In our work on Neatline, we have made a deliberate choice to start by restraining our work to map-sources that are quickly and easily provided through WMS. This leaves out (for now) two popular sources of map imagery; Google Maps and Open Street Map. I’m going to explain why we made that choice, and why, when we do come to make these sources usable with Neatline, we will do so with great care and with an eye to scholarly method.
Introducing DAVILA
Jean Bauer, former Scholars’ Lab Graduate Fellow in Digital Humanities announces: “I have just released my first open source project. HUZZAH!” DAVILA is a database schema visualization/annotation tool that creates “humanist readable” technical diagrams. It is written in Processing with the toxiclibs physics library and released under GPLv3. DAVILA takes in the database’s schema and…. More.
Mr. Voronoi, meet the US state boundaries
In the Scholars’ Lab we are working with remarkably detailed datasets showing changes to US political boundaries over time. We’ve all been fascinated with visualizations where the familiar outlines of the US states emerge from thousands of boundary changes to their underlying counties over the last few hundred years. Did you know Virginia once spanned…. More.
More on Pandora: genres, genomes, and musical taste…
Hello. In my last blog, I began my discussion of Pandora.com, the streaming audio website which offers a new kind of web radio to listeners. Enter a “seed” song into Pandora’s search engine, and the site will create a streaming “station” composed of songs that resemble your seed song. This process is powered by the…. More.
Mapping the Digital Diaspora of a Dissertation Research Blog
At the onset of my field research in summer 2007, I launched a blog – YellowBuzz.org – with the intention to: 1) archive and organize my field notes in textual and audio-visual form; 2) convey my research purpose and progress to informant musicians and the public; 3) self-position as a “participant” in the scene. Since…. More.
Pandora and the “genes” of music genres
Hello, it’s been a while since I blogged. You may remember me as the music Ph.D. student who was last heard from pondering the uses of Google Scholar. I’m on a new mission this semester, studying for my comprehensive exams. One of the topics I am researching and preparing an essay on is about genre…. More.
Illuminating Historical Architecture
Following up on my introduction to using 3D models to recreate archaeological sites and perform meaningful academic analysis on simulated virtual environments, I will discuss in further detail my current project concerning the recreation of the House of the Drinking Contest in Seleucia Pieria, the port city of Roman Antioch.
Electronic Text Analysis and the Wary Humanist
For a long list of complicated reasons, most practitioners of my discipline—political theory—tend to be suspicious of, if not altogether opposed to, the integration of computer technology into their research and teaching. While some scholars cite the superfluity of computer technology to the discipline (excepting, of course, Microsoft Word), others argue that the introduction of…. More.
Mapping Regional Language Use
So for the thousandth (or so it seems) time I’ve gotten into this discussion with my friends from the East Coast and Midwest (I’m from Texas) about the correct way to refer to a sweet carbonated beverage, and I have finally got to thinking about ways to map locally spoken slang and jargon using GIS. …. More.
Mining and Mapping Apocalyptic Texts, Part 1
I have used computer technology to help my work in biblical interpretation for a while. I learned to do complex digital word searches with the Bibleworks software package early in my graduate career. When I started working at the Scholars’ Lab in the summer of 2006, I was introduced to digital humanities. I found these…. More.