{"id":542,"date":"2017-08-23T12:02:02","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T16:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/digital-humanities\/?p=542"},"modified":"2017-08-23T12:07:50","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T16:07:50","slug":"reflections-on-dhsi-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/digital-scholarship\/2017\/08\/23\/reflections-on-dhsi-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on DHSI 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"I recently had the opportunity to attend the 2017 Digital Humanities Summer Institute<\/a>, thanks to the support of a DLF + DHSI Cross-Pollinator Tuition Award<\/a> and travel funding from the UNT Libraries. This was my first time at DHSI, and my first visit to Victoria, B.C<\/a>., so I was excited about both. I came into this week-long immersion in the digital humanities with very little practical training in the discipline. Although I have a Ph.D. in English and a Library & Information Science degree, most of my experience has been with traditional humanities scholarship, teaching, and scholarly communication. This is also my first year as a full-time librarian, so I\u2019m still deciding how much involvement I might have in DH work at my own institution. The appeal of DH, for me, is its potential for challenging entrenched boundaries inside and outside of academia: disciplinary, social, economic, and technological.\u00a0 As a librarian and educator, I see this as part of my role\u2014to be not just an information provider, but also a facilitator of new conversations and knowledge creation.\u00a0 Whether that means doing DH myself or helping other faculty and students do the work that interests them, I hoped that coming to DHSI would better equip me for the task.\r\n\r\n
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University of Victoria<\/a> campus\u2014pretty, pretty.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nI decided to begin with one of the short workshops, \u201cDigital Publishing in the Humanities,\u201d led by Sarah Melton and Anandi Salinas, and one of the foundational courses<\/a>, \u201cIntroduction to Computation for Literary Criticism\u201d, taught by James O\u2019Sullivan and Randa El Khatib. The first gave me a solid overview of some of the common digital publishing platforms available for both book and journal publishing\u2014 services supported by our library, but still relatively new. The conversation inspired me to begin learning the OJS<\/a> system for e-journal publishing and to start developing a checklist for new journal editors at our institution.\u00a0 Eventually, I hope to learn some of the other platforms we discussed, so that we can offer more options to our faculty & students.\r\n\r\nThe computation course introduced us to a number of tools currently being used by literary scholars engaged in DH, including Voyant<\/a>, RStudio<\/a>, and various text modeling and mapping programs. We also experimented with common methods of analysis such as basic text mining (for word frequencies & usage), stylometry (statistical analysis of literary style), and topic modeling for examining themes and ideas in literary texts. Among the questions we discussed were: Why utilize these methods in the first place? What can they add to our understanding of literature? Are they \u201cevidence\u201d or \u201cexploration\u201d? And how do we interpret the results of such experiments in literary analysis?\r\n\r\n

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Stylometric analysis of three sci-fi\/fantasy authors. Is this anything?<\/span><\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n \r\n

\"Computers merely parse literature; they cannot 'read' it.\"\r\n- James O'Sullivan<\/pre>\r\nEven more valuable than the tools, though, were the conversations we had about integrating DH with other forms of literary criticism & theory, the limitations of computational analysis, finding publication opportunities, doing peer review, and engaging more fully with our disciplinary communities. For a librarian, these are the questions that impact my daily work, as well as conversations with others in my professional communities. Whether they approach DH as disciples or skeptics, I want to be able to have informed conversations about the potential and the prospects of this kind of work. Just as I\u2019ve carried discussions about information literacy, pedagogy, and critical information theory out to literature conferences and other professional gatherings, I hope to bring a more informed view of digital humanities to my future discussions with literature scholars and librarians. I felt like this course gave me a good foundation for those conversations, as well as some useful tools to play with (as well as a large dataset of Poe materials that I can explore on my own!).\r\n\r\nOutside of class, DHSI offered lots of opportunities for socializing, sharing our work, enjoying food & drink, and even engaging in a little non-DH entertainment and creative activity, including movies and an outdoor poetry reading. The weather was gorgeous (especially for Texans in the summer), the people of Victoria were friendly, and there was no shortage of things to do<\/a> in this small, but active and artsy city.\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nAt the end of the week, I was sad to leave, but also flush with new information and ideas to bring back to my work. I feel like I only skimmed the surface of what all there is to learn at an event like this, but I think that\u2019s inevitable given the immersion in a single course (or two, if you stay the full two weeks of the Institute). It\u2019s definitely designed for repeat visits, and it\u2019s clear that many of the attendees and instructors have been there many times. While these \u201cold-timers\u201d form social groups of their own, the event as a whole is very welcoming to newcomers, and there are special events and activities designed especially for those on their first visit.\u00a0 I would certainly encourage my colleagues to check it out, and to apply for any funding opportunities through DLF or other organizations to help subsidize the trip. Funds set aside specifically for training as well as those for professional development might be used for this kind of trip, since it provides opportunities for both.<\/span>\r\n\r\nFor those interested in going, here are a few things to keep in mind:<\/span>\r\n