Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities)

Kallithea to Halos: the defensive network of the north Othrys mountains

by Myles Chykerda

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts
in

Humanities Computing
Department of History and Classics

©Christopher Myles Chykerda
Spring 2010
Edmonton, Alberta

This thesis presents an interdisciplinary examination of a series of towers existing between the sites of Kastro... more This thesis presents an interdisciplinary examination of a series of towers existing between the sites of Kastro Kallithea and New Halos along the north ridge of Greece’s Othrys Mountains. The overarching goal is to utilize digital archaeological techniques such as GIS to refine the methodologies used in determining the rate of efficient communication between towers in defense networks. Tools within the ArcGIS software package allow line of sight and viewsheds to be examined remotely with a series of criteria to be met, such as maximum allowable distance. In doing so, past studies of regional networks are critiqued in light of their inclusion or exclusion of considerations such as distance, atmospheric conditions, and time of day when determining over how far a distance fire signaling could be effective. A second critique explores the dangers of employing digital means from the perspectives of both the investigator and public.

Media Visualization: Visual Techniques for Exploring Large Media Collections.

by Lev Manovich

The article explains the limitations of current web interfaces and tools for viewing and managing media collections.... more The article explains the limitations of current web interfaces and tools for viewing and managing media collections. We describe new method which we call media visualization - use of high resolution visualizations which show all images in a collection (or key video frames) sorted in different ways to enable discovering patterns and understanding the "shape" or a collection.

The work of the encyclopedia in the age of electronic reproduction

by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Building a Volunteer Community: Results and Findings from Transcribe Bentham

by Tim Causer

Forthcoming 2012. Co-authored with Valerie Wallace

This paper contributes to the literature examining the burgeoning field of academic crowdsourcing, by analysing the... more This paper contributes to the literature examining the burgeoning field of academic crowdsourcing, by analysing the results of the crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham. First, it describes how the project team sought to recruit volunteer transcribers to take part, and discusses which strategies were successes (and which were not). We then examine Transcribe Bentham’s results during its six-month testing period (8 September 2010 to 8 March 2011), which include a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of website statistics, work completed by the amateur transcribers, as well as the demographics of the volunteer base and their motivations for taking part. The paper concludes by discussing the success of our community building with reference to this analysis. We find that Transcribe Bentham’s volunteer transcribers have produced a remarkable amount of work – and continue to do so, carrying out the equivalent labour of a full-time transcriber – despite the nature and complexity of the task at hand.

Computational Linguistics and the Humanist

by Bill Benzon

Computers and the Humanities 10:  265 - 274, 1976. (with David G. Hays)

I co-authored this piece with David Hays. It was published in 1976 in what was then Computers and the Humanities and... more I co-authored this piece with David Hays. It was published in 1976 in what was then Computers and the Humanities and is a review of the computational linguistics literature. At the end we imagined Project Prospero, a computer simulation of the human mind with which we could simulate reading a literary text. It wasn't possible to do such a thing then, and it still isn't, but as a way of thinking about literature it's a thought-experiment worth resurrecting.

From Relational Databases to Linked Data in Epigraphy: Hispania Epigraphica Online

by Joaquín L. Gómez-Pantoja

Co-authored with Fernando-Luis Álvarez and Elena García-Barriocanal and published in Elena García-Barriocanal, Zeynel Cebeci, Mehmet C. Okur and Aydın Öztürk (edd.), Metadata and Semantic Research (Proceedings of the
5th International Conference, MTSR 2011, Izmir, Turkey, October 12-14, 2011), Communications in Computer and Information Science
Volume 240, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg , 2011 [ISSN 1865-0929 /
ISBN 978-3-642-24730-9 / DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-24731-6], pp. 225-233,

Epigraphic databases store metadata and digital representations of inscriptions for information purposes, heritage... more Epigraphic databases store metadata and digital representations of inscriptions for information purposes, heritage conservation or scientific use. At present, there are several of such databases available, but our focus is on those that are part of the EAGLE consortium, which aims to make available the epigraphy from the ancient classical civilization. Right now, the EAGLE partners share a basic data schema and an agreement on workload and responsibilities, but each repository has it own storage structure, data identification system and even its different idea of what an epigraphic database is or should be. Any of these aspects may lead to redundancy and hampers search and linking. This paper describes a system implementation for epigraphic data sharing as linked data. Although the described system was tested on a specific database, i.e. Hispania Epigraphica Online, it could be easily tailored to other systems, enabling the advantage of semantic search on several disparate databases.

Collex: Facets, Folksonomy, and Fashioning the Remixable Web

by Bethany Nowviskie

Digital Humanities 2007

Select resources for image-based humanities computing

by Bethany Nowviskie

Computers and the Humanities, 2002. 39:1 (109-131)

L’historien et la liseuse : à propos d’un nouvel outil électronique

by Julien GILET

L’historien des textes, quelle que soit l’époque qu’il étudie, aime à disposer facilement de nombreux ouvrages... more L’historien des textes, quelle que soit l’époque qu’il étudie, aime à disposer facilement de nombreux ouvrages (sources manuscrites, éditions de textes, archives,..) et se référer à une large littérature scientifique écrite souvent depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, parfois difficile d’accès. Aujourd’hui, l’historien, comme les autres chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales, peut pallier cette difficulté en consultant les nombreux sites internet partiellement ou complètement dédiés à la mise en ligne de textes scientifiques allant de simples articles à des ouvrages complets dans les langues les plus diverses. Ces ouvrages, directement consultables en ligne, donnent accès à une immense bibliothèque virtuelle, bien plus grande que n’importe quelle bibliothèque « physique ».

Physics and Hypertext: Liberation and Complicity In Art and Pedagogy

by Martin E. Rosenberg

Published in George Landow, ed. _Hyper/Text/Theory_. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

"_Chess RHIZOME_ and Phase Space: Mapping Metaphor Theory Onto Hypertext Theory

by Martin E. Rosenberg

Published in _Intertexts_ Vol. 3 # 2, Fall 1999: Special Issue: "Webs of Discourse: The Intertextuality of Science Studies." edited by Bruce Clarke. Available online at: http://bart.tcc.virginia.edu/tradzoneworkshop/Papers/Chess%20Rhizome.pdf
A translation into Portuguese, for the second volume on _Education and Transdisicplinarity_, edited by Sommerman, de Mello and Barros, was published by UNESCO, and a copy of that volume may be downloaded here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/6732198/Ed-e-Transd-II-Unesco

_Chess RHIZOME_ is a hypertext I have constructed to explore across disciplinary boundaries the range of references to... more _Chess RHIZOME_ is a hypertext I have constructed to explore across disciplinary boundaries the range of references to chess, the chessboard, its pieces, its rules, and the peculiar role that time plays in the process of unfolding the game itself. The method informing _Chess RHIZOME's design draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze in the forging of contingent alliances among the disciplines of science, philosophy and the arts, for the purposes of conducting epistemological investigations. The motive for this project is to explore metaphor (or tropes more generally) as a site for trans-disciplinary study. Particularly, _Chess RHIZOME_ exploits the unstable nature of Richard Boyd's Theory Constitutive Metaphor (TCM) as a ground for epistemological criticism, by mapping the logics of the drift of the chess trope across disciplinary boundaries, in order to make visible its cultural work. The three particular logics that this hypertext project attempts to model are 1) genealogical: the causal drift of a trope from one user to another; 2) naive: the opaque, unself-conscious use of a particular trope, with an uncritical acceptance of its epistemological baggage; and 3) ironic: the transparent and self-conscious use of a particular trope, with a a skeptical perspective on its epistemological baggage. Later in this essay I will discuss these three tropic logics as a methodology for interdisciplinary studies.

Transcription Maximized; Expense Minimized? Crowdsourcing and Editing 'The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham'

by Tim Causer

Co-authored with Justin Tonra and Valerie Wallace.

Published in Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2012, pp. 119-137.

This paper discusses the award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, and how it... more This paper discusses the award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, and how it will impact upon long-established editorial practices at the Bentham Project, University College London, which is producing the new and authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. We site Transcribe Bentham in the burgeoning field of scholarly crowdsourcing projects, and attempt to assess the potential benefits of engaging the public in a seemingly complex task in order to further humanities research by detailing our experiences of running and administering the project.

The paper examines the conceptualisation and development of Transcribe Bentham, and how editorial practices at the Bentham Project may change as a result. We account for the design of the bespoke transcription tool which is at the project’s heart, and allows volunteers to transcribe the material and encode it in TEI-compliant XML. We attempt to answer five key questions: is crowdsourcing the transcription of complex manuscripts cost-effective? Is crowdsourcing exploitative? Would the volunteer-produced transcripts be of sufficient quality for editorial use and uploading to a digital repository, and what quality controls are required? Would crowdsourcing ensure sustainability and widen access to this priceless material? And finally, should the success of a project like Transcribe Bentham be measured solely according to cost-effectiveness or the volume of work produced, or do considerations of public engagement and access outweigh such concerns?

Fuzzy Set Theory (or Fuzzy Logic) to Represent the Messy Data of Complex Human (and other) Systems

by J. B. (Jack) Owens

Co-authored with Emery A. Coppola, Jr.

Historians and Human Geographers deal with human systems or subsystems of considerable complexity. This situation... more Historians and Human Geographers deal with human systems or subsystems of considerable complexity. This situation presents a dilemma to those who use computational technologies, which demand a high level of precision to organize, analyze, and visualize information: the more complex the system is, the greater the imprecision of the available data. Historians and geographers often feel that their imprecise, ambiguous, contradictory, messy, largely qualitative information does not “fit” well in the available software categories, and they have trouble discussing the results produced when they work within computational environments because category assignment seems so arbitrary. This dilemma appears dramatically with the use of Geographically-Integrated History (GIH) as a research strategy. In this paper, we introduce fuzzy set theory (or fuzzy logic) as a proven solution for dealing with imprecision in complex systems.

Squinting at a sea of dots: visualising Australian readerships using statistical machine learning

by Julieanne Lamond

In K. Bode and R. Dixon (Eds), Resourceful reading: The new empiricism, eResearch and Australian literary culture. (pp. 223-239). Sydney : Sydney University Press.

The key question when approaching literary studies with empirical methods is how to move between the generalisations... more The key question when approaching literary studies with empirical methods is how to move between the generalisations involved in empirical research and the attention to the particular that characterises literary analysis: in other words, how such data could be made useful to literary analysis? This chapter examines one such approach. Specifically, it uses a collaboration between Australian literary studies and statistical machine learning to suggest how, in practice, empirical modes of research can speak to, enhance, or even help to direct more traditional modes of literary analysis.

Il latino dopo l'avvento dell'informatica, in Il nostro latino. Risorse del latino e latino come risorsa, Roma 2010

by Michele Di Marco

The Oral Tradition in 3D: Harold Innis, Information Visualisation and the 3D Historical Cities Project

by John Bonnett

In Computing in the Humanities Working Papers. A.20. September 2003.

Also published in Text Technology. 12(1): 1-8. 2003.

One of the key challenges currently facing humanities and computing scholars is the generation of new conventions,... more One of the key challenges currently facing humanities and computing scholars is the generation of new conventions, particularly new forms of narration and representation to support student development of critical thinking skills. Drawing inspiration from the writings of the communication theorist Harold Innis, this study argues that conventions supporting information visualization the production of visual analogues of ideas or patterns represented by text and number can help students apprehend and interrogate concepts. The experience of the 3D Virtual Buildings Project suggests that a program devoted to 3D computer modelling is one way that Innis' ideas might be realized. Through tutorials students learn to reconstruct models of historic Canadian settlements and to translate historic data into numeric information for a 3D model. Most importantly, the tutorials show students that historical models are inherently imperfect, at best partial reconstructions of the past. Through a process of information translation and visualization, students learn to distinguish historical models from the objects they purport to represent.

High-Performance Computing: An Agenda for the Social Sciences and the Humanities in Canada

by John Bonnett

Digital Studies / Le champ numérique, Vol 1, No 2 (2009)

Paper was originally a commissioned report for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

In 2006 CFI announced its financial support for the creation
of a national High Performance Computing (HPC)... more In 2006 CFI announced its financial support for the creation
of a national High Performance Computing (HPC) platform, and the formation of a new organization to govern it: Compute Canada. The platform now affords Canadian researchers with more computational power than they have ever enjoyed before. HPC presents rich research possibilities for Canada’s social scientists and humanities (SSH) researchers. Our respective research communities, however, are not yet prepared to exploit them. This report outlines two possibilities that HPC presents for SSH research, centering on serious computer games and Massive Multi-User Persistent Worlds. It also contains recommended steps for SSHRC and the SSH research community to take in order to exploit them.

Humanities' Computings

by Meurig Beynon

Abstract only (co-authored by Roderick R. Klein and Steve Russ) In Digital Humanities 2006: 1st International Conference of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organisations, Conference Abstracts, Paris-Sorbonne, France, July 2006, 17-20

As discussed by McCarty, Beynon and Russ in a session organised at ACH/ALLC 2005, there is a remarkable convergence... more As discussed by McCarty, Beynon and Russ in a session organised at ACH/ALLC 2005, there is a remarkable convergence between McCarty's concept of 'model-building in the role of experimental end-maker' (McCarty 2005:15) - a cornerstone in his vision for humanities computing (HC) - and the principles of Empirical Modelling (EM) (EMweb). More problematic is the tension between the pluralist conception of computing that is an essential ingredient of McCarty's stance on HC, and the prominent emphasis on 'dissolving dualities' in McCarty, Beynon and Russ (ACH/ALLC 2005:138). Resolving this tension transforms the status of HC from one amongst many varieties of computing to that of first amongst equals.

Human Computing: Modelling with Meaning

by Meurig Beynon

(co-authored by Steve Russ and Willard McCarty) Literary and Linguistic Computing 21(2), 2006, 141-157.

This article is based on a session given by the authors at the ACH/ALLC conference at the University of Victoria in... more This article is based on a session given by the authors at the ACH/ALLC conference at the University of Victoria in June 2005. It discusses the prospects for partnership between the humanities and computing from the alternative perspective afforded by Empirical Modelling (EM). Perceived dualities that separate the two cultures of science and art are identified as the primary impediment to this partnership. A vision for ‘human computing’ that promises to dissolve these dualities is outlined. The key characteristics and potential for EM for the humanities are illustrated with reference to a modelling exercise on the theme of Schubert's Erlkönig. This highlights how each of the six varieties of modelling identified by McCarty can be represented within an EM model. The implications of EM are discussed with reference to McCarty's account of the key role for modelling in the humanities, in relation to James's ‘philosophic attitude’ of Radical Empiricism and to ideas from phenomenological sources.

Management of Shortage. The Byzantine Church in the face of crisis and collapse, 1204-1453

by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

Paper for the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, 2011
Session 602: "The Late Byzantine Empire: Crisis and Identity"
Tuesday 12 July 2011: 11.15-12.45
(Slide of the presentation are online in the "talks"-section of my academia.edu-website: http://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller/Talks/47703/Management_of_Shortage._The_Byzantine_Church_in_the_face_of_crisis_and_collapse_1204-1453)

At a time when the Byzantine State was shaken by invasions, relative decline in terms of political and economic power... more At a time when the Byzantine State was shaken by invasions, relative decline in terms of political and economic power and internal unrest and finally ceased to exist, the Byzantine Church was able to maintain essential elements of its pastoral and institutional framework in (South)Eastern Europe and Asia Minor beyond the catastrophes of 1204 and 1453 despite the adverse effects these events of course also had on its followers and properties. The paper aims at analysing important aspects of this resilience of the Late Byzantine Church as religious community and ecclesiastical institution; therefore “classic” instruments of historical research will be combined with new methods of (socio)historical and systems research (modern statistical tools, network analysis, institutional and system analysis).