Seminar 6 The Rossetti and Blake Archives

Introduction to the Digital Liberal ArtsMDST 3703 / 7703

Fall 2010

Business

• Quiz 1 will be returned Thursday• Syllabus out of synch– 09-21 Valley of the Shadow– 09-28 Rossetti and Blake– 10-05 Tibetan Himalayan Library + Dante

• MIDTERMS– Do you want due before or after break?

Review

• Valley of the Shadow and The Differences Slavery Made – Extensive collection of primary sources– Primarily hierarchical with controlled hypertext– Categories not exposed

• Open narrative is a mode of writing, not of history per se– We may say that history is not “monocausal”– Open narrative associated with emergent properties

of complex systems

Structure of TDSM• Geography• Politics

– Election of 1860– Political activtivists

• Economics– Commerce– Crops– Labor– Property

• Social structure• Race• Culture

– Religion– Education (“school”)– Urbanization (“Town Development”)

• Information and communications

Historiography

Points of Analysis

Evidence

Summary of Argument

VOS

Categories

Overview

• Today we look at literary projects that focus on images

• And we name the genre—Thematic Research Collections

• Move from Structure to Use

Radiant Textuality

“The Mutation of Theory to Practise”

from … Theory to HistoryCriticism to Sources

Text to Library

Landow McGann

Dueling Victorianists . . .

"Hierarchies can be determined and need not be determinate" (RT, 385)

Hierarchy considered OK …

Where have we seen this?

What are some “critical opportunities” of hypertext

that McGann cites?

“We must begin experimenting with the critical opportunities that these new media hold out to us.”

Incompleteness(entails activity . . .)

Scholarly Primitives

• A list of irreducible “functions” associated with the activities of scholarship– Discovering Annotating Comparing Referring

Sampling Illustrating Representing– Basic “moves” in the game of scholarship– Compare to the Memex Man

• Discusses interfaces designed at IATH to meet these needs

• Where do they belong in our scheme?– Selection Classification Synthesis

Synthesis

Classification

Selection

Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

Collections

Activities

The Stack of ScholarshipDiscovering Annotating Comparing Referring Sampling Illustrating Representing

http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/doing-digital-scholarship-presentation-at-digital-humanities-2008/

Thematic Research Collections

• Coined by Unsworth in 2000– Developed by Palmer in article

• Based on real examples of hypermedia collections

• How are TRCs different from books? Libraries?• How do they relate to the Stack of

Scholarship?

The Rossetti Archive

• One of two original IATH projects• Focused on the works the Pre-Raphaelite poet

and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)– Art history and literary criticism

• Innovations– Improved search (cross-site)– Bread crumbs

Getting to Bocca Baciata

• Find the painting, Bocca Baciata• Search [image records]• What do you do when you get there?• How is the site structured?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_Bocca_Baciata_1859.png/510px-Dante_Gabriel_Rossetti_Bocca_Baciata_1859.png

Bocca Baciata 1859

The Blake Archive

• Example of networked fellows at IATH– Morris Eaves, University of Rochester– Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside– Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill• Innovations– Image fidelity– Image search (iconographic classification)

Getting to Tyger

• Find illustrations of Tyger• Image Search Animal Tyger• What do you do when you get there?• How is the site structured?

Exercise

• Compare Rossetti and Blake archives in terms of the primitives and the stack of scholarship– What devices and techniques are used to support each

aspect of scholarship?– Are the sites functional as research portals?

• Break up into 4 groups– Group A: Scholarly Primitives in Rossetti– Group B: Scholarly Primitives in Blake– Group C: Comparing for Comparison– Group D: Comparing for Contextual Mass

• Assign a scribe and a reporter– Scribe writes post and tags with 09-28 Exercise

Summary

• Thematic collections are designed to support the activities of scholarship– Not just reading (as in books)– Not just finding (as in libraries)

• But are they effective in doing so?– Test: What do you do when you find something?