Tag: Digitalhumanities

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final blog

Final Blog Post

Link to our Website: http://leeshumn100.blogs.bucknell.edu

I have come to realize as I reflect on the past semester that Humanities 100 was my favorite class this semester. I am surprisingly impressed with how much I have learned in such a short amount of time. I signed up for it because it sounded interesting and fulfilled one of my CCC requirements. I did not know what to expect and was slightly nervous after hearing about it the first day of class. Although there were times that were challenging and frustrating, I overall loved how interactive class was and am extremely proud of all the hard work I have put in throughout the semester.

One major skill this class has taught me is how to read for important information quickly and effectively, which was beneficial because I have always been considered a slow reader. I was flustered when I was given the memoir of Harriet Lees that is hundreds of years old because I did not know what to search for when analyzing. It was at this point in the class where I learned the importance of transcriptions. Again, I was a little confused at first, but it became easier and easier as I started completing each assignment. Transcriptions are a way of analyzing a text in a great amount of depth to seek out the maximum amount of important information.

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Working with Hailey Zimmerman on the memoir of Harriet Lees was extremely fun. The memoir is short, just about twelve pages, which I also enjoyed because we got to read and reread it as many times needed to understand her life story. When transcribing the original document, we split the pages up amongst us: six pages for me, six pages for Hailey. This process was my favorite part of the semester. Hailey and I would sit side by side making out the words and sentences that were written in cursive. We would ask one another when we couldn’t make out a word or phrase, which happened quite often. It was funny to see how some words I could easily read were so difficult for her and vice versa. Although this process was fun, it was very difficult at times due to the unfamiliar handwriting (cursive), sayings, and places in England. It was also difficult because some letters looked so similar to each other, so to resolve this issue we looked back at previous words with the same letter(s) and compared them. It was very critical that our transcription of the memoir was correct and made sense because it is used for every project for the rest of the semester. With that in mind, Hailey and I read through our transcriptions three times and thankfully we did because we found some mistakes. Voyant was the next step in our project. Again, this was a novel tool for both Hailey. Voyant was extremely helpful because it offered us the opportunity to learn about Harriet Lees’ life in new ways and in more depth. Voyant consisted of charts, lists, graphs that highlighted the most frequent words and phrases in our text, which made it easy to see what was of importance. It offered us a way to look deeply into the text and observe what hardships Harriet Lees faced and how she overcame them. Voyant is an efficient and more pleasing way to gain the important information needed from a long text. My favorite tool in voyant I used was cirrus. The next project Hailey and I did was the timeline and story map of Harriet Lees’ life, which was also very interesting and fun. The timeline helped arrange Harriet Lees’ life in a systematic order; which we used three major dates: her birth, marriage, and death. The timeline allowed us to make connections in her life to the world around her in that time. Specifically, we were able to gain a better understanding of Harriet Lees’ suffering and death from tuberculosis. We incorporated pictures to help the viewer envision the information we discussed. The story map was an extremely cool tool to work with, but again I did run into some struggles. The story map we created showed specific places in England where Harriet Lees’ lived, died, and traveled to. A struggle I was referring to earlier was that the memoir did not provide us with enough pages to make a strong story map, but after further research, we chose other relevant places in England that connected to Harriet Lees’ life. For example, we used London as a place and then compared and contrasted the different lifestyles in the nineteenth century. The story map provides a way for one to track the Harriet Lees’ life in a fun and information way. The Google Fusion table was another project we completed this semester. We took words from the memoir and put them into a spreadsheet that allowed us to indicate the important relationships. Hailey and I found that the strongest relationship in the memoir of Harriet Lees was emotion to health, which made sense because the majority of the memoir discussed Harriet Lees suffering from an inflammation in her lungs.

Another important aspect to Humanities 100 that broadened my understanding of the projects and the materials was the homework readings. It was cool to see the correlations between the readings and the projects when writing the blog posts. One of my favorite readings this semester is Grafton’s “Cartographies of Time”. I really enjoyed the timeline project and this reading gave me more insight on the importance dates and how beneficial of timelines can be. Another reading in specific that I really enjoyed was Bodenhamers, “The Spatial Humanities”. I really enjoyed this article because I think the author had a lot of good points that were relevant in my project. My favorite point he made was, “we see space as the platform for multiplicity, a realm where all perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time” (Bodenhamer 14).

The website Hailey and I created for our final project was extremely rewarding to finish. Our homepage is simple and has a lot of tabs that connect one to more information on the memoir of Harriet Lees. Each tab links one to information on a specific topic. Some of the information we included was the Moravian Church, Moravian Women, Geographical Context, Gender History, and more. Along with the information aspect, we included pictures and links to our past projects. Each tab is unique and provides insight on life in the nineteenth century, specifically Harriet Lees’. It is important to note that although Harriet Lees is one women, her life is extremely important for many reasons, which is explained in the website under the “Research Question” tab. Overall, this website incorporates and combines all the different information and components we have encountered this semester, which will be very helpful for people doing further research.

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Again, thank you so much for this semester and I appreciate all the work you, Professor Faull, Carry, and Courtney have done to help me learn. I will forever remember this class and hope to use some of the skills I learned in the future.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

http://www2.ivcc.edu/gen2002/women_in_the_nineteenth_century.htm

http://www.localhistories.org/vicwomen.html

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Blog #5

blog post #5

A map is a great way to help the audience gain a lot of knowledge on a specific topic. It is defined as a “diagram of collection of data showing the spatial distribution of something or the relative positions of its components”. Where a feature on a map is located is important because it shows the relationship from feature to feature. In other words, it is a visual way where one can make connections from place to place and gain a broader understanding of something. I found it very interesting when Bodenhamer said, “We see space as the platform for multiplicity, a realm where all perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time” (Bodenhamer,14) because think this is a very strong and accurate point that he made.

I really enjoyed mapping Harriet Lees’ life and gained a lot of insight on her life and England in the 1800s while doing so. While mapping the memoir of Harriet Lees, I understood what the Bodenhamer was insinuating when he said, “Spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product and determinant of change” (Bodenhamer 16).

Multiple places were referred to in the memoir of Harriet Lees’ and  while making a map of these different places, I was able to understand why each place held importance in her lifetime. I used maps and spatial thinking to help me understand the complexities and nuances of the history of Harriet Lees’ life. Like I stated before, mapping Harriet Lees’ life broadened my understanding and perspective of her life. This is because I traced each important part of her life discussed in the memoir. For example, I showed that Harriet Lees lived in Leominster, England for a big portion of her life with her husband and how when she got sick she traveled to Leamington in hope for the special healing waters to heal her sickness of the lungs.  Because there were only three places discussed in Harriet Lees’ memoir, I did further research on England in the 1800s and found places of importance as well. Other important places I found were Bath, Bristol, and London, England. I found that Bath England, similarly to Leamington, is also known for their spas and many people travelled there in attempt to regain their strength they had lost from sickness. I found that Bristol, England was relevant to Harriet Lees’ memoir because similarly to Leominster, Bristol was a very religious town where the Moravian church was located. I also researched London which was important because it was the biggest city in all of Europe and a central place for Moravians at the time. Interestingly, I also learned while researching London that the majority of Moravian women did not live in London, but in outside cities, such as Bristol. While researching Bristol on a map, I discovered that Bristol is closer to Leominster than London is, which is cool to think about in historical times.Overall, I think mapping is a very cool and unique way to relay information. David Bodenhamer says, “inherently spatial beings: we live in a physical world and routinely use spatial concepts of distance and direction to navigate our way through it” (Bodenhamer 14). I agree with Bodenhamer and this being said, I think mapping is very useful and fun at the same time!

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/6832125f9b54ae55b31ef0b2dc189120/harriett-lees-story-map-1/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

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Uncategorized

Blog #1

After visiting several websites based on archival materials, I realized that there are both advantages and disadvantages to creating a digital artifact. One advantage to creating a digital artifact is the fact that it is progressive. At this day in age, technology is increasingly growing and becoming more and more important to our daily lives in many respected aspects. Physical and tangible manuscripts are going ‘out of style’ because there are so many virtual tools. Another advantage is that with technology comes increased productivity and speed.

According to Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts “many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons.” Another line that stuck out to me as an advantage was “digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource…” What a lot of the projects have in common are that they are a collection of a bunch of manuscripts. Also, the artifacts are usually kept in an important library or museum.

Some of the disadvantages to creating a digital artifact is that it is digital. To some people, they do not like change (change being the technology in this case). Technology can be extremely helpful but also has its cons. It is expensive, takes time to learn how to figure it out, and can have bugs and crash especially when first starting up. Another huge disadvantage in my opinion is getting rid of the tangible aspect of an artifact. For example, there is no more “flipping the page”.

Are our physical and emotional relationships to our objects of study shifting in a digital age?

I think that our physical and emotional relationships to our object are both changing and staying the same. An emotional attachment and relationship to an object in my opinion does not change just because technology comes into play. However, our physical relationship with an object does change because of the tangible aspect of it going away. Reading on a screen is much different then reading off a physical object.

Do digitized materials supplant our need to view the physical originals, or enhance the necessity of and desire for archival work?

Digitized materials enhance the necessity and desire for archival work. With new technology, there is new publicity, and this is how word spreads which may create a higher desire for archival work.

Are we interacting with textual material on the screen more than on the (manuscript or printed) page, and if so, how are our research practices changing?

I think that we are interacting with textual material on the screen more than a manuscript or a printed page because a lot of the manuscripts are very old and hard to read because of the damage done to them just naturally weathering over the years. With technology becoming a bigger part of our life, it is easier to interact with the textual material as a lot of educational tools and even work-related items are online.

fintech icon on abstract financial technology background represent Blockchain and Fintech Investment Financial Internet Technology Concept.

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Blog #1

Nathan Ware’s Blog post #1

Throughout the last few decades, the world has experienced a technological explosion. What I mean by this statement is that society is progressively becoming tech-savvy. As a result of recent trends, such as the rise of personal computing in the late 1980’s, society can now view the world through a new lens. These computers transformed the world into an environment reliant on the internet with audio, visuals, and graphics. Consequently, the field of Digital Humanities was created. What was once a civilization reliant on traditional literature, is now being transitioned to use visualization to offer additional interpretations to standard text.

Digital Humanities is changing a world in which knowledge was taught through texts and stationary pictures and progressing to a world that produces and organizes knowledge through graphic designs and more. Now, multiple authors can work collaboratively and efficiently through the new age of technology to create a product that adheres to human’s natural tendency to register shapes and patterns. However, any abrupt changes to society inevitably result in reluctant critics. These critics call upon an important question: What are the benefits and detriments of creating a digital artifact compared to an archival document?  

An effective starting point to this argument would be to consider what ways digital versions of material texts highlight physical elements of texts that might otherwise pass unremarked. In his article “Visualizing the Archive”, Edward Whitley reflects upon how the human brain processes information. “Humans are quite adept at perceptual visual cues and recognizing subtle shape differences. In fact, it has been shown that humans can distinguish shape during the pre-attentive psychophysical process” (Whitley, 193). This fact entails that human brains are pre-wired to process and visualize shapes. While critics point out that traditional text encourages the reader to absorb the details of the material by reading more attentively, this benefit is outweighed when the text becomes too complex. The human brain can only take in a finite amount of information before details are lost. The Digital Humanities offer a solution to this problem by graphically displaying information that summarizes text in a way that’s easier on the human mind. By visualizing commonalities of the text, the viewer experiences serendipitous discovery of underlying themes that would have remained unapparent through standard text.

The picture below is from the project called “Lincoln at 200”. This project is connected to a website that allows the viewer to navigate through two website exhibitions. By adding structure to this website, the reader can view text documents in an organized manner. If it were a traditional text, the viewer would miss out on this organization leading to that person to interpret the reading less accurately. Using websites such as this one, scholars can create online reading interfaces that can more closely approximate the experience of reading physical materials.

 

 

On the other hand, literature provides some perks that computers can’t. Since computers were a recent invention, history is discovered through mainly literature. In the project called “Old Weather”, ship logs from the 19th and 20th century are vital for climate scientists. However, the handwriting can’t be processed by computers. Only the human eye can read these documents. The picture below is an example of one of these ship logs. By decrypting the text into modern English, not only can we sample the lives of these sailors, but scientists can grasp a better understanding of their climate.