The most interesting segment of digital humanities to me is the digitization of texts. It is a fundamental building block for most of the other digital humanities endeavors – in order to do text mining and parsing for visualization and mapping, first the text must be computer-readable. However, as seen by the TEI drama, there is still controversy over the best method to convert a physical, printed or written work into a digitized format. Computers and Internet speeds are massively faster than in the early days of TEI, and it’s now possible to endeavor to create a more sophisticated way to digitize texts to better reflect their origins as physical objects in addition to being words. For my final project I am considering brainstorming possible techniques that could be used to help bridge the gap between computer-readable texts and the human-readable source material. I can construct mock-ups to demonstrate my ideas, rather than code actual implementations.
LCC 3843: Digital Humanities
This course begins with the basic premise that theoretical concepts can be engaged through method. To this end, we will explore the theories that underlie digital humanities scholarship—in particular, as they relate to literary studies—through the practice of three major sets of methods associated with this emerging field. (Read more...)Links of Interest
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This sounds like an excellent point of departure– and yes, a mockup rather than an actual implementation is a more realistic goal for the project. Are you thinking a new specification, metadata standard, or the like; or a project that looks at the digitization process with a wider lens? (e.g. new file formats, actual digitization techniques and devices, etc.)