
criticism and/or Shakespearean scholarship.
Located in McKeldin Library at the heart of the campus, MITH is the
University of Maryland’s primary intellectual hub for scholars and
practitioners of digital humanities, new media, and cyberculture, as
well as the home of the Electronic Literature Organization, the most
prominent international group devoted to the writing, publishing and
reading of electronic literature. MITH’s house research includes
projects in text mining, tool building, visualization, digital
libraries, electronic publishing, and digital preservation. We
collaborate actively with allied campus units, including the
University Libraries, the College of Information Science, and the
Human Computer Interaction Lab. Situated just outside of Washington
DC, MITH also offers all of the opportunities that come from the
libraries, museums, and cultural institutions of the area.
Salary range, $50,000 - $55,000. To apply, please send a letter of
application, CV, and contact information for three references. Best
consideration by April 9, 2008. Application materials may be sent
electronically to mith@umd.edu or to Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH,
McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Consideration of applications to begin immediately. Applications from
women and minorities are encouraged.
For years on this blog, at conferences, and even in direct conversations with Google employees I have been agitating for an API (application programming interface) for Google Book Search. (For a summary of my thoughts on the matter, see my imaginatively titled post, “Why Google Books Should Have an API.”) With the world’s largest collection of scanned books, I thought such an API would have major implications for doing research in the humanities. And I looked forward to building applications on top of the API, as I had done with my Syllabus Finder.
So why was I disappointed when Google finally released an API for their book scanning project a couple of weeks ago?
My suspicion began with the name of the API itself. Even though the URL for the API is http://code.google.com/apis/books/, suggesting that this is the long-awaited API for the kind of access to Google Books that I’ve been waiting for, the rather prosaic and awkward title of the API suggests otherwise: The Google Book Search Book Viewability API. From the API’s home page:
The Google Book Search Book Viewability API enables developers to:
These are remarkably modest goals. Certainly the API will be helpful for online library catalogs and other book services (such as LibraryThing) that wish to embed links to Google’s landing pages for books and (when copyright law allows) links to the full texts. The thumbnails of book covers will make OPACs look prettier.
But this API does nothing to advance the kind of digital scholarship I have advocated for in this space. To do that the API would have to provide direct access to the full OCRed text of the books, to provide the ability to mine these texts for patterns and to combine them with other digital tools and corpora. Undoubtedly copyright concerns are part of the story here, hobbling what Google can do. But why not give full access to pre-1923 books through the API?
I’m not hopeful that there are additional Google Book Search APIs coming. If that were the case the URL for the viewability API would be http://code.google.com/apis/books/viewability/. The result is that this API simply seems like a way to drive traffic to Google Books, rather than to help academia or to foster a external community of developers, as other Google APIs have done.
