We’re nearly at the half-way point of the year! That means I’ve got lots of links to share in this round-up.
- Helen D. Wall’s “120KMOMA Peak Years” article on medium.com featured some good visualizations using MOMA’s collection data from Github. What I liked about her article was how achievable these visualizations are (you could generate something similar, though maybe not as lovely, using Viewshare, for example) as well as her very helpful and digestible comments on data cleanup.
- Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) hosts Digital Dialog talks that are recorded and available for streaming on their site. This one by Matthew Lincoln– then-PhD-candidate, now PhD- features some serious computing in the service of exploration of Netherlandish prints. (A Storify of the talk is found on this page.)[vimeo 144138534 w=640 h=480]
- Even the New York Times Cooking site is fueled by structured data. Reading about Natural Language Processing and linear-chain conditional random fields might be less intimidating when what’s being analyzed are common recipes. (Might be… “p(UNIT QUANTITY UNIT∣“pinch of salt” “)
- The Reading Room: A Journal of Special Collections has produced some very worthwhile articles in its first two issues. Of particular interest to you may be April M. Hathcock’s article, “From Dusty Boxes to Data Bytes Acquiring Rights to Special Collections in the Digital Age“. Problems with rights can stop a project before it begins, so be sure you’re informed about what is possible regarding your collections moving into a digital environment.
- What is an API? And why did NARA recently announce that they have one? If your institution has “openness” as part of its mission, an API can be a good way to introduce institutional mission into digital efforts.
- Digitizing Special Formats wiki brought to you by the Digital Library Federation: “Rather than providing comprehensive coverage, this list includes introductory and reference materials that are good places to begin an exploration of issues of broad import to digitizing cultural heritage materials.” Also good research for writing a grant.
- The Digital in the Humanities: A Special Interview Series from the Los Angeles Review of Books provides a meaningful reflection on necessary considerations about what DH is, or whether it even is anything (“First of all the term “digital humanities” means nothing.” –Franco Moretti.) All of the interview subjects come from, or have been part of, academic institutions, though their disciplines vary.