what do digital humanists want from a national library?
TRANSCRIPT
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What do Digital Humanists want from a National Library?
dr. Steven Claeyssens | @sclaeyssens | [dr. Martijn Kleppe | @martijnkleppe]
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Part 1
How we assist Digital Humanities scholars
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Data
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Data
= result of
more than 200 years of collecting
over 30 years of digitisation
+ almost 10 years of collecting born-digital publications
= machine readable, mostly textual
= structured or semi-structured
= legally as open as possible
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www.delpher.nl www.kb.nl/dataservices
http://www.delpher.nlhttp://www.kb.nl/dataservices
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Lab
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Lab
www.kb.nl/lab
= online and offline sandbox
1 co-ordinator
1 curator
2 programmers
= experimental data sets
= tools and software
= workshops
http://www.kb.nl/lab
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Programs
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Programs
1. Fellowship Program
= 4 months, 1 fte | invited | successful academic
2. Researcher-in-Residence Program
= 6 months, 0,5 fte | open call | early career
Call is open! blog.kbresearch.nl
http://blog.kbresearch.nl
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Part 2
Our experiences with assisting Digital Humanities scholars
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Additional analysis
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Findings
Particular interest in the newspaper corpus
Very diverse research questions and use cases
Various ways of data delivery wanted
Most computer scientists have data-driven research questions
Most humanities scholars are driven by research questions
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www.tijdschriftstudies.nl
http://www.tijdschriftstudies.nl
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Findings
Apart from a lot of good points of critique, also:
Conflicting wishes about the corpus
Poor knowledge about the corpus
Poor understanding of the difference between the data and the tool
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blog.kbresearch.nl
http://blog.kbresearch.nl
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Findings
Again: very diverse research questions and use cases
Proliferation of tools and software
Interest in several corpora
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Part 3
Lessons
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There are no typical Digital Humanities scholars.
Their needs change over time, change with skills.
The hard news
There are hardly any standard tools or techniques.
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We need to be more transparant about the data (and the tools).
An API is not enough. Multiple ways to deliver the data are needed.
In the short term
We need to be more envolved in research projects.
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We need to (collectively) develop a digital source criticism.
We need to (collectively) develop a tool criticism.
In the medium term
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In the long term
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Any questions?
www.kb.nl/dataserviceswww.kb.nl/dh
[email protected]@sclaeyssens
http://www.kb.nl/dataserviceshttp://www.kb.nl/dhmailto:[email protected]