Digital Humanities

TOPIC OF THE BLOG:- 

This blog is a part of a thinking activity on Digital Humanities given by Dilip Barad Sir from The English Department, MKBU, Bhavnagar. Check out Dilip Barad sir's Blog Site (Click Here) for more information and knowledge about Digital Humanities and other works and writers. In this blog I am going to discuss about What is Digital Humanities and also some interesting sites and projects we explored to know more about it. 

WHAT IS DIGITAL HUMANITIES?:-

Digital Humanities is a filed which explores ideas of Humanity with the help of Digital tools. The definition of Digital Humanities changes as new scholars are learning about it and opens the new ways to use it. But if we have to see in simple manner about DH so Digital humanities is a collaborative field that explores the intersection of technology and humanities disciplines such as literature, history, linguistics, philosophy, archaeology, etc. 

Key Aspects of Digital Humanities (Chat GPT):-

1. Text analysis and data mining: Digital humanities scholars use computational tools and techniques to analyze large corpora of texts, identifying patterns, trends, and connections that may not be apparent through traditional close reading. 
2. Data visualization: Visualization tools are employed to create graphical representations of complex data, making it easier to interpret and understand patterns and relationships within the data. 
3. Text encoding and markup: Researchers use markup languages like XML (eXtensible Markup Language) or TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) to structure and tag texts for detailed analysis and presentation. 
4. Geospatial analysis: Spatial data is used to explore and map historical or cultural phenomena, such as the migration of people, the spread of ideas, or the distribution of archaeological sites. 
5. Digital archives and libraries: Digital humanities projects often involve the creation of online repositories and databases to preserve and provide access to cultural heritage materials.
6. Social network analysis: This approach involves mapping and analyzing social networks, such as the interactions between historical figures or connections within a literary movement. 
7. Augmented reality and virtual reality: Digital humanities can also incorporate immersive technologies to recreate historical settings, allowing users to experience the past in a more engaging way.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:-

According to Journal Article 'The early history of digital humanities: An analysis of Computers and the Humanities (1966–2004) and Literary and Linguistic Computing (1986–2004) Chris Alen Sula, Heather V Hill.' Most commentators attribute the origin of digital humanities (DH) to computational text analysis in the mid-twentieth century, particularly with Roberto Busa's work on the Index Thomisticus. In 1946, Roberto Busa, an Italian Jesuit priest and scholar, initiated plans for the Index Thomisticus project, which aimed to create a concordance for the works of Thomas Aquinas. This ambitious project involved encoding nearly 11 million words of Thomas Aquinas' writings onto IBM punch cards. (Click Here to read further)

If we see what Roberto Buso described in the book 'The Index Thomisticus' we can find some interesting points about the history of Digital Humanities.

• We can see the use of Digital Humanities started when scholars started using machines for language analysis which is probably known as Linguistics.
• Buso analysis corpus of Thomas Aquinas' writings using computational methods.
• Buso's collaboration with IBM (International Business Machine').
• The Index Thomisticus provides the easy way to text search, concordance and style of language used in texts.

DIGITAL TOOLS:-

Books Ngram Viewer:- 

This Program or Google search engine provide us with the analysis of search which is yearly used by us. As you can see in the photo how many times the words which are entered used by the people through out the years. Let me give you an example by the video screen recorded by me how to use it.

WORDPRESS:-

WordPress is a Web content management system which provides us to publish blogs but now it also provide to publish websites, mailing lists, etc. In short, it is a open source blogging software and free to use. 

ENDNOTE:-

EndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays, reports and articles.

QGIS:-

QGIS is a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system application that supports viewing, editing, printing, and analysis of geospatial data. Through this software we can easily learn about Geography and knowledge around it. Here above is an example of that from this website.

ARCHIVES:-

BRITISH LIBRARY:-

This archive is one of the vast and largest collection of the blogs, news, videos, historical texts and many more things you can access easily and also provides printed books and manuscripts, the British Library is home to the national newspaper archive, the national philatelic collection and the records of the India Office, etc.

THE (UK) NATIONAL ARCHIVE:-

This archive came across as a National Archive of the UK and also know as The National Archive which provide us Blogs, Websites, History, original texts, videos and so on which help us to explore our research or study.

WHAT I DID UNDER THE STUDY OF DIGITAL HUMANITIES?:-

Normally, as per my knowledge to learn about Digital Humanities opens so many windows for me to explore Literature.

CLiC - Dickens Project:-

This is indeed very interesting project to explore not only cause it's available easily but because its also provides so many Charles Dickon's Books for free to read and also helps us to explore the languages, words, and style of writing of that time. It has also 19th Century works by Jane Austen and other writers who have some tone to write about society of that time.

Moral Machine:-

This website shows us that how our morals working in this era. So, they gave us a scene like their is a Automatic Car which has break failure and we have to choose to kill someone compulsory. This website gave us choice that either we need to kill passenger or public on the road. 

WORK CITED:-

• Sula Chris Alen, and Heather V Hill. “The Early History of Digital Humanities: An Analysis of Computers and the Humanities (1966–2004) and Literary and Linguistic Computing (1986–2004).” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 5 Nov. 2019, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz072.