Fred Gibbs has proposed a session on R for Humanists, and I’d like to propose a complementary session on scripting languages for humanists. Ruby and Python are popular among digital humanists for a variety of applications. These

• data munging
• data analysis
• natural language processing (with the Natural Language Toolkit)
• geocoding (I use ggmaps, but there are lots of options)
• automation
• web scraping
• solving particular programming problems of interest to humanists, such as dates
• general purpose programming
• web development
• system administration (e.g. Wayne Graham’s Capistrano recipes for Omeka)

We needn’t limit the session to Ruby and Python; in fact, I hope we talk more about R. Intro to programming sessions are ever popular; that’s not what I have in mind, but maybe that would be useful too.

This session could turn into a show and tell session where we share what we’re doing with these kinds of languages and get some new ideas. We might decide to solve some problem of general interest to the group. Or we might decide to work through the exercises in the Programming Historian (Python) or the Rubyist Historian (Ruby).

The graphical world wide web has now been in existence for  over 20 years. Some of the earliest digital humanities sites are almost as old. While some of these sites are tied to people or organizations who update them in one form or another, many are not as funding ran out or creators moved on. We can all think of sites that we’ve run across that are, at a minimum, not up to today’s visual and user experience expectations, and at worst, are simple unusable by some or even all of today’s users.

Since we know that many old sites don’t fade away (though they might blink in and out), but linger on virtually forever (unless they were on GeoCities), what might we do with some of these abandoned or no-longer-funded projects going forward beyond just hoping that the Internet Archive takes some snapshots of them?  How might we build on the work that has already been done, and do so in a way that is more than just an aesthetic facelift for these sites? Is it worth considering ways that we might make such previous work more accessible (both in terms of accommodations and in terms of something that more people would want to use) and usable?

I proposed a session at THATCamp AHA2012 on this topic where we began to list the issues involved.  This time, however, I’m proposing a session where we come up with a design plan for a team that would work on rescuing (updating) older digital humanities sites, and a specific list of skill sets and tools that would be needed to do so. [In the latter category, I know questions of copyright/permissions are a substantial issue to resolve, as are those relating to the technical aspects of how the material was stored and presented, and how a site might be maintained going forward.]

Ideally, the session would bring together people interested in the project, would identify some potential test cases, and even discuss potential grants or other funding sources.

Anyone else interested in designing a digital SWAT team for rescuing old sites?

There have been sessions at past THATCamps that have explored the use of 3D design to envision historical sites or perhaps to demonstrate relationships of words in a concordance or index. In those cases the examples in most cases were a transference of Atoms (papers, manuscripts, notes from conversations) to bits (program design, programming, data entry, user interfaces). For this session I would like to explore your ideas and mine about the impact of Making, Tinkering, Physical Innovation to create 3 Dimensional Objects in the Digital Humanities.

One quick example: 1) Analog — a historian discovers description, perhaps with an illustration of a piece of table ware or furniture. She notes that it has certain qualities that she’d like to explore more. This is where the project moves into 2) Digital space. The object is sketched, then rendered into a 3D representation. Then that file is may need to be translated into a format that can be used by a 3D printer. The object can be scaled down or up to fit the 3D printer that will be used to “print” the object. Once the object is “printed” it has returned to an 1) Analog object. Now the object can be closely observed to better understand those curious qualities. There are many variations on this theme. Let’s share some of them.

A true story. At the San Diego Super Computer Center at UC-San Diego there was a Laminated Object Modeling (LOM) lab. Their printer used thin paper layers pasted then cut with lasers. They created a small model of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains in the same scale. They were small, hand held objects. A ninth grade class on tour was shown the models and asked what did they learn from seeing these two objects. A young woman was the first to raise her hand. Her answer, “The Appalachians are older than the Rockies because they are worn down and smoother than the Rockies.” She was correct.

So, how could 3D tools and resources for Making or Tinkering be applied to ideas, questions, or the work in the Humanities you are doing?