You can see here that Mr Appleton and Mr John Adams were connected through both being a member of one group, while Mr John Adams and Mr Samuel Adams shared memberships in two of our seven groups. Mr Ash, meanwhile, was not connected through organization membership to any of the first four men on our list. The rest of the table stretches out in both directions.
This would be interesting to visualize using Palladio.
Stylized graphical effects can be just as distracting as chartjunk.
This is true. People can shape visual representations to encourage readers to interpret them a certain way, which can introduce bias.
sparklines
If I remember correctly, there seemed to be something similar to this in voyant, in the "Document Terms" tool.
The right visualization can replace pages of text with a single graph and still convey the same amount of information.
So very true. Afterall, there is a quote, "a picture is worth a thousand words." I personally find visual data to be more engaging. Including charts, graphs, maps, etc. may attract new readers, and make it easier for all readers to sustain their attention (by breaking up long explanations/blocks of text)
This particular display is showing the most likely route from Rome to Constantinople under a certain set of conditions,
I'm curious to know what kinds of physical documents they used to estimate or establish these patterns. This is something I'm going to read into.
Google’s web browser, Chrome, searching for a word on a webpage highlights the scroll bar on the right-hand side such that it is easy to see the distribution of that word use across the page.
Wow. I had to see it for myself, because somehow I never noticed this. This is really cool that they included a simple data-analysis feature into mainstream browsing.
The ease of use for LDA with basic settings means humanists are too likely to take its results as 'magic', rather than interpreting it as the output of one clustering technique among many.
This is why I see the importance in doing a bit of research on a tool you plan to use: one can develop a better appreciation for what goes into creating it, and what comes out of it.
doesn't map perfectly onto the expectations we have for the topics.
This is a good point; I experienced this firsthand when I ran the Shawville Equity through the topic modelling tool in exercise 2. I expected to see a theme about crime, but was surprised by topics that seemed to have a war theme, or a political theme.
Paste the URL to the csv of the CND database: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shawngraham/exercise/gh-pages/CND.csv .
I think this is a broken link as well, I'm getting a consistent 404 error.
Digital methods are not any more or less valid than traditional approaches, but they do provide a different entry point into the historical archive.
This is very true -- both are valid approaches that can reach the legitimate conclusions; the difference is the amount of time and effort spent. Would we rather spend less time digitizing in order to have a large archive, even though documents may be riddled by OCR errors? Or would it be better to have a smaller archive, but with complete and human-verified documents?
Digitized newspapers are inherently messy sources.
There has to be a human component to the digitization process. If this were to be left to computers, the result could drastically differ from the original. Historians are sort of the "quality control agents" in a way.
Online databases often use OCR to enable users to search their collections, but few provide access to the "raw material" of its underlying machine-readable text needed for large-scale text mining. Private, for-profit content providers are particularly hesitant to provide individual researchers with that degree of access to their material.
Another example denoting how history can sometimes be proprietary. Just like in Module 1, this shows how people aren't inclined to share information if it will adversely affect oneself and/or benefit others.
distant reading often necessitates computers that can "read" massive quantities of text in a matter of seconds.
I know that artificial intelligence has tremendous capabilities, but I feel as though data and its meaning could potentially be lost or misinterpreted, since computers don't have the same type or extent of judgement as a human being.
For perspective, a researcher poring over the newspapers nonstop for eight hours a day, five days a week, would need four years to finish reading them.
This is why digital tools have become increasingly useful. They may not be able to research for you, but they can drastically help with tackling tasks of this scale.
societies dynamically produce space over time.
I would argue that we don't make space, but instead make better use of the space that we do have.
delete everything for the index of the list of letters.
This isn't clear to me, and I think I may have interpreted it wrong. Say we have "Sam Houston to J. Pinckney Henderson, December 31, 1836 51" -- are we supposed to just remove 51, and do the same for each subsequent entry?
Time and money will need to be spent on interacting with volunteers, maintaining and developing the transcription interface in response to volunteer needs, continual promotion of the project, and checking and offering feedback on submitted work.
Crowdfunded projects face these challenges that projects run by corporations likely wouldn't run into as easily.
Giving experienced and motivated volunteers moderator status may be one way in which crowdsourcing projects could improve community cohesiveness, and is something we would like to explore in the future.
A good solution to my last question.
volunteers appeared to prefer starting transcripts from scratch, and to work alone
This sort of defeats the intention of open collaboration projects. How could participants engage with each other more? Peer revision?
minimal evidence of interaction between Transcribe Bentham users.
This also strikes me as odd. I would have thought that collaboration is especially important for deciphering Bentham's handwriting -- some people may be more familiar with it than others.
any contribution to Transcribe Bentham is beneficial to the project;
Hypothetically, what if someone tried to sabotage the project?
survey respondents had no problem with this, which speaks to the mutual trust and respect between a project and its volunteers which is vital for success.
Again, this is wonderful that people don't pride themselves on their work, but instead seek to make a contribution to the larger picture. This shows that they are truly participating because it is meaningful to them.
it was thus surprising that Transcribe Bentham volunteers regarded "competition" and "recognition" to be of such low importance.
I think it's great that volunteers found intrinsic meaning within the project, and simply didn't treat the process as a means to an end.
appears to have had little impact in driving traffic directly to the site, despite staff using them on a routine basis for publicity, communicating with volunteers, and issuing notifications.[
This surprises me. I would have thought that this is an effective way to spread the word and recruit participants.
Google Adwords was a failure for us as a recruitment strategy. Our advert was displayed 648,995 times, resulting in 452 clicks, but sent no visitors to the Transcription Desk
Why is this so? Would this be the result of accidentally clicking on an advert?
"Team-building" features like these have been found to be useful in stimulating participation by other projects like Solar Stormwatch and Old Weather:
This answers my previous question regarding whether other projects try to create this online sense of community.
Each registered participant was given a social profile
This illustrates the notion of trying to create a community. I wonder if most or all open source/crowd funded projects do this.
Retaining users was just as integral to the project’s success as recruiting them in the first place.
I wonder what the turnover rate is for some of these projects. Maybe some participants would want to contribute, say, a single fact, whereas others would want to oversee a larger aspect of the project.
advertisements in academic journals
I wonder if nowadays, crowdfunded/open projects will make use of social media to spread the word and recruit historians. This is a free alternative to spending money advertising in academic journals.
distinguishing between a "crowd" and a "community". Contributions made by a crowd, which Haythornthwaite describes as "lightweight peer production", tend to be anonymous, sporadic, and straightforward, whereas the engagement of a community, or "heavyweight peer production", is far more involved.
I'm sure that different subjects would attract different numbers of people. Could a project with crowd support be of the same quality as one with community support?
The Bowring edition omitted a number of works published in Bentham’s lifetime
Is there a particular reason why some works were omitted, or was it just poor workmanship?
the edition will run to around seventy volumes
I wonder how long this process will take...
Galaxy Zoo
This sounds so neat! I will definitely be checking this out on my spare time.
two images
Not sure if there's a way to embed the image, so I assumed the links to the images would be okay.
It is extremely difficult as someone who is part of a web publishing software project and has published different types of content-driven digital projects to sit on the sidelines for her own publication.
I can't imagine putting in so much work and effort, then leaving it in the hands of people who don't seem to know what they're doing despite the fact that they should. This is perhaps one of the caveats of collaboration.
Michigan was one of the first presses willing to experiment with and support digital-first writing projects
It's surprising how seemingly few publishers are willing to support open-access projects.
to discover what we might learn if we are allowed to let go, just a tiny bit, of our investment in being right.
Very important that people learn to admit their mistakes and avoid attaching their self-worth to being right. We are all human, and we WILL make mistakes so we shoudn't succumb to societal constructs that being wrong is a bad thing.
our anxieties (and very real anxieties) about deprofessionalization, about association with the amateur,
These qualms should be less of a driving force for the open sharing of research. The research seems to create high personal stakes (i.e funding, reputation) that make the researcher vulnerable to the ideas and criticisms of others.
mutual goals
If only digital history was regarded as this. The sharing of information and research, as I mentioned in another annotation, is for a collective benefit.
genuinely hearing and processing what is being said to me, underwritten by the conviction that in any given exchange I likely have less to teach than I have to learn.
This is an important mindset to embrace. You learn so much more by listening than by speaking. Taking on this type of mindset, in my opinion, results in almost the same thoughts/convictions as those deduced from critical thinking because you are subconsciously contrasting new information with what you already know, and either solidifying or formulating an opinion.
what is to be gained from supporting a field that seems intent on self-dismantling.
This is an interesting point. I think what she's getting at is that if a subject or field is analyzed to its core, information and conclusions can change many times and this, to some people, may be regarded as a lack of progress.
we hear one another’s interpretations (of texts, of performances, of historical events) and we push back against them. We advance the work in our field through disagreement and revision. And this agonistic approach, I want to argue today, is both the greatest strength of the humanities—and of the university in general—and its Achilles’ heel.
Kathleen Fitzgerald recognizes the importance of learning through debate and presenting opposing views. This is directly related to the notion of collaboration and working in the public so that there is opportunities for such dialogues to arise.
humanities fields can thrive as fields, with their own majors, their own research problems, and their own values and goals.
The humanities are always evolving, and they are diverse. This combination makes it more challenging, but not impossible to thrive. I just think it will take some time to determine which are the most appropriate methods for carrying out research and doing it justice so that it becomes more of a widely-recognized field.
many of our fields are facing crises that we cannot solve on our own.
Kathleen Fitzgerald seems to be implying that we have to work together in order to progress and to tackle problems that we can't do on our own.
I follow in the footsteps of other women who sought to erode the distinction between public and private to reveal the politics underneath.
I like how she carries on this tradition that promotes transparency, by using transparency. She evidently puts into practice what she believes in.
I try to publish open access as frequently as possible and share that work online. Much of my paywalled work was written in public so drafts of it are available.
Moravec seems to recognize that conducting research open-access not only is a tool for collaboration, but a way to document the way her approach to the subject and her findings evolve. This affirms her previous statement that she is "also interested in the methodological implications of doing history digitally (How Digitized Changed Historical Research) as well as the ethical implications of digitizing archival materials."
Open government is, in a nutshell, the idea that the people of a country should be able to access, read, and even manipulate the data that a country generates.
I think this is a good start, but not everyone will know what to do with this information, and how. I myself, was under the impression that this sharing of data was primarily related to bureaucratic or financial aspects of the government. I found it really interesting and helpful that later in this article, Milligan demonstrated firsthandely with some examples what could be done with the data.
My primary research focus is on how historians can use web archives.
It would be interesting to see his perspective on some of the points from Caleb McDaniel's article: Zotero Commons, and also the idea of being able to trace where your reasearch goes.
co-written collaborative textbook
Milligan collaborated to write a textbook, so he must have a positive inclination for working with others.
I’m going to see what it’s like to keep an open notebook for my new book project.
He obvioiusly sees the potential in open notebooks; by undertaking his research in this way, he is going to see which challenges arise, and will likely investigate ways in which to mitigate them which could lead to developments in this area.
One possible way forward is to do as Open Notebook Scientists have done and create a stepped system of notifications that communicates to readers how much of a researcher’s notebook or source base is being shared.
I think that this would be a great impementation so that researchers could trace where their work goes.
Digital notebooks, however, could overcome this challenge as well. The solution here is version control
If this were more of a standard, perhaps people would be more inclined to share their research because it could be traced back to them.
By inviting others to see our work in progress, we also open new avenues of interpretation, uncover new linkages between things we would otherwise have persisted in seeing as unconnected,
No two people will look at something the exact same way, and will have different but valuable contributions to offer. Caleb McDaniel seems to see the value in openly sharing work.
Open Notebook scientists place a premium on sharing even the results of failed or small experiments, which often produce what scientists refer to as dark data.
This isn't making use of the productive fail. Perhaps where one researcher went wrong, another could find a different approach. Hiding these failed results inhibits the possibility of resolving or developing these ideas.
the decision to release, or make “open,” the source code for a program can mean two very different things.
It is important to distinguish between allowing people to access your work and modify the original, or to allow access and modification through version control (which is what I assume Caleb McDaniel is alluding to)
Many are willing to share old notes or sources with inquiring students or friends.
True, people would be more inclined to share their work with people they know and trust. They may have the mindset, "Why would I want to share my hard work with total strangers, who may take the credit?"
Zotero Commons will facilitate exactly this kind of radical transparency for primary source material in historical scholarship.
Trevor Owens recognizes that Zotero Commons will facilitate collaboration by making it more easy to track sources and access bibliographies of others.
<shamelessplug>
Not sure what this means?
This kind of double checking doesn’t happen that often largely because it is so time consuming.
It seems that people predominantly make the time to double-check their work, but are more reluctant to invest that time in the work of others. I believe that open collaboration projects would help to minimize or alleviate this.
The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation (forthcoming)
I wanted to look into this book a bit more and followed the link. One quote that I found represented his stance on collaboration was, "I’ve gotten the OK to share drafts of the chapters as they start to come together. I’ve found that I benefit dramatically from doing my writing in the open where folks can help me refine and sharpen my ideas before they end up fixed in any particular medium.” http://www.trevorowens.org/2016/12/theory-craft-of-digital-preservation-my-next-book/
Trevor Owens knows the value of open collaboration because it can take a project in directions that it may not have gone by working alone. He sees collaboration as something that positively impacts his work.
its engagement with memory and policy, literature and imagination, are ours to make and remake as seems most useful.
History is in a way static, but the ways that we interpret it are dynamic.
Projects like the Virtual St Paul's Cross, which allows you to ‘hear’ John Donne’s sermons from the 1620s, from different vantage points around the square, changes how we imagine them, and moves from ‘text’ to something much more complex, and powerful.
That's such a neat medium in which to experience history. I think that presenting it in this way would captivate so many people. Those who may not otherwise be inclined to sit down and read about it may be drawn in to learn about it by other sensory means.
We can do ‘distant reading’, and see this trial account in the context of 127 million words - or indeed the billions of words in Google Books; and we can do a close reading, seeing Sarah herself in her geographical and social context.
This is a great example of looking at historical trends through a macroscope, while still being able to access microhistory. I think that one of the problems with using a macro approach is that in a way, it diminishes individual narratives which are relative to the individual and cannot always be generalized. I think it's great how this study takes both into consideration.
how we might identify new objects of study, rather than applying new methodologies to the same old bunch of stuff.
I think that as technology advances, it may possibly address the notion of identifying new objects of study. It currently helps by providing new methodologies to study the same material, but perhaps artificial intelligence will eventually be capable of finding these "new objects of study" that are mentioned.
There is a lot of it, however, and large methodologies will be needed to explore it. It is this problem that we believe makes the adoption of digital methodologies for history especially important.
As history becomes increasingly digitized, I wonder if this will pose challenges for data retrieval, say 500 years from now. I agree with this because even though we may be able to access such a vast pool of knowledge, it may not necessarily be easy to sift out what is relevant or needed.
As IBM noted in 2012, “90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.”
Wow, this is a surprising statistic.
librarians and archivists often do yeoman’s work in curating, collecting, and preserving these traces of the past in aggregate form for us.
Can this process be biased by the personal attitudes/ideas/convictions of scholars and archivists, or does the document usually maintain its integrity?
But they didn’t seem to have a good sense of how to yield quantitative data to answer questions,
In a world that contains a myriad of data, it can be overwhelming and challenging to narrow it down by relevance. This is why I think open history and collaboration are so important, because scholars can work together and break down the task into more manageable parts. I believe that this will become more of a norm as technology and access to digital history content develops.
For us, big data is simply more data that you could conceivably read yourself in a reasonable amount of time – or, even more inclusively – information that requires or can be read with computational intervention to make new sense of it.
This makes me wonder what we could attain in terms of examining big data, without modern technology. What trends would we see, and which ones would we miss? It really has impacted how we can interpret history, and how we can use these insights to look forward and predict other trends -- as the renown quote goes, "history repeats itself."
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‘the productive fail’
An interesting read -- It's important for people to see the value in failure. Mistakes are instrumental for learning and personal growth.
Maybe digital history is at the midway point on the continuum between art and science.
I like this interpretation; it really demonstrates the past and the present coming together, and how different disciplines can be combined to create a whole that is able to enhance the two parts.
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