This session proposal is a confession and a cry for help. I’ve been charged with producing the Proceedings of THATCamp, and I’ve been struggling with it. Hoped we could have a therapeutic session where I can try to explain the problems with the project and you all can tell me how to get over them. Or myself.

Anyone interested in helping create an XML schema (customized TEI?) for encoding bibliographies for the web? We are working on a “black box” solution for scholars wanting to publish bibliographies to the web and the first step is to create a schema that can serve as the input and storage base for the data. We are wanting to create a schema that can accommodate all types of bibliographies and their “added value,” including annotated bibliographies, linked data, and descriptive bibliography. We may not leave the session with a complete schema, but may be able to come up with a substantial list of elements that need to be included. No knowledge of XML needed — just an interest in putting bibliographies on the web!

What are the DH tools and methods used to study literature? How are these being used and to what end? I’d like to talk with others about the forms that digital literary studies have taken and the underlying methodologies. This could take the form of a “Make” session where we draft an inventory of DH tools and methods used in literary studies with notes on application, context, skills, methodology, etc. For example, what can mapping (topic modeling, text mining, digital editions) do to further scholarship and/or teaching? What is needed to complete a project?

I would like to propose a session on the Juxta collation software. I understand this is a very good tool for textual editing, but I’m wondering if it can be manipulated for comparing, say, different translations of the Aeneid. Ideally, too, I’d like to know the difference between Juxta & the new Juxta commons.

All:

This workshop suggestion focuses on a tool, the Neatline map tool, that in some ways follows up on the discussion about the use of Scripto for Omeka projects. It follows first because of an underlying interest in Omeka, and second, because of an interest in visualizing archival data in interesting ways (which is what I take the text and archive based work in Scripto to be in the service of accomplishing). As I am sure a number of you know — and Patrick in particular — Neatline has the benefit or detraction of being a UVA product, so it is not currently supported by the Omeka.net hosting service and its server-based plugin library. Bummer as that may be, the advantage, I think, is associated with the increased potential flexibility of the tool.

My interest has been for some time now to marry textual / archival data with cartographic and spatial matter in order to create a richer and deeper data set. Think of this as an exploration of “big data” for cartographic or spatial humanists. One of the principle difficulties I see inherent in GIS platforms is the distinction (often under-represented) between powerful visualization and presentation platforms and powerful analytical platforms. We have begun to see strongly interpretive tools in corpus analysis and data mining applications; we have not, to my mind, seen the same evolution in the realm of humanist data visualization, and in particular, those visualizations tied to time and space through GIS technologies like Neatline. So, I would open this up for a potential workshop that might address themes like: what are some of the the analytical potentials of GIS based technologies? How do we see archival inquiries and historical investigations productively in conversation with the cartographic imagination? What are the limitations of tools like Neatline, or perhaps Google Earth / GMap? I mentioned QGIS in an earlier post and it got a big thud of silence, so maybe this is a better approach, but if anyone wants to dig into technical GIS (as in ArcGIS or QGIS, I’d be open to that as well). Any takers?

There is a gulf between the needs of industry writers and the needs of researchers and academics. One requires very orderly processes of feedback and comments, while the other is a messy connectivism melee of ideas and attribution.

I still recall a drawing of a 16th century scholar (though cannot find it) who has several books held up by mechanisms, cross referencing and comparing the texts. I’m reminded of my own multi-monitor display, and wonder how augmented reality and future devices will change even that modal paradigm.

The closest in terms of present-day systems to this aspiration of connectivity in knowledge remains Wikipedia, though the links (clicking text which changes everything) often hide the connections as much as they provide ways between ideas. Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu set out to realize the connections in a spatial way, though the system as envisioned was never completed. Giorgio Guzzetta’s proposal for this year’s THATCamp MLA talked of a scholarly operating system, citing the various tools and programs that would allow tweaking and cajoling Linux tools and systems into the specialized needs of academia, and more specifically the humanities. These tools are constantly moving, their combination volatile and their practicality at least uncertain. The primary technologies I currently use are Microsoft Word, Mendeley Desktop manager (which does a great job of helping manage citations and PDFs/Notes), but I (and most others) still feel there should be something more.

I’d like to be a part of a session that addresses these deeply embedded dissatisfaction with the ways that technology supports the fundamental process of writing and scholarship. Who is best suited to standardizing these solutions, who has the time and capabilities, and further, since we are professionals, what would we be willing to do to show there is a market?

Please weigh in on the comments, and I’d be happy to combine talk of semantic web, real-time collaboration tools with the existing applications and workflows.