Death Becomes Her: slideshow of exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I wish I could go to New York to see this collection of Victorian mourning attire.  But at least we can see slideshows: another benefit of the digital age!

http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/death-becomes-her/gallery-views

Death Becomes Her Gallery Views | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Death Becomes Her Gallery Views | The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I wish I could go to New York to see this exhibition. But this is one more advantage of the digital age: slideshows!

Phillip K. Dick in the OC

I just attended a terrific panel on “Teaching with the Internet and Technology” at the PAMLA Conference in Riverside, CA. One of the presenters, Dr. David Sandner from CSU Fullerton, described a class project he incorporated into a more traditional literary analysis class: he had his students research and create a website,   called Phillip K. Dick in the OC. This is an excellent example of digital literacy practices in the classroom, and demonstrates the participatory learning ethos of the digital humanities. It is created in Google Sites, utilizing freely available free tools: choices made in order to demonstrate to other faculty, students, and administrators what can be done without a knowledge of coding. The site incorporates some original research as well as collecting materials and resources scattered across the web.

Some of the discussion at the panel revolved around the problem of student motivation. While students in Dr. Sandner’s class were graded upon their contributions to this website, they worked in groups according to interests and abilities. Some of the students have continued to work on the site since the class ended. One of the points the panel participants made was that students are willing to work, if the assignments have real world impact. Students often perceive papers and assignments read only by their professors as “busywork.” In my next post, I will write about an initiative at Northern Arizona University that also demonstrates the extent to which students can be motivated to work hard–in this case, to produce a professional academic symposium about video gaming without any extra credit.

Distant reading and the blurry edges of genre.

This is a really fascinating discussion of the kinds of insight distant reading practices can bring to problematic literary boundaries such as the fuzzy concept of “genre.” I have been puzzling myself over how to model the idea of “literary influence.”

The Stone and the Shell

There are basically two different ways to build collections for distant reading. You can build up collections of specific genres, selecting volumes that you know belong to them. Or you can take an entire digital library as your base collection, and subdivide it by genre.

Most people do it the first way, and having just spent two years learning to do it the second way, I’d like to admit that they’re right. There’s a lot of overhead involved in mining a library. The problem becomes too big for your desktop; you have to schedule batch jobs; you have to learn to interpret MARC records. All this may be necessary eventually, but it’s not the ideal place to start.

But some of the problems I’ve encountered have been interesting. In particular, the problem of “dividing a library by genre” has made me realize that literary studies is constituted by exclusions that…

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Reimagining libraries as conveners of information and innovation – Knight Foundation

A fascinating project exploring the realms of possibility with digitized libraries, using the Internet Archive as a data set!

Each of these projects explores what is possible when libraries open their collections to data scientists, allowing them to apply data mining algorithms to catalog, mine, visualize and create new ways of interacting with these vast archives. The results of such “big data” analyses by this new generation of “data librarians” yields new tools and datasets that can subsequently be used by ordinary citizens and journalists to transform how they access and understand the world. 

via Reimagining libraries as conveners of information and innovation – Knight Foundation.

Princeton’s Center for Digital Humanities, News – excerpt

Here is a short news article from Princeton explaining some of the projects they are undertaking at their Center for Digital Humanities. It gives an excellent example of how a humanities undergraduate can work with a faculty member to do real research using digital tools. This is the kind of work I would like to do with undergraduates!  I’ve included an excerpt below and the link to the article.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/14/10S31/index.xml?section=topstories

Sometimes, opposites attract.

Princeton senior Brian Lax is an English major, passionate about British literature. He is also passionate about computer science and is earning a certificate in statistics and machine learning. Determined to marry these two seemingly disparate parts of his academic experience for his senior thesis, he set out to track revisions of poems by W.H. Auden across time — using the computer as his chief research tool.

Working with his adviser, Meredith Martin, associate professor of English and director of theCenter for Digital Humanities, Lax began his journey into the field of digital humanities.

Case Western Reserve: Digital Scholarship Colloquium, Nov 6-7, 2014

While I’m on the topic of professional development, this conference at Case Western Reserve University also looks to be fabulous!

http://library.case.edu/ksl/freedmancenter/colloquium/

Webinar Oct 1: “The Digital Shift–Libraries at the Center”

SIRLS at the University of Arizona recently sent out an announcement about this upcoming free webinar sponsored by the Library Journal and the School Library Journal. It looks fabulous! I plan to attend, and the archived content will be available for three months afterward. Free professional development is always good in my book!!

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/tds/libraries-at-the-center/faq/

A Teaching Blog I Really Like: Te@chthought http://teachthought.com/

I just discovered this blog today, and already I have found several very useful posts, especially in the Technology section. Have a look!

http://teachthought.com/technology/zombie-pedagogies-embodied-learning-digital-age/

I will be reading more, to be sure!!

At MLA meeting, digital humanists share both research and success stories | Inside Higher Ed

At MLA meeting, digital humanists share both research and success stories | Inside Higher Ed.