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Digital artifacts are used heavily nowadays. It is easier to gain access to the artifacts if they are on the web, and one can access them from around the world. With digital artifacts, people do not need to worry about storing them or protecting them. The artifacts will not decay, and people can analyze them years into the future. One of the main disadvantages of digital archives is that the researcher cannot touch the artifact when deciphering it. They are not able to analyze the material of the artifact or the kind of “paper” it was written on. It is also easier to examine something when one can move it around and look at it from all angles. Sometimes artifacts have brail written on them, so researchers would not have the ability to feel the brail writing if it were solely a picture on the internet. Most of the large-scale digital humanities projects require a lot of time and effort to gain a full understanding of the meaning hidden in the archive. It also seems as if most of the archives are very difficult to read and interpret. Many are written in foreign or old languages and ancient script handwriting.

 

Yes, I believe we are interacting with textual material more on than screen than on the page. Most research used to be done by checking out books in the library then returning them when finished. Now, researchers have the ability to google a specific topic and look at all of the different websites containing information on that topic. The internet contains everything one needs to know about their research topic in one space. It is much easier to google something than it is to check out several books and search through them for hours. With the internet, one can search for a specific word on that web page as well as gain access to all of these books at one time without a due date. Researchers can also bookmark pages, so they can go back later and access them quickly. It is also easy to analyze archives when they are digitized because they can be accessible anywhere at anytime.

 

I feel as if researchers are becoming less emotionally attached to their artifacts since they have become digital. There is a difference between holding a huge stack of papers containing all of one’s research and scrolling through pages on the computer. With the stack of papers, one is able to feel all of their hard work unlike solely looking at a screen. Researchers are also unable to touch their artifacts if they are digitized. These people would be upset if something happened to the artifact physically, but the artifact is unable to be damaged if it is in digital form. I also believe it is difficult to obtain a physical relationship with something that is digital. It is easier when one is able to touch the artifact and obtain a sense of its physical characteristics.

 

I do not believe digital versions of material texts highlight physical elements of texts. Some artifacts are very frail, and one could tell it was created many years ago. With the artifact in digital form, it is difficult to determine when the artifact was created. Sometimes one is also able to determine where the artifact came from based off of the material of it. Some supplies were not available in specific parts of the world. Digital versions also mask the ink used which could give more clues about the artifact. I believe many physical characteristics of an artifact go unnoticed when turned into a digital form.

 

http://togointotheworld.blogspot.com/2013/06/ships-logs.html

 

http://www.titanicuniverse.com/titanic-artifacts/titanic-artifacts-15-2

 

 

 

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Blog #1

In the Research Projects that were looked at like the, “Database of Indigenous People in North America,” had many interacting material that are displayed in our screen with a click of our mouse. With the new interactions of these archives conveys that our research practices are changing in order to be more visually pleasing to people and be more accessible to the public. In the Research Projects, the primary Digital Humanities focus was Archive in the site itself. With Archiving it allows people to see documents, letters and other images that can be easily accessed in the site, than having someone go to specific place just to see the physical copy once. However, there are disadvantages to that.

There are disadvantages when analyzing things in digital form because there is significance when looking at the object in first hand. It can show if the object is truly of significance or not to a specific area. No one can truly understand meaning of a place unless one goes to that specific place and talk to the people of that area or walk around that area in order to imagine how a person will live in this place.

With looking at the Research Projects in Archive it has its clear advantages with having more approaches to this like Maps. Maps help in looking at mapping areas that have impacted by events in American History, Southeast Asia, and many more. In the archive of  “Database of Indigenous People in North America” it give examples of some of them having named locations where Natives of the Land use to settle and the territory that was assigned to them by the American Government. With the methods that were presented in this specific Research Project  it can fit into a scholarly subject matter in understanding the History of the Indigenous people in a certain place and time. With having the perspectives of many people coming from newspapers, photographs, census and etc. it allows the average person connect the ideas of the past for them understand the actions of those people in the past. The determining factor that makes the digital representation to be conveyed to world is by the type material that is given and the amount information one has in their disposal to explain a subject matter. One has to determine in what ways can we share this information to a audience. Some people would just publish it into a book that can only be read in a physical copy. Or there are people who rather share to a public domain that is online to capture a larger audience. Another example can be an audio recording that was captured of very important event. One of the many ways people will be allowed to hear it is by either going to the object itself and get the permission to hear it, or having a copy online that can be easily accessed by one click.

The physical and emotional relationships to our objects of study are shifting in a digital age that can’t be stop. The reason is that is for efficiency. Lets say someone has found a huge discovery that can impact our world and the way to share it quickly is by using online tools that can be presented to a huge audience and can be analysed by other researches around the world. In a matter of time.

Digitized materials enhance the necessity of and desire for archival work because the physical location where that material came from can help us understand the meaning of that piece because a picture of a place can’t supplement the meaning of a place.

      

 

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Blog #1: On Material and Digital Archives

Some advantages to creating a digital artifact from archival documents is that the digital artifact is more easily accessible and there is no to little risk of damaging the original artifact. Also, some documents could be written in handwriting that is hard for people of the twenty first century to follow along with, so a transcription will make it easier for users to actually read old documents. Additionally, these tools can help with, what Whitley calls, distant reading, which helps identify the overall interconnection between data. Once there is a transcription available you can use tools to manipulate and analyze the text for patterns that may not be obvious to the naked eye. Some of the disadvantages of digitization are the time and money that goes into the process of creating the digital artifacts. In addition, there is maintenance and upkeep involved in preserving these documents digitally. Technology is advancing all of the time, so it’s important to keep these sites updated. I noticed that The Moravian Lives project is similar to other large

Moravian Lives Project

-scale DH projects in a few ways. Both Moravian Lives and Old Weather has a place where people can get involved and transcribe materials themselves. Similar to the Jane Austen Manuscript project, you can access documents that were already transcribed and you can view the transcription and pictures of the original document. Also, the Quantifying Kissinger and Moravian Lives projects both have visualization maps that help people actually see the connections between the data. Yes, society as a whole is interacting with textual material on screen more than on the printed page. With the advancement of technology we have more accessibility to information and digital artifacts than ever. Research practices are changing because of this technology. Instead of looking up where a resource is located and dealing with the hard copy, now we can just look up whatever we need online and more often than not we will be able to find what we’re looking for. Open-source and free digitized materials offer new

 

Quantifying Kissinger Visualization Map

pedagogical opportunities. For example, we can take the digitized data and approach it a different way by using visualization tools. According to Whitley, these digital tools and visualizations produce more questions and problems than answers; this leads to an even deeper analysis of the data.  Students can reference and compile information from artifacts and centuries old documents that are located across the globe because they have digital access to them. According to Whitley, serendipitous discovery is possible in digital and physical form. In physical form, your perspective could be widened by a newspaper for example. Your eyes are drawn to different articles across the page prompting you to make new discoveries. On a digital platform, a search engine could help the user serendipitously find information that they might not have found on their own. Overall, all of these DH projects use tools that Whitley claims will, “challenge us to read texts differently than we otherwise would.”