dirty OCR illuminates the priorities, infrastructure, and economics of the academy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
I never thought about it this way- maybe one day in history another student will be laughing at how far behind our "technological advances" were
Our primary perspective on the digitized text thus far has been that of the textual critic who is entirely “concerned with…the reconstruction of the author’s original text
I was under the impression that this should be a primary concern? if we are digitizing history should it not be accurate?
The consequences of “errorful”
A reminder that while technology is advancing it often requires a human eye to monitor it
It’s not just the simplicity of that single search box, it’s our faith that search will just work.
This is very true- we instill all our faith in it working, it is a bit magic every time it does
A seam-free service
As with most things in life I don't think there will ever be a completely seam free manner to do this- there is always going to be one aspect that will not be what someone wants. Maybe striving for more seamless as opposed to seam free is more realistic?
web-scale discovery services
I don't think I understand what this means
‘Here was magic!’.
This reminds me of a quote I cannot seem to get my hands on right now about how every generation has its own type of magic- and this was theirs!
My tweet led to a flurry of activity amongst scholars, and even now, the transcription has begun. Indeed, I made an android-only game out of it.
This is so interesting! Games like this really encourage interest especially in people who may not have heard of these types of things in any other way before!
But can you imagine a ‘public literary criticism’?”
This is very fascinating to me
The study of literature, history, art, philosophy, and other forms of culture has been justly lauded by those whose business it is to teach those fields as a key means of providing students with a rich set of interpretive, critical, and ethical skills with which they can engage the world around them.
I think this is very true. Oftentimes arts students are overlooked because all we do is "write essays" and read but at the end of the day: it is a skill set. Being able to communicate your thoughts in an effective manner is not something every major seeks to teach their students.
even manipulate the data that a country generates.
This seems like it could end up poorly but I do agree the public should have access to read and view it. Allowing full open access seems like a wikipedia page style disaster of misinformation.
The value of our work is too wrapped up in the scarcity of sources themselves, rather than just the narratives that we weave with them.
This is something that has always struck me as odd- a lot of important history- or the things people deem important- is based on very few sources, which makes the rarity of it all something of an appeal readers and other researchers, it adds a challenge. Would we lose this effect if too much information ( if there is such a thing) occurred was made available?
Open Notebook scientists place a premium on sharing even the results of failed or small experiments
Other peoples failures can help you to learn from their mistakes, allowing you to make different mistakes and find new solutions
What would happen if historians made their research notes public? What would it look like to make our notebooks “open source”?
I find this concept fascinating because it would also provide a window into the mind of the researcher- I find my research notes, although a mess, are oftentimes more fun to read as all my information is in them vs the final draft which had to have information edited out for the sake of maintaining an argument
Allowing anyone to link out to an author’s primary sources
I think this feature is brilliant and going to be great for research in the future
one of the only times a historians footnotes were so rigorously fact checked.
Students often live in fear of getting called on plagiarism because they didn't cite something correctly but the idea that a historian- someone far more advanced in the field of study than an undergrad student- put work out into the public and was expecting it not to be fact checked is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around
A historian’s macroscope offers a complementary, but very different, path to knowledge
Finding different places and techniques to gather more knowledge is something that I think we stop doing after a time which can end up being more harmful than trying to explore new ways to learn
an academic guerrilla movement
I love all the imagery this sentence produces
From the privileged position of editor, I am acutely aware of how disciplinary, technical, and personal constraints have shaped this volume.
I really admire when authors and editors acknowledge this because it really is a position that needs to be stated as a something that holds a bias.
and has the great advantage of not being ‘text’; or at least not being words.
As an English major this hurts me a bit to say, but words/texts are not always the best way to go about research. Examining art and images or even examining the way words are written as opposed to the words and their meaning can produce as many insightful opinions and theories as reading
If these revolutions are to pass, historians themselves will have to change as well.
I think this is true of all varied sorts of scholars- the world is changing rapidly around us and if those who wish to study the world don't change with it, they may find themselves left behind as opposed to a part of the changes
did not have free hands in the satires they designed, but rather they made designs that they thought were likely to appeal to the anticipated audiences of one or more prospective publishers
I feel like even though we are decades ahead this is still something that authors/artists struggle with- their work has to be molded to fit what is currently in demand or they often find themselves unable to publish on a scale that will afford them recognition.
not everything made it to the surface of the final product.
In the same vein as my previous comment from this authors other post- over time a skill that you need to develop is to pick and choose which information is truly needed to be in your work.
Adding them just didn’t feel right because I don’t make an argument within them,
This is something I always have to pay attention to when writing- and it helps to know that "professionals" also have this same issue. Sometimes when researching, especially with history, I find I am able to gather a lot of information but am sometimes just regurgitating this information instead of making a point or adding to a point I was attempting to make
THIS TEXT
I had a similar program on my computer for the past school year but this one seems much more user friendly!