My proposed project involves investigating more holistic text digitization practices, better addressing the gap between the abstract and the physical – the words and the artifacts. While TEI offers a compellingly comprehensive standard for meta-tagging the different elements of digitized texts, it offers no way to link those elements back to the original physical source material. While initially inevitable due to technological limitations, current computer hardware offers very fast, very cheap processing and storage capabilities, and TEI’s narrow-minded standards have become unsatisfying. Digital humanities scholarship relies heavily on computer-readable text to attempt large-scale computer-driven mining and visualization projects – but that isn’t the most important reason for constructing digital archives. The field of digital humanities self-evidently reflects changing attitudes towards technology within academia – and the world. Throughout the semester our class has followed the debates within digital humanities that address the expected criticism and skepticism of the digital by traditional humanities scholars. That skepticism isn’t inherently counter-productive to progress – I’d argue the opposite. The humanities have approached technological progress with warranted skepticism throughout history – never willing to accept scientific advancement as an inherent good. Two devastating yet incredibly technologically sophisticated global wars in the first half of the 20th century stand testament to that end. Nevertheless, we are in a digital age. The humanities needs to remain relevant – and that relevance must retain a long-trenched unwillingness to abandon the artistic forms of the past.
My project begins with the assumption that the most important aspect of text digitization isn’t mere computer-readability – but rather digital archivization, the preservation of the physical artifacts of the past for the study and enjoyment of our inescapably digital future. I argue that the field of digital humanities should embrace the digital to advance and preserve traditional scholarship, in addition to providing relevant, provocative criticism on cutting-edge technologies.
My project will be primarily in the form of a paper that further fleshes out and examines the practice of text digitization within the context of an uncertain future for digital humanities – using primarily class readings in the form of essays and blog-posts as reference. Additionally I will brainstorm and propose methods of text digitization that mirror my ideals.
