{"id":1481,"date":"2017-12-18T12:52:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dh.prattsils.org\/?p=1481"},"modified":"2017-12-18T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T16:52:08","slug":"event-review-can-digitized-book-dh-methods-analyzing-printed-materials-anne-donlon-pratt-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/dh\/2017\/12\/18\/event-review-can-digitized-book-dh-methods-analyzing-printed-materials-anne-donlon-pratt-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Event Review: What Can You Do with a Digitized Book? DH Methods\u00a0for\u00a0Analyzing Printed Materials with Anne Donlon at Pratt Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Event Summary: On December 4th, Anne Donlon gave a lecture on current \u00a0DH methods for print text analysis at Pratt Institute School of Information. \u00a0This lecture gave participants an introduction to ways that large-scale book digitization projects have changed how scholars can access and analyze printed materials. Donlon gave a thorough overview of current digital humanities methods used to analyze books, from hand-encoded TEI to algorithmic topic modeling and sentiment analysis, at the scale of one book to a million books. The lecture also considered ways that these methods can by applied in libraries and other cultural institutions<\/em><\/p>\n

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The CUNY Graduate Center\u2019s Anne Donlon gave a lecture entitled \u201cWhat Can You Do with a Digitized Book? DH Methods for Analyzing Printed Materials\u201d on December 4th at Pratt\u2019s School of Information. Anne Donlon works as the Community Manager\u00a0for\u00a0Humanities Commons, and is a member of the Journal\u00a0for\u00a0Interactive Technology & Pedagogy\u2019s editorial collective. Her background includes work analyzing special collections\u2019 digitized and born-digital materials, and metadata. Donlon\u2019s lecture gave participants an introduction to ways that large-scale book digitization projects have changed how scholars can access and analyze printed materials. Donlon gave a thorough overview of current digital humanities methods used to analyze books, from hand-encoded TEI to algorithmic topic modeling and sentiment analysis, at the scale of one book to a million books. The lecture also continually emphasized\u00a0how these methods can by applied in libraries and other cultural institutions<\/p>\n

Donlon began her workshop by asking and answering some central questions to this work: what do we get from digitized books?; how do we use them?. Digitized books allow us to search in new ways, create topic models, mine text for linguistic patterns, compare texts in a corpus, and build online exhibitions and finding tools. She then examined different examples of these uses from within academic spaces, social spaces, and corporate spaces. Donlon offered Alan Liu\u2019s Literary Studies in the Digital Ag<\/em>e as an example of academic ways to use digital texts. Literary Studies in the Digital Age<\/em> is a dynamic digital anthology of core tools and techniques for computational approaches to literary studies. The project\u2019s website explains \u201csince literary studies represents a confluence of fields and subfields, tools and techniques, and since computational approaches come from a great variety of sources, it became clear that any primer would have to be dynamic and capable of incorporating a rich and growing array of methodologies.\u201d[1]<\/a> The anthology offers features for scholars to comment on each others work. This essentially functions like a peer review and academics revise their work based on comments made\u00a0through social reading.<\/p>\n

Donlon then considered how the questions we ask in literary criticism might change\u00a0when a text is digitized. Conventional literary criticism analyzes form, rhetoric, social\/historic context, narrative in a text but when texts are digitized scholars have the opportunity to ask these questions on larger scale. Literary investigation broadens it’s scope to look for patterns over hundreds of texts at a time.\u00a0 Still,\u00a0Donlon presented analog and digital approaches to literary criticism as valuable. She pointed to potential obstacles in text mining and digital analysis: \u201cin order to search for something you need to know what you are looking for but we need to figure out more spontaneous\/playful way of exploring this amount of text\u201d.<\/p>\n

After introducing these central concepts, issues, and goals of text analysis, Donlon discussed practical approaches and tools for text analysis, mapping and spatial analysis, and methods beyond the text. TEI is one of the most common DH methods used by librarians and archivists. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a consortium which \u201ccollectively develops and maintains a standard for the representation of texts in digital form. Its chief deliverable is a set of Guidelines which specify encoding methods for machine-readable texts, chiefly in the humanities, social sciences and linguistics.\u201d[2]<\/a> Donlon described how TEI allows librarians to create new ways to engage and access their collections link offering digital tools to juxtapose and compare critical editions of books TEI is also useful to scholars and literary critics. It offers librarians a way to mark up an authors corpus for analysis, look at texts side by side. Donlon\u2019s lecture continued with a discussion of tools DH scholars use to analyze text\u2014 Voyant, and Natural Text Language Processing. She also discussed established methods in text analysis like Topic Modeling, Sentiment Analysis, Stylometric, and Metadata.<\/p>\n

Throughout her lecture, Donlon\u00a0outlined the importance of\u00a0applying of these different uses of text analysis in library science citing NYPL Labs and LOC Labs. She continued to emphasize the importance of thinking about using these strategies for engagement\u00a0to increase engagement and support spontaneity. I found Donlon\u2019s focus on ways to use these methods for engagement and access an exciting shift away from conversations among scholars about how to use these methods for their independent work.\u00a0 Finally, this lecture did an effective job at pointing to compatibility between the goals of DH scholars and librarians. DH brings methods for bringing texts and ideas out of books to create new entry points for new learnings. \u00a0Because they are non-academic thinking\/learning spaces, libraries offer DH a space that unlike the academy prioritizes access to people with varying background and comfortability.<\/p>\n

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Notes<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cLiterary Studies in the Digital Age | An Evolving Anthology.\u201d Accessed December 18, 2017. https:\/\/dlsanthology.mla.hcommons.org\/.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u201cVictory for Nonviolence | American Experience | PBS.\u201d Accessed December 17, 2017. http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/americanexperience\/features\/freedom-riders-victory-nonviolence\/.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Event Summary: On December 4th, Anne Donlon gave a lecture on current \u00a0DH methods for print text analysis at Pratt Institute School of Information. \u00a0This lecture gave participants an introduction to ways that large-scale book digitization projects have changed how scholars can access and analyze printed materials. Donlon gave a thorough overview of current digital humanities methods used to analyze…<\/p>\n

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