History GR8975 What is a Book in the 21st Century? Working with Historical Texts in a Digital Environment
Spring 2017 Wednesdays, 4:10pm-6pm, Studio @ Butler Some Friday Labs, 2-4pm, Studio @ Butler
Some shared sessions with the Experimental Methods Group (Fridays 3-5pm) and Professor Dennis Tenen’s class GU4903: Critical Computing in the Humanities
INSTRUCTORS: Terry Catapano (CU Libraries) and Pamela Smith (History), with guest lectures by Steven Feiner (Computer Science)
This course will introduce graduate students to techniques of working in digital environments. The course is intended mainly for humanities and social science students who are novices with little or no experience in using digital platforms, but we also welcome students from all disciplines, as well as those who might be familiar with constructing websites or blogs, or even with creating minimal editions. Through hands-on assignments (with plenty of assistance), you will master a variety of skills that constitute literacy in digital humanities, and, by the end of the semester, you will be able to take your newfound digital literacy with you as you pursue your own study, research, and future work.
Throughout the course, your skills will be built by implementing them to collectively create a small scale digital edition, which will be festively launched at the end of the semester. This digital edition will draw on collaboration with and research done by the Making and Knowing Project (http://www.makingandknowing.org/) on an anonymous sixteenth-century French compilation of artistic and technical recipes (BnF Ms. Fr. 640). The Project’s existing English translation of this manuscript will constitute the “data” with which students in this course will work to create their small scale edition.
This rare French manuscript resulted from the compilation of craft knowledge over time, followed by its subsequent “disassembly” in a late sixteenth-century workshop by an author-compiler-practitioner who experimented on techniques contained in the manuscript’s “recipes.” While the course will focus on this intriguing manuscript and the research that has been carried out on it, the skills you will learn over the course of the semester are widely applicable to other types of Digital Humanities projects, and, indeed, in many fields outside of traditional academic study.
The Making and Knowing Project, directed by Professor Smith, has produced the transcription and English translation of this manuscript, “disassembling” Ms. Fr. 640 through research seminars and workshops, involving multidisciplinary teams of students and scholars. The Project is now engaged in creating a complete critical digital edition, which represents a reassembly of this manuscript in a 21st-century form. In this course, you will be an active participant in the Project’s exploration of the technologies that allow not just a reading of the text but an interaction with the content itself. This is in direct resonance with the ways that this sixteenth-century recipe collection can only be transformed from text to knowledge when the techniques contained within it are practiced, whether in the sixteenth century or in the Making and Knowing Laboratory reconstructions today. Through this exploration, the course aims to foster reflection on the constraints of the codex as a framework and vehicle for the production of knowledge, and to re-think the technology of the book and what it means to read a text. To this end, the course also includes collaboration with Professor Steven Feiner’s Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (CGUI, http://graphics.cs.columbia.edu/home/home/).
This course is one component of the History in Action Initiative of the Columbia Department of History. The American Historical Association (AHA) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are collaborating to re-think career education for history PhD candidates at four selected universities (Columbia, Chicago, New Mexico, and UCLA) and to continue, expand, and enhance the AHA’s “Career Diversity and the History PhD” initiative. The long-term goal is to establish a new norm: that doctoral graduates in history and the humanities will be equipped with the skills to pursue a wide spectrum of career opportunities and communicate their research to a broad audience.
ASSESSMENT: Participation, initiative, effort: 10% Weekly assignments and field notes: 30% Final edition project: 60%
SCHEDULE:
Please note: You will encounter many unfamiliar and possibly intimidating terms in the following syllabus, but FEAR NOT! Learning a new craft involves not just “how to do” it, but also “how to talk” about it. Hands-on techniques are in general difficult to put into words, so this practitioners’ jargon is often necessary.
Please see here for a short and easy to read version of the class schedule and syllabus that includes the digital skills introduced in each class.
Week 1: Jan 18 - Introduction Get to know your many collaborators in this class!
To prepare in advance of the class on Jan 18: To do: If you do not already have one, please create a GitHub account. To join: https://github.com/join For more information and help with creating an account - https://help.github.com/articles/signing-up-for-a-new-github-account Please send your GitHub profile name to Naomi Rosenkranz ([email protected]) before the start of class. Please fill out this form to be granted access to the Project’s Google Drive which serves as the Project's collaborative workspace for transcription, translation, and annotation of the manuscript, BnF Ms Fr 640. You will need a Gmail account explicitly ending in “@gmail.com,” so if you do not have one already, please create one. PLEASE DO NOT ACCESS THE GOOGLE DRIVE WITH YOUR LIONMAIL ACCOUNT. Please consult the following introductory document with more information about Google Drive, and which explains in brief how our files are organized within the folder, and provides further instructions and details about access. Read and Explore: The Making and Knowing Project website The Making and Knowing Project Flickr account, the Project’s photo repository from lab reconstructions Making and Knowing Wikischolars site, to which you will be granted access by your instructors. (As in the Making and Knowing Laboratory, students will keep field notes in a course wiki each week, recording their assignments, experiments, and learning each week.) Making and Knowing Google Drive (once you have been granted access by your instructors) Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (CGUI) website Digital competencies (and the larger site: http://allaboardhe.org/) See also the Short Guide to the Digital Humanities
In class on Jan 18: Introduction Aims and overview of the course (Smith and Catapano) The Making and Knowing Project and BnF. Ms. Fr. 640 (Smith) Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab (Feiner) Overview of and Digital Editions and Editing (Catapano) Digital literacy - resources and digital competencies (Jessica Brodsky)
Homework assignment Jan 18: Assignment 1 (due Jan 25): Pull your assigned folios from the course GitHub and read through them. Find and list the annotations (found in the Making and Knowing Google Drive) relevant to your assigned folios. Read at least two of them. Explore DH projects, specifically digital editions, and identify an interesting feature of an existing DH project that could be used on the digital critical edition of Ms. Fr. 640. Come to class ready to share your findings. Complete Digital Competencies Evaluation #1 Reading (for Jan 25): “User Story” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story G. Thomas Tanselle. A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992). Available at Book Culture.
Lab 1: Jan 20 - workshop with Dennis Tenen Introduction to Command Line, and help with GitHub
Week 2: Jan 25 - General introduction to text editing and scholarship What is a “book”? How does it organize text and content? What aims does it achieve? Who does it reach? What is Scholarly Editing and Textual Criticism? What are the rationale, purposes, scope, and features of scholarly editions?
In class on Jan 25: Discussion: What is a book? Digital Humanities projects, scholarly editions, user stories
Homework assignment Jan 25: Assignment 2 (due Feb 1): From your exploration of DH editions and class discussion, derive 3-5 user stories related to the textual features of the online edition and add them to GitHub. Create your first field notes entry (after WikiScholars workshop during Lab 2) Reading (for Feb 1): Read the rest of the annotations relevant to your folios.
Lab 2: Jan 27 - Wiki, GD, and GitHub workshop Wiki Scholars introduction and setup M&K Google Drive troubleshooting GitHub troubleshooting
Week 3: Feb 1 - Data and Project Management How do we think about the social, intellectual, and physical infrastructure of producing a “book” or a “digital project”? What is distinctive about digital projects? What is the range of concerns for a digital editing project?
In class on Feb 1: Lecture and discussion: Data Management Identifiers Metadata Tracking Preservation and Sustainability Licensing: Creative Commons and open access Optimising for Re-use Project Management “Agile” development and management Collaboration and Communication Release Management Technical Debt and Digital Obsolescence Class discussion and exercise: User stories continued Articulate features for the edition (“feature requests”) and add to “issue tracker” as a group
Homework assignment Feb 1: Assignment 3 (due Feb 8): Create table of metadata (as determined during Lab 3) for your assigned folios and add to GitHub. Add to issue tracker as you come across issues while filling in the table Update your field notes Reading (for Feb 8): Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative “Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials”
Lab 3: Feb 3 - Metadata What are the categories by which we organize our “content,” our “materials,” our “digital assets”? Create master table of metadata elements collaboratively, to be filled in for homework What are the considerations we may need to have for creating a digital edition? What should our metadata be?
Week 4: Feb 8 - Digital Image Fundamentals Representing a representation: How are images represented digitally? How are they viewed, processed, and referenced? What are their advantages and limitations?
In class on Feb 8: Discussion: Reconciliation and resolution of metadata issues Lecture and discussion: Digital image fundamentals Tool: Omeka
Homework assignment Feb 8: Assignment 4 (to be started during Lab 4 and due Feb 15): Prepare an Omeka exhibition with images of folio pages with metadata from previous week Add photos from related annotations’ reconstruction experiments Update your field notes Reading (for Feb 15): Unix for poets Milligan and Baker: Introduction to the Bash Command Line
Lab 4: Feb 10 - Omeka Omeka introduction and workshop Start Assignment 4 (if needed, finish for homework)
Week 5: Feb 15 - Text Fundamentals What is digital text? What can it do that printed type on paper cannot? How may digital or “electronic” text be “processed”? What sorts of study and inquiry does text “processing” facilitate? How does the way digital text is “prepared” affect its possible uses?
In class on Feb 15: Go over Omeka exhibits Lecture and discussion: Text fundamentals, representation, and encoding What can you do with digital text? Tool: Linux command line text utilities
Homework assignment Feb 15: Assignment 5 (due Feb 22): TBD Update your field notes Reading (for Feb 22) TBD
Lab 5: Feb 17 - Linux command line Together with Dennis Tenen Unix/cunix introduction and tutorial Regular expression exercises: see: http://dh.obdurodon.org/#regex
Week 6: Feb 22 - Version Control The mess of mechanical reproduction: how to maintain control of content, issue, edition, “release”? How can digital tools accommodate textual “instability”?
In class on Feb 22: Lecture and discussion Version control Exercise: Version control and representation of textual variance in traditional critical editions
Homework assignment Feb 22: Assignment 6 (due Mar 1): TBD Digital Competencies Evaluation #2 Update your field notes Reading (for Mar 1): Tenen, Dennis and Wythoff, Grant: Sustainable Authorship in Plain Text using Pandoc and Markdown
Week 7: March 1 - Text Markup: Introduction and Overview Digital text: How it works in practice, part 1. Approaches for preparing textual data to represent implicit “formal” or “structural” features
In class on Mar 1: Introduction to structured text, basic markup technologies Markdown HTML/XHTML/HTML5
Homework assignment Mar 1: Assignment 7 (due Mar 8): Practice markdown of your folios, and use it to present your folios Commit to repository in GitHub Consider the affordances and limitations of markdown and bring your ideas to the next class about what more you want from markup of your folios Update your field notes Reading (for Mar 8): DeRose SJ, Durand DG, Mylonas E, Renear AH. “What is text, really?” SIGDOC Asterisk J. Comput. Doc. 1997 Aug; 21(3):1-24. doi: 10.1145/264842.264843 “What is XML and why should humanists care? An even gentler introduction to XML” http://dh.obdurodon.org/what-is-xml.xhtml
Week 8: Mar 8 - Text Markup Continued: Semantic Markup Digital Text: How it works in practice, part 2. “Text Encoding” or “Markup” for preparing textual data to represent both “formal” and “semantic” textual features.
In class on Mar 8: Lecture and discussion: Introduction to XML Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and customized markup Exercise: Begin determination of our possible markup tag set Tool: XML-aware text editor
Homework assignment Mar 8: Assignment 8: Due Monday March 20: Fully develop a markup element set and apply to your folios within GitHub Due Wednesday March 22: Compare and review partner tag set and, using the issue tracker, comment on partner tag set. Be prepared to present to the rest of the class on Mar 22 during class. Update your field notes Reading: John Lavagnino, "Electronic Textual Editing: When not to use TEI" http://www.tei-c.org/About/Archive_new/ETE/Preview/lavagnino.xml
Lab 6: Mar 10 - Markup Text editor and markup troubleshooting and help
Spring Break: Mar 15 - NO CLASS Working on Assignment 8 [DUE Monday Mar 20 to your peer reviewers]
Week 9: Mar 22 - Text Markup Continued: Establishing Consensus Digital Text: How it works in practice in collaborative projects (part 3). How to decide what to tag and what not to tag. The role of the “schema” in formally defining (i.e., for a computer) a “document type” or “tag set”
In class on Mar 22: Present your comparison and review of your own and partner group’s tag set. Discussion of different markup Establish the final, consensus markup Formalize this consensus markup in a schema Begin applying the consensus markup - troubleshooting, understanding, reporting, diagnosing, and fixing errors
Homework assignment Mar 22: Assignment 9 (due Mar 29): Apply consensus markup to your folios Review partner group’s markup (through issue tracker) Identify Issues: Bugs Commentary Update your field notes Reading (for Mar 29): David Birnbaum: Digital humanities course XSLT materials http://dh.obdurodon.org/#xslt http://dh.obdurodon.org/xslt-basics.xhtml http://dh.obdurodon.org/xslt-basics-2.xhtml
Week 10: March 29 - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 1 Digital text: How it really works.
In class on March 29: Review and troubleshooting of your marked-up folios Lecture and discussion: Transformation of XML - XSLT
Homework assignment Mar 29: Assignment 10 (due Apr 5): Complete folio markup Update your field notes Reading (for Apr 5): Birnbaum DH course XSLT materials “Losing the Thread,” Aeon, 2016: https://aeon.co/essays/how-textiles-repeatedly-revolutionised-human-technology
NOTE: In lieu of a lab this week, TA Office Hours for troubleshooting
Week 11: April 5 - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 2 Moving from preparation of digital textual data to “processing” and “application”, particularly “transformation” or “conversion” into appropriate formats for publishing in an online edition.
In class on Apr 5: Transformation of XML - XSLT Publishing platform via Jekyll using Ed
Homework assignment Apr 5: Assignment 11 (due Apr 12): Transform marked-up pages to Jekyll markdown Revisit feature requests from Week 3 and evaluate status of requests Update your field notes
Lab 7: Apr 7 - XSLT workshop Hands-on XSLT session
NOTE: Additional TA Office Hours will be scheduled
Week 12: April 12 - Transformations, Representations, and Interfaces to Digital Resources Part 3
In class on Apr 12: Continued: Transformation of XML - XSLT
Week 13: Apr 19 Students Working on Editions
Lab 8: Apr 21 - Computer Graphics and User Interface Lab Presentation by Computer Graphics and User Interface Lab (Feiner and digital assistants)
Week 14: Apr 26 - Review and Conclusion The Future of Digital Text (yikes!): preservation, sustainability, archiving
In class on Apr 26: Preservation, sustainability, archiving Complete Digital Competencies Evaluation #3
Week 15: Launch of Edition
May 23-25: Working Group Meeting with invited scholars. Attendance required, if at all possible.
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