UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Many thanks to all those who came along to the painless introduction to paper in the brave new digital world.

The object of the painless introductions is to spark discussion and collaboration. Some of the topics covered today included:

• content versus carrier and the impact of format on text and text on format
• Darnton’s communications circuit
• case study: Watermarks in incunabula printed in the low countries (WILC)
• case study: the Scottish Government’s Burns iphone app
• case study: Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing – Robert Burns. Poems chiefly in the Scottish dialect
• versioning online and in print
• the Wicked Bible
• the impact of book design on e-book design – Van de Graaf’s secret canon
• the Reading Experience database (RED)
• archiving publishing and other corporate records
• what happens when records are destroyed?

The slides are available here, and you can also download a copy of Van de Graaf’s secret canon of book design if you would like to try it on your ebooks / images of books.

If you are a book historian who would like to give a guest talk to our MA LIS / MA ARM / MA Digital Humanities Historical Bibliography students, or who would like to speak about other potential collaborations, please get in touch (email or twitter works best).

The next event in the Painless Introduction series of lunchtime talks will take place on Tuesday, 25 January, in Room G31, UCL Foster Court, 13.05-13.50 hrs. Anne Welsh will speak on Paper in the brave new digital world:

In this Painless Introduction Anne Welsh will discuss the impact of the computer on Historical Bibliography (the study of the book, its manufacture and use). From online catalogues and full-text digitization of rare books and manuscripts to the analysis of large collections of texts, we will look at new ways of accessing and understanding books and their readers.

We hope to see you there!

Happy New Year!

We thought we would celebrate the New Year with an open forum down at DDH.

Do you have any burning questions about DH? I know I have!

DDH Open Forum is an informal gathering of those curious about humanities, technology and everything in between. Anyone can share great ideas or projects they’ve working on, ask important questions or simply come along to take part or listen to the latest DH chat.If technology tickles your fancy, manuscripts make you happy, or cloudcomputing takes your breath away. Join us on the 18^th Jan at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB (map)and share your ideas and experiences with others.

Date: Tuesday, 18th January 2011
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm
Location: The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, London W1T 1JB (map)

We have had this launch event notice forwarded to us by Yolana Pringle from the University of Oxford. This event is run by postgraduates for postgraduates, so it may be of interest to many of you. Details follow below.

The History Blogging Project will be launched at an event hosted by The History Lab on Tuesday 18 January. Starting at 6pm, there will be short talks on a range of issues connected to blogging as a postgraduate historian, including ‘why blog’, ‘finding time to blog’ and ‘blogging and public engagement’. There will also be a chance to guide the direction of the project and network with other historians over a glass of wine. A limited number of travel bursaries are available for postgraduates coming from outside of London.

Run by postgraduates for postgraduates, the History Blogging Project will provide a forum in which postgraduates can publicise their research, network with other historians, debate the role of blogs in academic and public engagement, and contribute to a continually developing online set of resources on blogging technology.

The website will be launched during the event.

Launch event details:
Start time: 6pm
Date: Tuesday 18 January
Venue: SAS Common Room, Senate House, University of London.

For further information about the Project and to register your intention to attend, please contact Yolana Pringle.

Follow the History Blogging Project on Twitter.

We are proud to announce that Ernesto Priego, one of our UCLDH PhD students who has just submitted his thesis will be giving a seminar on Comic Book Markup Language: Challenges and Opportunities on Thursday 13 January in room G32 of Senate House at 5.30. Ernesto is passionate about comics, their phenomenology, and their new existence on the web and mobile platforms and this promises to be a very enjoyable talk as a result. Do join us if you can.

– via Dominic Oldman –

When:

Thursday January 13th 2011

Where:

9.15 to 3:30 at BM, The Hugh and Catherine Stevenson LT

16.00 – 19.00 at UCL Roberts Building, Room G08

The World Wide Web is an essential part of the Museum’s toolkit for publishing information, engaging visitors and communicating across the globe. However, museum web sites and information systems are still largely silos that make it difficult for us to realize the benefits of bringing data together. The growing momentum of the Semantic Web movement means a greater investment in the technology and tools needed to convert its potential into practical opportunities that museums can utilise. The ability of the semantic web to cheaply but effectively integrate data and breakdown data silos provides museums with a long awaited opportunity to present a richer, more informative and interesting picture. For scholars, it promises the ability to uncover relationships and knowledge that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to discover otherwise.

The main focus of this study day is on projects that are already employing semantic web technology and which represent the beginning of a new wave of initiatives that will encourage further investigation and investment. By presenting a more practical insight into the use of the semantic web in the sector it is hoped that the current gap between the technologists and others who stand to benefit from the technology can be bridged.

Aimed at a general cultural heritage audience, the day currently includes the following speakers:

* Professor Dame Wendy Hall DBE FRS FREng – Keynote Speaker

* Kenneth Hamma – The Wrong Containers, Humanities and the Internet

* John Sheridan – Government and National Archive initiatives

* Hugh Glaser -  Museum data, where next – consuming linked data

* Atanas Kiryakov – FactForge – the Fast Track to the Centre of the Data Web

* Dominic Oldman – The ResearchSpace Initiative – Supporting scholarly research online

* Leif Isaksen – Semantic Technologies in Cultural Heritage: Past, Present and Future

* Jonathan Whitson Cloud – Paths to Data Sharing.

This is a FREE event. To book a ticket click here and for more info on the event click here.