“Creating specialized corpora from digitized historical newspaper archives: An iterative bootstrapping approach”

“Creating specialized corpora from digitized historical newspaper archives: An iterative bootstrapping approach”

Every scholar in digital humanities and/or social sciences has probably already faced the challenge posed by consulting large digital newspaper archives in order to extract detailed information about a topic. It is beyond any doubt that computational-oriented methods and tools currently available may provide a great contribution; however, applying such methods and tools could pose several difficulties, especially in dealing with large ensembles of items.

Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python — Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python

Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python — Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python

Introduction: Folgert Karsdorp, Mike Kestemont and Allen Riddell ‘s  interactive book, Humanities Data Analysis: Case Studies with Python had been written with the aim in mind to equip humanities students and scholars working with textual and tabular resources with practical, hands-on knowledge to better understand the potentials of data-rich, computer-assisted approaches that the Python framework offers to them and eventually to apply and integrate them to their own research projects.

The first part introduces a “Data carpentry”, a collection of essential techniques for gathering, cleaning, representing, and transforming textual and tabular data. This sets the stage for the second part that consists of 5 case studies (Statistics Essentials: WhoReads Novels? ; Introduction to Probability ; Narrating with Maps ; Stylometry and the Voice of Hildegard ; A Topic Model of United States Supreme Court Opinions, 1900–2000 ) showcasing how to draw meaningful insights from data using quantitative methods. Each chapter contains executable Python codes and ends with exercises ranging from easier drills to more creative and complex possibilities to adapt the apply and adopt the newly acquired knowledge to their own research problems.

The book exhibits best practices in how to make digital scholarship available in an open, sustainable ad digital-native manner, coming in different layers that are firmly interlinked with each other. Published with Princeton University Press in 2021, hardcopies are also available, but more importantly, the digital version is an  Open Access Jupyter notebook that can be read in multiple environments and formats (.md and .pdf). The documentation, coda and data materials are available on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/3560761#.Y3tCcn3MJD9). The authors also made sure to select and use packages which are mature and actively maintained.

GitHub – CateAgostini/IIIF

GitHub – CateAgostini/IIIF

Introduction: In this resource, Caterina Agostini, PhD in Italian from Rutgers University, Project Manager at The Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton shares two handouts of workshops she organized and co-taught on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). They provide a gentle introduction to IIIF and clear overview of features (displaying, editing, annotating, sharing and comparing images along universal standards), examples and resources. The handouts could be of interest to anyone interested in the design and teaching of Open Educational Resources on IIF.
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Offen, vielfältig und kreativ. Ein Bericht zum Barcamp Data Literacy #dhddatcamp20 bei der DHd 2020 | DHd-Blog

Offen, vielfältig und kreativ. Ein Bericht zum Barcamp Data Literacy #dhddatcamp20 bei der DHd 2020 | DHd-Blog

Introduction: What are the essential data literacy skills data literacy skills in (Digital) Humanities? How good data management practices can be translated to humanities disciplines and how to engage more and more humanists in such conversations? Ulrike Wuttke’s reflections on the “Vermittlung von Data Literacy in den Geisteswissenschaften“ barcamp at the DHd 2020 conference does not only make us heartfelt nostalgic about scholarly meetings happening face to face but it also gives in-depth and contextualized insights regarding the questions above. The post comes with rich documentation (including links to the barcamp’s metapad, tweets, photos, follow-up posts) and is also serve as a guide for organizers of barcamps in the future.

Audio-Dateien zusammenführen und konvertieren in Audacity (Windows)

Audio-Dateien zusammenführen und konvertieren in Audacity (Windows)

Introduction: As online became the default means of teaching globally, the thoughtful use of online technologies will play an even more critical role in our everyday life. In this post, Christopher Nunn guides you through how to publish your lectures as podcasts as MP3 with the help of the open source tool, Audacity. The tutorial had been published as a guest post on Mareike Schuhmacher’s blog, Lebe lieber literarisch.

The Research Software Directory and how it promotes software citation

The Research Software Directory and how it promotes software citation

Introduction: The Research Software Directory of the Netherlands eScience Institute provides easy access to software, source code and its documentation. More importantly, it makes it easy to cite software, which is highly advisable when using software to derive research results. The Research Software Directory positions itself as a platform that eases scientific referencing and reproducibility of software based research—good peer praxis that is still underdeveloped in the humanities. 

Teaching Quantitative Methods: What Makes It Hard (in Literary Studies)

Introduction: This article reflects on the lessons learnt by the author as he first taught a graduate course in digital analysis of literary texts. He stresses the importance of methodologies over technologies, the need for well-curated, community-created teaching datasets and the implications of the practical, discipline-based organisation of the curricula.