DH tools and techniques

In DH tools and techniques I want to introduce methods useful to the DH. I want to explain some tools with enough (but still minimalistic) introductory information which will get you going without too much clutter. Also, I feel that a ‘market’ of DH tutorials starts to become available, however, what I think they are missing, for the most part, are the possible applications. Why should I learn a new method or tool when I can’t (yet) see what benefit it could have for my own research? Why learn a tool I don’t know what to use for? This has happened to me way to many times which is why I hope to make it better ;)

In these techniques, I want to cover simple things, like XML and Annotation (which has its own category) but also some methods belonging to what has caused somewhat of a stir on Twitter under the (somewhat problematic) name of ‘Computational Humanities’.

26. January 202027. January 2020

What are ‘real’ Digital Humanities and how to get started?

The title suggests a political discussion, however, this is not what I want to discuss here. (However, I had a ‘more political’ discussion planned for a while.) At a recent conference, I realized many people from the Humanities find it difficult to grasp what the DH even really are – because they are so diverse. I was told a colleague had gone to a short DH summer school but still feels like she doesn’t get what the DH really are. Or that she hasn’t learned any ‘real DH’. How does this happen? How can we make it better? Maybe, as a first step, by trying to answer what the DH are in a way which is easy to grasp for someone who isn’t already part of the DH: It is really an umbrella term for a wide range of topics ranging from digital edition to long-term archiving, digitizing facsimile scans of books or running analyses. I don’t promise to unveil