Digital Humanities: The Continuing Role of Serendipity in Historical Research

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anabel Quan-Haase ◽  
Kim Martin
Keyword(s):  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Digital Environment

The move towards the digital humanities will see a growing interest in digital tools, such as Ebooks. This study examines the opinions and perception of historians about how Ebooks and other digital tools affect the research process. Findings indicate that historians are concerned that the digital environment reduces the possibility of chance encounters with a text. They continue to recreate the environment that encourages serendipity to occur within their field, and would readily welcome tools that facilitate this.Le passage vers les humanités numériques ira en grandissant, grâce à la popularité des outils électroniques et des livres électroniques particulièrement. Cette étude examine les opinions et les perceptions des historiens quant aux livres électroniques et autres outils numériques dans le cadre de leur processus de recherche. Les résultats indiquent que les historiens se soucient du fait que l’environnement électronique puisse réduire les possibilités de découvertes fortuites dans les texte. Ils continuent de récréer un environnement qui suscite la sérendipité dans leur domaine et adopteraient volontiers un outil qui leur faciliterait la tâche à cet égard.

Creative Dislocation: an Experiment in Collaborative Historical Research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bickers ◽  
Tim Cole ◽  
Marianna Dudley ◽  
Erika Hanna ◽  
Josie McLellan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Process ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Creative Methods ◽  
The Village ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Historical Practice

Abstract This article introduces an experiment in collaborative historical practice. It describes how six historians visited the East Devon village of Branscombe, with the aim of creatively engaging with the present and past of the village. This was a collaborative and collective act of what we term here ‘creative dislocation’. By dislocating from our usual routines, subjects, places, methods, and styles, and adopting creative methods and constraints, we aimed to shed light on the role of creativity in the historical research process. Our experiment resulted in six pieces of writing – three of which are presented here. However, a key argument of this article is that creativity lies in process as much as in the finished product. Creative work happened at each stage of the research process, in ways that were not always immediately visible in the final written pieces. The creativity in historical research and writing does not necessarily lie in opposition to archival explorations and fact-driven narratives, but can also lie within them. Creativity informs the questions we ask, our ways of working with the archive and our approach to writing.

scholarly journals All the Work that Makes It Work: Digital Methods and Manual Labour

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-126
Author(s):  
Johan Jarlbrink
Keyword(s):  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Manual Work ◽  
Manual Labour ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Digital Research

The chapter explores how digital graphs, maps and trees can reveal things never seen before, but how they may also hide all the manual work that lies behind them. The most basic rationale behind digital humanities is the idea that machines should do most of the dull tasks for us. If all the extracting, counting, matching, and plotting is left to computers, researchers can focus on the intellectual parts of the process, interpreting and presenting the results. In many cases, however, digital tools need assistance to work properly. This kind of manual or semi-automatic work may involve compiling, cleaning and filtering datasets, tagging images, transcribing texts, correcting bad matches, adjusting graphs, and so on. Yet, it is rare to see it mentioned when results are presented. The aim of this chapter is to describe and discuss the role of this invisible (semi-)manual work within digital research.

scholarly journals Building Historical Knowledge Byte by Byte: Infrastructures and Data Management in Modern Scholarship

2020 ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
Jessica Parland-von Essen
Keyword(s):  
Data Management ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Digital History ◽  
Good Data ◽  
Provenance Data ◽  
Data Lifecycle ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
New Challenges

This chapter describes how the new emerging digital environment challenges historians’ existing training and practice of source criticism. In an environment with increasing amounts of digitized data and digital methods there are new requirements for historians to develop new skills as well as new more extensive provenance data. Historians are faced with new challenges regarding new increasing demands for transparency and open scholarship that has comes with the growth of digital humanities in general and with digital history in particular. The old demands that historical research has to be well documented and reproducible has to be adapted to the promises and pitfalls of the new digital environment which especially means developing and adapting new standards and practices for what counts as good data management. The study discusses how the FAIR data principles can offer valuable guidance, but also how they cannot be implemented without supporting services that take into account different types of data and the data lifecycle.

The Great Reform and the Fate of Capitalism in Russia (On the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Reform)

2011 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
M. Voeikov
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
150Th Anniversary ◽  
In The Beginning

The paper deals with the problem of the establishment of capitalism in Russia in the late 19 - early 20th centuries. Using a wide array of historical research and documents the author argues that the thesis on the advanced state of capitalism in Russia in the beginning of the 20th century does not stand up to historical scrutiny, and the role of the famous Emancipation reform of 1861 appears to be of limited importance.

The role of digital tools in the delivery of genomic medicine: enhancing patient-centered care

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salma Shickh ◽  
◽  
Sara A. Rafferty ◽  
Marc Clausen ◽  
Rita Kodida ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Genomic Medicine ◽  
Patient Centered Care ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Centered Care

scholarly journals Us Mob Online: The Perils of Identifying as Indigenous on Social Media

Genealogy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Bronwyn Carlson ◽  
Tristan Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Digital Environment ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Insight Into

Social media is a highly valuable site for Indigenous people to express their identities and to engage with other Indigenous people, events, conversations, and debates. While the role of social media for Indigenous peoples is highly valued for public articulations of identity, it is not without peril. Drawing on the authors’ recent mixed-methods research in Australian Indigenous communities, this paper presents an insight into Indigenous peoples’ experiences of cultivating individual and collective identities on social media platforms. The findings suggest that Indigenous peoples are well aware of the intricacies of navigating a digital environment that exhibits persistent colonial attempts at the subjugation of Indigenous identities. We conclude that, while social media remains perilous, Indigenous people are harnessing online platforms for their own ends, for the reinforcement of selfhood, for identifying and being identified and, as a vehicle for humour and subversion.

THATCampQueensU: Bringing Digital Humanities to Queen's

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Bielinski
Keyword(s):  
Digital Humanities ◽  
First Century ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Skill Levels ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Queen's University ◽  
New Generation

There is a new generation of scholarship in the humanities, and it is rooted in twenty-first century technology. In response to what some have called the "crisis in humanities," scholars have begun to tackle their research questions armed with digital tools and a strong sense of collaboration in order to think across disciplines, allow for greater accessibility, and ultimately to create bigger impact. Digital Humanities, or DH, is this exciting and growing field--or maybe methodology--used by humanities scholars to share and create scholarly content.Despite the growing fervour for DH across Canada, many scholars at Queen's have yet to take advantage of the opportunities for research and teaching afforded by DH. I believe that by bringing together Digital Humanities practitioners at Queen's University, more scholars, faculty, and students would learn about and engage in dialogue about fostering and furthering DH scholarship across all disciplines. The best way to begin, I believe, is by hosting THATCamp at Queen's. The Humanities and Technology Camp is an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document