Digital Humanities Commons^™

Renegotiating The Archive: Scholarly Practice In A Digital Age, William G. Thomas Iii

Department of History: Faculty Publications

In the last two decades scholarly practice in archival research has changed substantially. The availability of digital finding aids and digital facsimiles of original sources combined with powerful search engines and digital library technologies have altered how historians and other researchers encounter, access, and use archives and sources. Scholars who were trained to work solely in physical archives are now dealing with a fundamentally new environment. These changes have come with considerable anxieties about whether digitization and digital archives are replacing, as well as displacing, traditional archival work in the archives. Judging from the experience of the Mellon Fellows, however, …

Airborne Lidar Acquisition, Post-Processing And Accuracy-Checking For A 3d Webgis Of Copan, Honduras, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Maria Grazia Spera, Michael Auer, Nicolas Billen, Lukas Loos, Laura Stelson, Markus Reindel

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Archaeological projects increasingly collect airborne LiDAR data to use as a remote sensing tool for survey and analysis. Publication possibilities for LiDAR datasets, however, are limited due to the large size and often proprietary nature of the data. Fortunately, web-based, geographic information systems (WebGIS) that can securely manage temporal and spatial data hold great promise as virtual research environments for working with and publishing LiDAR data. To test this and to obtain new data for archaeological research, in 2013, the MayaArch3D Project (www.mayaarch3d.org) collected LiDAR data for the archaeological site of Copan, Honduras. Results include: 1) more accurate archaeological maps, …

Interim Report, Hd-51897-14, Image Analysis For Archival Discovery (Aida), January 2016, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh

CDRH Grant Reports

In the third six months of work on "Image Analysis for Archival Discovery," the project team has made progress toward the goals outlined in our report from June 2015. As we reported in June 2015, we realized that our original plan to analyze 7 million pages from Chronicling America was overly ambitious for the grant period, and we revised our goal to complete a thorough case study of our methodology and code for all newspaper images in Chronicling America from the period 1836-1840. Activities undertaken, toward this and other grant goals, from June 2015–December 2015:

• Publication of the article, "Developing …

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3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Interim Report, Hd-51897-14, Image Analysis For Archival Discovery (Aida), June 2015, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh

CDRH Grant Reports

In the second six months of work on "Image Analysis for Archival Discovery," the project team has continued making strides toward our goal of analyzing more than 7 million newspaper pages in Chronicling America for poetic content. We have hit a few challenging areas in our research and development work, and our work plan has shifted in some ways from that originally set out in our application, but we have implemented these changes with the fundamental goal of performing the major research outlined in our proposal—exploring image analysis as a methodology for discovery in digitized collections of historic materials via …

Developing An Image-Based Classifier For Detecting Poetic Content In Historic Newspaper Collections, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh, Maanas Varma Datla, Spencer Kulwicki

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

"Developing an Image-Based Classifier for Detecting Poetic Content in Historic Newspaper Collections" details and analyzes the first stage of work of the Image Analysis for Archival Discovery project team. Our team is is investigating the use of image analysis to identify poetic content in historic newspapers. The project seeks both to augment the study of literary history by drawing attention to the magnitude of poetry published in newspapers and by making the poetry more readily available for study, as well as to advance work on the use of digital images in facilitating discovery in digital libraries and other digitized collections. …

Code Of Best Practices In Fair Use For The Visual Arts, College Art Association, Patricia Aufderheide, Peter Jaszi

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The mission of the College Art Association (CAA) is to promote the visual arts and their understanding through advocacy, intellectual engagement, and a commitment to the diversity of practices and practitioners. CAA contributes to the visual arts profession as a whole through scholarly publications, advocacy, exchange of research and new work, and the development of standards and guidelines that reflect the best practices of the field. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is based on a consensus of professionals in the visual arts who use copyrighted images, texts, and other materials in their creative …

Interim Report, Hd-51897-14, Image Analysis For Archival Discovery (Aida), Elizabeth M. Lorang, Leen-Kiat Soh

CDRH Grant Reports

In the first six months of work on "Image Analysis for Archival Discovery," the project team has made significant strides toward our goal of analyzing more than 7 million newspaper pages in Chronicling America for poetic content. Although we have made some adjustments to our work plan, we remain on task to perform the major research outlined in our proposal. Activities undertaken from June–November 2014:
• Preparation of training set images (completed)
• Processing of initial data sets to extract/derive features from image data (completed)
• Development of algorithms for describing image characteristics (completed, but future iterations/revisions are likely)
• …

Developing Civil War Washington, Katherine L. Walter, Elizabeth M. Lorang, Stacy Rickel, Karin Dalziel

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Civil War Washington project team at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln includes scholars, librarians, technologists, and students, both undergraduate and graduate. Individuals are affiliated with the English and History Departments, the University Libraries, the School of Geography, and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. Our successes as a team can be attributed to many things, including sound project management and the fact that our participants have been committed to achieving set goals. Most important, the interdisciplinary nature of the team has been highly advantageous in the research itself and in creating the composite web site.

The project was …

Procedural Modeling For Ancient Maya Cityscapes: Initial Methodological Challenges And Solutions, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Rachel Plessing

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Digital reconstruction of 3D cityscapes is expensive, time-consuming, and requires significant expertise. We need a 3D modeling approach that streamlines the integration of multiple data types in a time-efficient and low-cost manner. Procedural modeling—rapid proto-typing of 3D models from a set of rules— offers a potential solution to this problem because it allows scholars to create digital reconstructions that can be quickly updated and used to test and formulate alternative hypotheses that are derived from and linked to underlying archaeological data. While procedural modeling is being used to visualize ancient Roman, Etruscan, and Greek cities, in the Maya region the …

Digital Humanities And Librarians: A Team-Based Approach To Learning, Casey D. Hoeve, Lis Pankl, Mark Crosby

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

This chapter details the development and implementation of an Introduction to Digital Humanities course (ENGL 695) at Kansas State University (K-State). The course originated with a tenure-track professor with a research specialty in British Romantic-period Literature and the digital humanities. In conjunction with a host of librarians at K-State Libraries, a course was developed that drew on both library resources and librarian knowledges and skills. Over the course of the semester, the professor and the students worked closely with librarians in many areas of the library, including public services, technical services and special collections. The result was four innovative and …

Library Publishing Is Special: Selection And Eligibility In Library Publishing, Paul Royster

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Traditional publishing is based on ownership, commerce, paid exchanges, and scholarship as a commodity, while library activities are based on a service model of sharing resources and free exchange. I believe library publishing should be based on those values and should not duplicate or emulate traditional publishing. University presses have mixed views of library publishing, and libraries should not adopt those attitudes. Library publishers are not gatekeepers; their mission is dissemination. Libraries need to publish because traditional publishing suffers from high rejection rates, required surrender of intellectual property, long production schedules, high cost of products, and limited dissemination. Nebraska’s Zea …

Html & Css November 19, 2014, Karin Dalziel

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

HTML and CSS are two of the most important building blocks of the web. In this workshop, you'll learn how to create an HTML page, how to give it some style, and how to take advantage of HTML and CSS frameworks to speed up your development process. You'll also learn where to go next to continue your learning.

The Promise Of The Digital Humanities And The Contested Nature Of Digital Scholarship, William G. Thomas Iii

Department of History: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the contested qualities of digital scholarship and why, paradoxically, the twenty-year surge in the digital humanities--from 1993 to 2013--has produced relatively little interpretive or argumentative scholarship. In this first phase of the digital humanities, scholars produced innovative and sophisticated hybrid works of scholarship, blending archives, tools, commentaries, data collections, and visualizations. For the most part in the disciplines, however, few of these works have been reviewed or critiqued. Because the disciplines expect interpretation, argument, and criticism, it could be argued that digital humanists have not produced enough digital interpretive scholarship and what we have produced has not …

Digitization Fundamentals: Text, Image, And Sound Notes September 17, 2014, Brett Barney

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

No abstract provided.

Digitization Fundamentals: Text September 17, 2014, Laura Weakly

Digital Humanities Workshop Series

No abstract provided.

Teaching Attentive Reading And Motivated Writing Through Digital Editing, Amanda A. Gailey

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Though English departments, including my own at the University of Nebraska, have been teaching digital humanities (DH) courses for over a decade, hyperbolic claims about the perils and promises of using computers in the study of literature continue to appear in the press. A piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books likens the algorithms used by some digital humanities methods to fascism (Marche). Another, in The Huffington Post, compares the rise of digital humanities to “our uncritical acceptance of drone attacks” (Mohamed). On the other hand, digital humanists such as Franco Moretti, who famously promote “distant reading” as opposed …

Red Social En La Celestina: Una Aproximación Cuantitativa A Su Sistema De Personajes, Jennifer Isasi

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

La que hoy es conocida como La Celestina se publicó en su edición príncipe con el título de Comedia de Calisto y Melibea (1499 o 1500), con 16 actos, para ser retitulada Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea en 1502, añadiéndosele cinco actos más. Parece que sin prestar demasiada atención a la decisión tomada respecto a la trama trágica en lugar de cómica, ya en ese mismo siglo Juan de Valdés o Juan Luis Vives comenzaron a referirse a la obra tal y como la conocemos hoy, haciendo de Celestina la protagonista de la obra ¿Por qué se dio dicho cambio, …

"More Than Custom Has Pronounced Necessary”: Exploring The Correlation Between Gendered Verbs And Character In The 19th Century Novel, Nebraska Literary Lab, Oliver Baylog, Laura Dimmit, Travis Heller, Gabi Kirilloff, Shannon Smith, Grace Thomas, Chandler Warren, James Wehrwein

Department of English: Presentations

During the 19th century, gender politics played a crucial role in shaping the emergence of the novel as a popular and successful form of literature. Not only were middle class women becoming an important part of the reading public, women were also authoring novels and creating complex heroines that at times pushed against, and at other times bolstered, traditional conceptions of propriety and femininity. Along with a rise in popularity came a rise in the critique of the novel as a valid literary genre; many critics claimed that novels were capable of corrupting their female readership. Authors responded to this …

Movement As A Means Of Social (Re)Production: Using Gis To Measure Social Integration Across Urban Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Kristin Landau

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper contributes to the archaeological study of movement in urban environments where built forms and natural features worked together to play a key role in structuring human mobility.We propose an analytical method using least cost analysis in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to empirically measure social integration. The method defines mobility as the potential for pedestrian movement, and identifies locations where people were most likely to walk to or through in a landscape. The calculated mobility data are then employed to identify with whom people were most likely to interact and the degree to which they were socially connected …

The Mayaarch3d Project: A 3d Webgis For Analyzing Ancient Architecture And Landscapes, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Giorgio Agugario, Gabrio Girardi

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

There is a need in the humanities for a 3D WebGIS with analytical tools that allow researchers to analyze 3D models linked to spatially referenced data. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow for complex spatial analysis of 2.5D data. For example, they offer bird’s eye views of landscapes with extruded building footprints, but one cannot ‘get on the ground’ and interact with true 3D models from a pedestrian perspective. Meanwhile, 3D models and virtual environments visualize data in 3D space, but analytical tools are simple rotation or lighting effects. The MayaArch3D Project is developing a 3D WebGIS—called QueryArch3D—to allow these two …

Geospatial Virtual Heritage: A Gesture-Based 3d Gis To Engage The Public With Ancient Maya Archaeology, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Jim Robertsson, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Giorgio Agugario, Fabio Remondino, Gabrio Girardi

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper presents our research to develop a gesture-based 3D GIS system to engage the public in cultural heritage. It compares two types of interaction—device-based vs. natural interaction— and summarizes the beta-testing results of a 3D GIS tool for archaeology, called QueryArch3D, in which participants used device-based interaction (i.e. mouse and keyboard). It follows with a description of the gesture-based system—that we developed in response to these beta-tests. The system uses QueryArch3D and Microsoft’s Kinect to enable people use body movements (in lieu of keyboard or mouse) to navigate a virtual reality landscape, query 3D objects, and call up photos, …

From Mounds To Maps To Models: Visualizing Ancient Architecture Across Landscapes, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Since the onset of settlement pattern studies in the 1950s, landscape mapping projects have become an archaeological mainstay. Remote sensing technologies such as lidar, photogrammetry, and SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) steadily reveal new archaeological sites. For landscape archaeology, the detection and mapping of small architectural complexes and households offers important data to contextualize larger (often already known) sites and perform regional analyses. However, because the majority of sites remain unexcavated, analysis is limited, and yet Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D Visualization are expanding the possible uses for older and newly-acquired data on unexcavated mounds. This paper describes a GIS …

Kinect And 3d Gis In Archaeology, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Fabio Remondino, Jim Robersson, Jennifer Von Schwerin, Giorgio Agugiaro, Gabrio Girardi

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This paper explores the potential of using Microsoft's Kinect to create a low-cost and portable system to virtually navigate, through a prototype 3D GIS, the digitally reconstructed ancient Maya city and UNESCO World Heritage Site of Copan in Honduras. The 3D GIS, named QueryArch3D, was developed as part of the MayaArch3D project (http://mayaarch3d.unm.edu), which explores the possibilities of integrating databases and 3D digital tools for research and teaching on ancient architectures and landscapes. The developed system, based on the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), controls in a remote and touchless mode the movements in the 3D environment in …

Social Interaction At The Maya Site Of Copan, Honduras: A Least Cost Approach To Configurational Analysis, Heather Richards-Rissetto

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

In this article, I employ least cost paths using GIS to measure the relationship between site configuration and social connectivity at the ancient Maya site of Copan, Honduras. I investigate two questions. First, did people of different social classes experience varying degrees of social connectivity? Second, did people living in different parts of the city experience difference degrees of social connectivity? Ultimately, the goal is modify traditional configurational analysis using least cost analysis (LCA) to identify how social hierarchy was embedded in landscapes and how ancient people may have strategically manipulated landscapes to structure social interaction and community organization.

Tei Texts That Play Nicely: Lessons From The Monk Project, Brian Pytlik Zillig

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Faculty Publications

Text curation, like most human endeavors, requires tools. A technique developed for the MONK Project, schema harvesting, provides a useful platform for facilitating the digital conversion and curation of text corpora. The author describes Abbot, an XSLT-based application that has had success in converting various Text Creation Partnership collections, and others, during and after MONK.

The Best Job In The World: Documentary Editor, Beth Luey

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Graduates of the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents deserve congratulations, not only because they have learned a great deal but also because being a documentary editor is the best job in the world. I can speak of this with some authority. Although I am a 1981 graduate of the Institute, I officially became a documentary editor only after retiring from university teaching, which was my second career. My first was as a university press and textbook editor. Those were all good jobs, but documentary editing is the best. Here is why.

Editing Harriet Beecher Stowe’S Uncle Tom’S Cabin And The Fluid Text Of Race, Wesley Raabe

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

I suspect that many scholars begin to edit a work by accident: I begin with the anecdote of how I became an accidental editor of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in academic year 2002. I had read not a single work by Harriet Beecher Stowe when I was admitted to the Ph.D. program at the University of Virginia. During my first semester, I was often at Alderman Library’s Special Collections floor to subject a copy of Delariviér Manley’s Memoirs of Europe (1710) to bibliographical analysis. I was reading Stowe’s work in another course, was already in Alderman for the Manley work, and …

Documentary Editing: Journal Of The Association For Documentary Editing, Volume 32: 2011

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

Articles

• Editing Sophia Peabody Hawthorne’s Travel Writing and the Conundrum of Copies, Patricia Dunlavy Valenti
• On Editing Late-Nineteenth-Century Author Interviews, Gary Scharnhorst
• “A Broad, Generous Stream of Love and Bounty”: The Concord Sewing Circle and the Holley School for Freedmen, Mary Lamb Shelden
• What’s in a Name? Cultural Onomastics and Other Scary Things about the Lincolns and Their Contemporaries, James M. Cornelius
• Issues and Challenges of Moving and Maintaining The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Ryan P. Semmes and John F. Marszalek
• The Best Job in the World: Documentary Editor, Beth Luey
• Preserving the Alliance: The Artful Diplomacy of Benjamin …

Willa Cather’S Many-Colored Medusa Of Art: Review Of Youth And The Bright Medusa Willa Cather. Historical Essay And Explanatory Notes By Mark J. Madigan. Textual Essay And Editing By Frederick M. Link, Charles W. Mignon, Judith Boss, And Kari A. Ronning., Nancee Reeves

Documentary Editing: Journal of the Association for Documentary Editing (1979–2011)

The latest edition to the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series, Youth and the Bright Medusa, is a monument to Cather’s own standards of excellence. The thick paper stock is warm and creamy—the kind of paper that feels smooth and comforting to fingers well used to thumbing the cheap texts that are so common today. The type is large and dark, and the wide margins showcase the text while filling the consummate note-taker’s heart with joy. As the series general editors, Susan J. Rosowski and Guy J. Reynolds, point out in the preface, “[g]iven Cather’s explicitly stated intentions for her works, …