Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 17, No. 455.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
www.princeton.edu/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
[1] From: Kirk Lowery <klowery@whi.wts.edu> (25)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
[2] From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au> (17)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
[3] From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli@indiana.edu> (36)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
[4] From: David Sewell <drs2n@VIRGINIA.EDU> (19)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
[5] From: Martin Holmes <mholmes@uvic.ca> (13)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
[6] From: Suzana Sukovic <S.Sukovic@library.usyd.edu.au> (15)
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:29:44 +0000
From: Kirk Lowery <klowery@whi.wts.edu>
Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty
<willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
> Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 14:06:09 +0000
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
> >I'm trying at the moment to think my way through what we might
denote as
>the basic techniques and activities of humanities computing. To help
>matters along, I offer the following list:
[snip]
>What does not belong? What have I left out?
How about linguistic/literary tagging/analysis for texts, or, more
generally, adding meta-data to text? I'm thinking NLP tools/techniques here.
Where would search engines fit? I'm thinking of textually oriented search
engines, e.g., http://emdros.org.
Do these fit already in one of your categories?
Best wishes,
Kirk
-- Kirk E. Lowery, Ph.D. Director, Westminster Hebrew Institute Adjunct Professor of Old Testament Westminster Theological Seminary, PhiladelphiaTheorie ist, wenn man alles weiss und nichts klappt. Praxis ist, wenn alles klappt und keiner weiss warum. Bei uns sind Theorie und Praxis vereint: nichts klappt und keiner weiss warum!
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:29:58 +0000 From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au> Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
On 12/12/2003, at 1:14 AM, Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
>What does not belong? What have I left out?
1. anything to do with time based media (sound, music, moving image)? 2. possibly anything to do with media that originated electronically (digitally), for example the sorts of tools that are attached to blogs these days (thinks like technorati, blogdex, etc), and blogs themselves, ought to be an object of study 3. possibly anything to do with media that originated electronically (digitally) that is image based, for example flash work (as opposed to using Flash to represent the outcomes of a prior analysis).
cheers Adrian Miles ................................................................. hypertext.rmit || hypertext.rmit.edu.au interactive networked video || hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog research blog || hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog/
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:30:30 +0000 From: Alexandre Enkerli <aenkerli@indiana.edu> Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
Willard,
Depending on your goals for such a list, it might be either expanded or streamlined. Are you looking for a way to define Humanities Computing (HC) through techniques or are you developing an exhaustive repertoire of what humanists can do with computers?
Item #1 in your list ("Textual sorting and gathering") seems to comprise a large number of techniques typical of HC while #4 "Encoding" might seem too general and would in fact include "textual gathering."
An alternate list could come from the classification of techniques based on inputs and outputs. Ultimately, we mostly use computers to "process" digital (numerical) data. These ideas are present in your list but could be specified in a different way. Some in-/outputs are "offline" and link HC with the rest of the academic world. A simplified model would be from "real-world" to "theory" with "raw data," "digital data," and "processed data" as intermediate steps. The computer isn't a mysterious black box but the ins and outs do determine a lot of what's being done inside it. One method to build a list of HC techniques could be to ask humanists about their computer use and then group these activities in specific techniques, only some of which are specific to HC. Texts, images, and sounds are the three types of objects HC can process most directly. Outputs include different types of "processed data" in general (numerical or otherwise) as well as texts, images, and sounds for presentation (class or conference lecture, inclusion in article), reproduction, and resynthesis. Data processing includes digitization, transcoding, visualization, summarization, and many different types of "analysis" (qualitative or quantitative...). By thinking about the overall process, we may rethink our approach to computing in general while defining HC in terms even a "non-humanistic" computer scientists can understand... ;-)
Thank you very much for your post. These issues really are fascinating.
Alexandre Enkerli Ph.D. Candidate Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology Indiana University
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:31:03 +0000 From: David Sewell <drs2n@VIRGINIA.EDU> Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>) wrote:
> I'm trying at the moment to think my way through what we might denote as > the basic techniques and activities of humanities computing. To help > matters along, I offer the following list: > > (1) textual sorting and gathering: concording, collocation, retrieval
1B. text editing (single-file and batch) and programmatic manipulation
Or however you want to word it; something that expresses the ability to do sophisticated editing and transformation of text files both one at a time and in batch operations, using both dedicated editors (general-purpose text editors, programmers' editors, and/or specialized tools like XML editors) and programming languages.
-- David Sewell, Editorial and Technical Manager Electronic Imprint, The University of Virginia Press PO Box 400318, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4318 USA Courier: 310 Old Ivy Way, Suite 302, Charlottesville VA 22903 Email: dsewell@virginia.edu Tel: +1 434 924 9973 Web: http://www.ei.virginia.edu/
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:32:19 +0000 From: Martin Holmes <mholmes@uvic.ca> Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
Hi there,
I think I would include "teaching" in your list.
Cheers, Martin
______________________________________ Martin Holmes University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre mholmes@uvic.ca martin@mholmes.com mholmes@halfbakedsoftware.com http://www.mholmes.com http://web.uvic.ca/hcmc/ http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com
--[6]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 10:33:01 +0000 From: Suzana Sukovic <S.Sukovic@library.usyd.edu.au> Subject: Re: 17.449 basic techniques?
Hello,
Study of information needs and behaviour is left out. It is partially covered by several other categories but I feel that it deserves a place on its own. Cheers Suzana _______________________________________________________ Suzana Sukovic Rare Books and Special Collections Library University of Sydney Library, NSW 2006 Australia
tel: (02) 9351 2992 fax: (02) 9351 2890 e-mail: s.sukovic@library.usyd.edu.au http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/libraries/rare/index.html
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