Digital Humanities and Big Data: Introduction to the Dictionary of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Digital Humanities and Big Data: Introduction to the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

IMEMS/Philosophy, Durham University s.l.uckelman@durham.ac.uk @SaraLUckelman, @theDMNES 9 May 2018 Innovative Computing Group Seminar

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 1 / 14

What?

A Dictionary of given names found in European sources between 500 and 1600, with etymological information, information about usage and distribution, and other relevant information.

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 2 / 14

What?

Currently: 54982 citations of 2252 names (published); 65976 citations of 6042 names (total) From 519 to 1599. Covering: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Malta, Italy, France, Belgium, the Low Countries, Switzerland.

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 3 / 14

Why?

To fill a lacuna. A resource for:

◮ Linguists and philologists. ◮ Historians. ◮ Genealogists. ◮ Re-enactors. ◮ Parents.

Big data!

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 4 / 14

To fill a lacuna (1)

Recent significant interest in lexicography of medieval languages: Middle English Dictionary the TLFi project (Old French) Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources Dictionary of Medieval Latin from Celtic Sources Anglo-Norman Dictionary Dictionary of the Scots Language Dictionnaire Étymologique de l’Ancien Français

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 5 / 14

To fill a lacuna (2)

Daniel W Hieber, “Renaissance on the bayou: the revival of a lost language”, https://theconversation.com/ renaissance-on-the-bayou-the-revival-of-a-lost-language-43958

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 6 / 14

To fill a lacuna (3)

Names are part of the language Importance for vernaculars Problem of invented names

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 7 / 14

How?

Primary motivation: Document everything. Version control: Every change to every file is recorded, along with who made the change, via git. Track responsibility (“blame”) for errors. Assign authorship credit:

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 8 / 14

How?

Why this way? Stable citations; reconstruction of thought processes Particularly important for historically-oriented projects. Focus on perfection/completion erases contributions. We should provide the info that we ourselves are interested in.

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 9 / 14

What makes this interesting to ICG

DH/cross-disciplinary collaboration: How can computing/computer scientists help? Potential for new tools and applications: Date parser/sorter; GIS and visualizations; statistics Big data

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 10 / 14

The problem of DH

‘Humanities’ people don’t know what to ask for; ‘Digital’ people don’t know what to give HUMS has a project and needs to find a COMP. How? Problem of articulating needs/wants; no common language What is research to HUMS is application to COMP. £££. Program/tool constraints

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 11 / 14

What has this got to do with Big Data?

What is ‘big’ for the humanities scholar might be quite small for the computer scientist.

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 12 / 14

Big Data

Cross-linguistic/cross-cultural patterns and trends.

◮ Patterns of diminutive and hypocoristic usage ◮ The eclipse of native names by “Christian” names in the 12th C ◮ Distinctly “Protestant” names.

Scholarship beyond the English language.

◮ “Made-up”/invented names: Shakespeare, J.M. Barrie, Neil Gaiman

Name/gender tools. Semantic support for OCR. Automated name-identification tools.

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 13 / 14

Big Data

Cross-linguistic/cross-cultural patterns and trends.

◮ Patterns of diminutive and hypocoristic usage ◮ The eclipse of native names by “Christian” names in the 12th C ◮ Distinctly “Protestant” names.

Scholarship beyond the English language.

◮ “Made-up”/invented names: Shakespeare, J.M. Barrie, Neil Gaiman

Name/gender tools. Semantic support for OCR. Automated name-identification tools. . . . and more: You tell me!

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 13 / 14

Where?

http://dmnes.org/ @theDMNES http://www.facebook.com/thedmnes http://dmnes.wordpress.com

• Dr. Sara L. Uckelman

Intro to The DMNES 9 May 2018 14 / 14