SLIDE 1 Introduction: History and Digital Technologies
Max Kemman
University of Luxembourg September 21, 2015
Doing Digital History: Introduction to Tools and Technology
SLIDE 2 Today
Introduction: History and Digital Technology
- Challenges →
- Technology as support →
- New practices →
- About the course →
- Prerequirements & Goals →
- Tasks & Grading →
- Overview →
- Next time →
SLIDE 3
Your lecturer
Information Science PhD Candidate with Andreas Fickers Dutch or English
SLIDE 4
Introduction: History and Digital Technology
What do we need all this new stuff for? Digitized archives & digital-born material
SLIDE 5
Challenges
SLIDE 6 Preservation
How to preserve digital sources?
Changes in hardware & software
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Complete preservation
A complete historical record What would be "everything"? Does "everything" have to be preserved?
SLIDE 8 Complete preservation
To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. The challenge, likewise, for digital archives is their inability to forget —or rather, their inability to forget creatively.
Anderson, S. F. (2011). Technologies of history: Visual media and the eccentricity of the past. UPNE.
SLIDE 9 Information Overload
Even when we don't have everything, we get a lot What do you do with a million books?
Crane, G. (2006). What do you do with a million books? D-Lib Magazine, 12(3).
Or, what do you do with 31 million tweets? Maybe printing isn't the solution...
SLIDE 10 Information Overload
The injunction of traditional historians to look at “everything” cannot survive in a digital era in which “everything” has survived
Rosenzweig (2003)
So, we consider alternative approaches to the historical record
SLIDE 11 Technology as support
Unlike humans, computers can process a million books very fast No hermeneutic interpretation, but potential uses for:
Exploration
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Exploration
How can we discover the interesting bits? For the microhistories/atomic history: which ones are of interest? And why? For the macrohistories/astrophysical history: how to gain overview? How to summarize?
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Presentation
How can we present history in an interesting way using digital tools? Are there methods beyond the narrative to tell a story? Can we invite readers to interact with the story and sources and be engaged with our arguments?
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Visualisation
In this course we will experiment with information visualisation for history Answer different questions about a body of text Notably:
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What?
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When?
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Where?
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Who?
SLIDE 19 Practices
(Un)fortunately, such visualisations are not created automagically For this, we need new practices:
Making the information machine-readable
- Experimenting with different views
- Presenting arguments in a digital format
SLIDE 20 Biases
We need to do all of this without falling for different biases: This brings us to our current course...
Confirmation bias
- Digital bias
- Algorithmic bias
SLIDE 21
About the course
SLIDE 22 Prerequirements & Goals
No prerequirements :) Students will learn how to use and critically examine digital tools for historical research. This course is not about how to use tool X or tool Y
Try tool during lecture
- Use Google when you get stuck
- You can always e-mail me: let me know what you have tried
SLIDE 23 Limitations of the course
Horizons in current practices of Digital History
Textual emphasis
- Heuristic emphasis
- End-user perspective, so no programming (but some coding)
SLIDE 24 Tasks & Grading
Tasks Grading
Reading literature
- Keeping track of new terminology
- Assignments
- Group project
- Weekly assignments (30%)
- Final group project (70%)
SLIDE 25 Overview
Week 1-5: Theory of Technologies
- 1. Introduction: History and Digital Technology
- 2. Writing for the Web
- 3. Digital Libraries & Archives
- 4. Big Data
- 5. Distant Reading
SLIDE 26 Overview
Week 6-13: Practice of Tools
- 6. What: Investigating what a corpus is about
- 7. What: Recognising entities in a corpus*
- 8. Where: Investigating locations in a corpus
- 9. Where: Creating your own map*
- 10. When: Investigating temporal events in a corpus
- 11. When: Creating an exposition*
- 12. Who: Investigating people in a corpus
- 13. Who: Networks of people*
SLIDE 27 Overview
*Optional for BA students All slides can be found on Moodle after the lecture All literature can be found on Moodle
- 14. Final class discussion on Tools & Technologies
SLIDE 28 For next time
Data: check Moodle
Writing for the Web
Reading: (see Moodle)
Nawrotzki, K., & Dougherty, J. (2013). Introduction. In K. Nawrotzki & J. Dougherty (Eds.), Writing History in the Digital Age (Online., pp. 1–20). University of Michigan Press.
- Dorn, S. (2013). Is (Digital) History More than an Argument about the Past? In K.
Nawrotzki & J. Dougherty (Eds.), Writing History in the Digital Age (Online., pp. 21–34). University of Michigan Press.
