Distance Reading Wiki
From Brock University's Digital Humanities Compendium
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| Crane discusses the possibilities for digital technologies to complete document analysis, information extraction, multilingual translations, and textual evaluation. Do you think it is practical that programs are created to evaluate texts? What is the point at which such projects cease assisting scholars in locating information and begin determining for academics what information is relevant? Aren't evaluation, critique, and translation essential aspects of the Humanist undertaking? Can evaluation and critique be reduced to quantification or are they more than the end sum of an equation? | Crane discusses the possibilities for digital technologies to complete document analysis, information extraction, multilingual translations, and textual evaluation. Do you think it is practical that programs are created to evaluate texts? What is the point at which such projects cease assisting scholars in locating information and begin determining for academics what information is relevant? Aren't evaluation, critique, and translation essential aspects of the Humanist undertaking? Can evaluation and critique be reduced to quantification or are they more than the end sum of an equation? | ||
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| + | Cohen, in "Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers" concludes by quoting a scholar who argues that "large-scale, quantitative research is likely to highlight 'the importance and value of close reading; the detailed, imaginative, heightened engagement with words, paragraphs and lines of verse." However, generally in our readings, little mention has yet to be made in terms of how to engage with and critically utilize resources. With a rising focus in academic institutions on quantitative analysis and results, do you think that DH will reassert Humanist interpretation or allow for "statistical measures" to "overshadow" meaning? | ||
| == Distance Reading Responses == | == Distance Reading Responses == | ||
Revision as of 20:49, 2 October 2011
Distance Reading Articles
Cohen "Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers"
Cohen "In 500 Billion Words..."
Crane "What Do You Do with a Million Books"
Moretti Graphs, Maps, Trees **In case some of you can't find the text, these articles are similar.
Cohen "Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers" Synopsis
Cohen "In 500 Billion Words..." Synopsis
Crane "What Do You Do with a Million Books" Synopsis
Moretti "Graphs, Maps, Trees" Synopsis
Distance Reading Discussion Questions
Discussion Question 1:
To start out this week's debate we thought we'd begin with a couple of general questions. With the advent of the digital environment a much larger number of texts and resources have been made available. Practically speaking, is there a point at which there is simply too much available to be able to sort through - in other words, is there ever a point in which there is so much information, or the scale of it is so large, that it in fact impedes effective research?
Discussion Question 2:
While the digital environment has given way to a range of new and useful means of textual analysis how does a statistical critique of literature and resources fit within traditional approaches? Do the possibilities for digital texts surpass or fall short of traditional approaches to printed materials?
Discussion Question 3:
Crane discusses the possibilities for digital technologies to complete document analysis, information extraction, multilingual translations, and textual evaluation. Do you think it is practical that programs are created to evaluate texts? What is the point at which such projects cease assisting scholars in locating information and begin determining for academics what information is relevant? Aren't evaluation, critique, and translation essential aspects of the Humanist undertaking? Can evaluation and critique be reduced to quantification or are they more than the end sum of an equation?
Discussion Question 4:
Cohen, in "Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers" concludes by quoting a scholar who argues that "large-scale, quantitative research is likely to highlight 'the importance and value of close reading; the detailed, imaginative, heightened engagement with words, paragraphs and lines of verse." However, generally in our readings, little mention has yet to be made in terms of how to engage with and critically utilize resources. With a rising focus in academic institutions on quantitative analysis and results, do you think that DH will reassert Humanist interpretation or allow for "statistical measures" to "overshadow" meaning?
Distance Reading Responses
** Let it Begin **
Well I'll kick things off this week. I'll start by addressing the first question.
The massive catalogues of books will radically change acceptable practices within history. I have no doubt of this. Where a theory could be proposed off the reading of 30 books before it might require 300 now to hold the same weight. While this seems ludicrous, I don't think it will amount to a whole lot more work for the historian in the long run. This of course can only be the case if we refine our methods of research and adapt. New methods to pull out relevant points and skim over the useless bits must be developed hand in hand with the massive catalogues of digitized books. And of course there are other aspects that must be taken into account. Digital archivists will be very important in this endeavour.
So I'll say no. I don't think that the scale of information will necessarily impede research. It COULD, but I dont think it has to.
RiotousRyan
I'll go next...
I think the first question is very interesting. I can understand how millions and millions of books at one's disposal could be seen as problematic for research, with just the sheer volume of material one would have to go through. I think what is important to keep in mind though is that as these digital libraries grow, evolve and change, so too will the tools used to search in them. I think with effective search tools, a library of millions of digital books will be kept fairly manageable, as only certain books would be brought forward from a search, or only sections of an article to be examined rather than the entire thing. Some of these techniques are addressed in the Crane article. I know this opens the questions of how searches are structured, how items are catalogued or tagged, etc. but those are things that require their own examination altogether, and aren't issues I think I could address adequately in this space. The fact of the matter is, the same amount of material is still out there regardless if it is digitized or not; digitizing it just makes it more easily available to more people. I think Cohen's "Analyzing Literature..." article is correct when it states that digital research will offer a new kind of comprehensiveness that previous research was lacking.
As for the second question, I think the statistical analysis of literature can be used as a tool within traditional approaches, such as the example in the Cohen article of the work done on Victorian mindsets towards progress and science. No one is forcing anyone to use the digital data that is being made available; it is a choice of the researcher if they would like to use digital resources on their research or not. In the Victorian example, digital tools provided some information that would've been very difficult to gather otherwise. The same article also states, however, that these tools aren't just tools but are changing the kinds of questions being asked by humanists. I don't necessarily feel that is a bad thing, though - it is opening another field of inquiry. Just because a new field opens does not mean that another, more traditional one has to close.
Melanie
I like the 3rd question because Crane is discussing the changing nature of the texts that are being digitized and wealth of new possibilities and problems that converting every book into a digital format presents. The issue with translations alone is something that he identifies when considering the books related to Classics for example. This is a discipline that houses many different languages and the ability of the translator programs to provide an accurate, contextually sound translation is one issue, along with the need to make all of these databases available in both their original format and in english. Crane also points out that initial text capture was done in a series of PDF's and other large single object transfers. Today, the ability (and the need) to identify ALL of the words (or objects) in the texts is crucial to allow for deep research. If the file is a PDF without the ability to explore within it (except for actually reading it) then the point of transferring this information into the digital realm is defeating the purpose. I also appreciated how Crane and others identified the troubling fact that Google, which is after all a commercial enterprise, is positioning itself to be the single point of entry for all human knowledge. This is somewhat troubling to me and not because of copyright or other rights issues; instead it seems to me that the endeavour should be undertaken by an agency that has a transparency that I don't see with Google. I heartily suspect that there will be fees coming very soon.....
The ability for academics to use these resources to assess and develop theories can only be assisted by the wealth of information that is rapidly coming on line. I have no love of quantitative history and this is, I suspect, always going to present an issue with humanists whenever the massive amount of computerized information is provided to their inquiries. It is always up to us to frame our own questions and direct the path of our own research; the digitized texts and the massive online libraries, search engines, pattern matching bots and other programs designed to help us filter out the mass of raw data will only help us become better historians.
Dave
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