In Susan Hockey’s The
History of Humanities Computing, Hockey traces the development of humanities
computing. Her emphasis is on stressing
benchmarks where substantial intellectual advancement has been made or where
work done within humanities computing has been embraced, developed or drawn on
significantly within other disciplines.
She traces the beginnings of humanities computing to 1949, where an
Italian Jesuit priest, Father Roberto Busa, “began what even to this day is a
monumental task: to make an index verborum of all the words in the works of St
Thomas Aquinas and related authors, totaling some 11 million words of medieval
Latin. Father Busa imagined that a machine might be able to help him, and,
having heard of computers, went to visit Thomas J. Watson at IBM in the United
States in search of support.” Hockey
explores the time period from 1970-1980s, where “consolidation” was the main
idea. The requirements of humanities
computing also began to be recognized within academic computing centers and more
centers for humanities computing were also established during this period in
order to consolidate the number of computing facilities. Hockey continues with stating that the time
period of the mid 80s to the mid 90s was a time for new developments in
humanities computing. The personal
computer became detrimental to scholarly work, where every scholar was now able
to access a computer to help facilitate his or her research. Also during this time period, those
participating sought to create a standard encoding scheme for humanities
electronic texts. Hockey concludes the
timeline with the mid 90s to the present day, with the advent and worldwide
spread of the Internet. Information was
increasingly becoming more available and the Internet made it easier for
scholars to collaborate and research their topics. During this time, the discipline of
humanities computing was also becoming more widely accepted in the academic
world. Hockey concludes with her ideas
about the future of humanities computing, “humanities computing can contribute
substantially to the growing interest in putting the cultural heritage on the
Internet, not only for academic users, but also for lifelong learners and the
general public. Tools and techniques developed in humanities computing will
facilitate the study of this material and, as the Perseus Project is showing,
the incorporation of computational linguistics techniques can add a new
dimension. Our tools and techniques can also assist research in facilitating
the digitization and encoding processes, where we need to find ways of reducing
the costs of data creation without loss of scholarly value or of
functionality.”
In Shawn
Allen’s article, Data Visualization, Allen explores concepts behind data
visualization as well as the history of data visualization. He aims at exploring common techniques for
visualizing data, as well as some strategies for managing information
digitally. Allen begins by defining data
visualization as “the visual representation of quantitative data.” He continues with the historical significance
of data visualization by presenting a handful of images. He goes back as far as two hundred years ago,
with the implementation of maps, timelines and charts dating back to the
1600s. He specifically points out the
first instances of charts and geological maps and time-lapse photos. The 1900s saw color, value scales and
labeling being incorporated into these charts.
Jumping to the early 21st century, Allen points out that people are all
of a sudden interested in data, crediting the widespread use of the Internet
and the growing need to learn through visualization. Allen continues that it is not just
visualization that is needed, but dynamic visualization and interfacing for
interacting. Google Maps and
spreadsheets are engaging participants in more depth, for example. Allen stresses to not think of data as an
abstraction but rather as “an expression of occurrence”. Allen points out that an array of usual
patterns have surfaced to deal with the visualization of common data models,
often dealing with one or both of what Allen terms “special variables”: time
and location. He uses the line chart as
an obvious example that tracks the change of one or more variables over time.
The Old Bailey proceedings is a collection of the proceedings of the Old
Bailey from 1674-1913. It is a
collaboration between the Universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield and the
Open University; Containing 197,745 records of criminal trials held at London’s
central criminal court, this site is a profusely searchable edition of the
prevalent body of texts describing the lives of non-elite people punished
within this legal system. This site is a
god example of using visual interface in collecting data, as well as
exemplifying the collaboration of institutions in processing humanities
computing.
Hitchcock
and Shoemaker make it clear that “The Old Bailey Proceedings did not cease
publication in 1834; they were simply given a new name to reflect the court’s
new title and jurisdiction as the Central Criminal Court, and publication
continued until it suddenly and permanently ceased in 1913.” The authors stress the importance of the
impact of the project, stating that it opened up new possibilities and
transformed how historical research was conducted. Hitchchock and Shoemaker
also make a point that this project creates a truly “democratic history,” in
the sense that it makes such a vast amount of material about the lives of
average citizens living in eighteenth-century London. “More than this, the
publication of a resource which can concurrently be both textually searched and
statistically analyzed allows quantitative and qualitative research to be
joined, thereby enhancing the authority and relevance of both.” And just as other historical documents end
up, this site will more than likely be used to research a multitude of
additional research questions not yet asked and projects not yet envisioned, as
evident in Ancarett’s development of academic historical courses. As the site is linked with other digital
resources it is only expected to grow increasingly.
Ancarett
found that the Old Bailey website was useful for her novice historian students
in building skills and understanding the broader subject matter in the history
of crime as well as an understanding of statistical analysis. These assignments, Ancarett stresses, help
students utilize both quantitative and qualitative analytical skills in their
research projects. Both skills Ancarett
points out as being quite antagonistic in the history field. Ancarett is certain that the students are
more adept at reading and creating statistical materials because of the implementation
of the Old Baily Proceedings website.
In Cohen et. al. ’s final paper, The Data Mining with Criminal Intent, the researches describe the
collaboration of three teams from three different countries. In this project, each
team provided a comprehensive and corresponding digital research resource – the
online trial records of the Old Bailey (UK), the bibliographical management
software (USA), and the text analysis portal (Canada) – with the shared goal of
creating a linked research environment where it would be possible to:
1. Query
the Old Bailey site
2. Save
different result sets directly to a Zotero library where they could be managed
3. Send
the results from Zotero to text analysis and visualization tools like Voyeur
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| Abacus-Used Two-thousand years ago as form of conducting quantitative data; okay, a far reach for adding a picture... Courtesy of plyojump.com |
In the words of our authors, “Developing research in the
digital humanities can require divided commitment. On the one hand you are
committed to the subject and the particularity of the data – in this case the
rich historical data we have about criminality. On the other hand you are
committed to developing increasingly sophisticated tools that can help you
reinterpret the data. One of the benefits of a project like this is that we can
iterate between different ideas about new tools/interfaces and hypotheses about
what we can learn from the data given new tools. We developed methods of agile
analysis and programming, both in smaller groups and for the team as a whole.
New questions led to new tools and interfaces. New tools and interfaces
provoked new questions. The adaption of tools to texts and back to tools,
whether categorized as literate programming
25or agile analytics, is new to
historical studies. Methodology is part the message. These approaches encourage
us to ask different questions, not only about our own tools, but about how to
approach historical research with a wide view lens and a fine grained brush.
They demonstrate how great things happen when the techies and the OWHs work
closely together. Moreover, they demonstrate the real benefits already enjoyed
by the ordinary working historians who have chosen to data-mine with criminal
intent.”
It has been a growing field for the collaboration of mathematicians,
information technologists and humanity scholars to collaborate on projects so
that quantitative and qualitative interpretations of historical occurrences can
be analyzed. Many endeavors have been
attempted in this process, and with more scholars and institutions collaborating,
it is only a matter of time before a solid tool is developed to help historians
analyze past events in hopes of understanding them and possibly preventing
similar occurrences, for now at least.
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