Digital Humanities

Book Traces in 18th Century British Plays

~ Annie Swafford

After failing to find any marginalia in the first few books I looked through, which were based upon my original database query, I happened upon The Plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The book was written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was a playwright and politician, among other things. He wrote them in the late 18th century, so I hoped for some insight from those students who had come before me, likely while studying English literature.

The book itself seems to have been repaired, and the title and authors’ name on the spine of the book was handwritten. Inside, It was heavily marked, albeit in pencil, which unfortunately indicated that the traces cannot be accurately dated. If the traces had been added with pen, it would be possible to ascertain more information about who had written them. There were many passages simply underlined, while there were also several pages where the traces consisted of comments about the text.

CIMG1919The student who provided the marginalia on this page sought to understand the vocabulary that Sheridan used. Enough was written after the line, “Crave what you will–there’s quantum sufficit”. “Sal volatile” was underlined and smelling salts was written by the student, while “hydra” led to snake, and positive was jotted in the margin after a line containing “poz”.

CIMG1920

When viewing another page, the same theme is found, with slight variations. The student used the margins to define words in the text, and also bracketed certain paragraphs as well, always in pencil. “Insipid” led to weak, and “raillery” was defined as gay ridicule. Of course, the connotation of the word gay was quite different when the student had written these notes. Raillery is defined today as good-humored teasing, so I’m not sure the students’ inclusion of ridicule fits best.

CIMG1921

Finally, I discovered that pencil was not the only marking implement found inside this book. Whether it was coffee, wine, blood, or something else entirely, there are about eight to ten pages that have some unfortunate staining. Just as I’m writing this today with the aid of a cup of coffee (at a safe distance from the book itself), a student from the past had done something similar, without as much luck.

Book traces

Emily DeFranco_Tuesday Jan 27th Assignment (extra credit)

~ Annie Swafford

From Lee Jackson’s “The Victorian Dictionary:”

Entry: For my entry first I went to the “Publications” tab and then chose “Journals, Magazines and Newspapers” (to make my research more interesting and relevant to my major) and finally selected ‘The Times.’ There were many articles about The Times but I read the first one (Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850).

times

What I learned: What I found interesting right away in this article was how the first daily paper in London actually began with one man, John Bill, who, “at the King’s Printing House in Black Friars, printed the proclamations of the reign of Charles II. [The] first London Gazette, [was] established in that reign.” In 1770 the location of the publication moved to its current location where it transformed into the daily it is today in 1788. “The Times of Tuesday, Nov. 29th, 1814, was the first work ever printed by a mechanical apparatus, and the first newspaper printed by steam.” The article also breaks down the starting and current advertising rates, though I didn’t completely understand some of the symbols used. It was cool to see how the paper evolved from its very beginning to a paper that it distributed worldwide.

newstimes1

Maps!

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Screen Shot 2014-11-10 at 2.13.50 AM

Hello fellow classmates, I’m Brian. I’m a junior/senior (its close), and I love maps, my atlas and globe, as well as just about anything else that conveys geographical information. I look forward to combining my appreciation for maps with Holmes and Watson’s criminal cases throughout Victorian London. I also hope to incorporate my love of music into the digital humanities course in some way. Overall, I am intrigued by this interesting course, and I look forward to all that we will cover.

Hello !

~ Annie Swafford ~ 3 Comments

Hi my name is Ashley Rivera and I am a Sophomore, majoring in Elementary Education with a concentration in History and a minor in Deaf Studies. I am a Student-Athlete, I am a goalkeeper for the Woman’s Soccer Team. Lets Go Hawks!!!

soccer 2soccer

Most recently the soccer team traveled to England not only to play 2 pro English teams but to watch a Pro Match, Explore London and Bond as a Team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9EC3Gy6Nk

First Digital Humanities Blog Post

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Hello, my name is Maria Hutman and I am nineteen years old.  My major is Spanish here at SUNY New Paltz and this is my first semester because I transferred from Dutchess Community College.  I have successfully figured out how to write my very own blog in my Digital Humanities class!

 

Silv-06

Greetings!

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Hello everybody! My name is Zach Pollock and I am 19 years old and I am a sophomore studying marketing at the State University of New York at New Paltz in New Paltz, New York.  I love skiing, hiking and mountain biking.

See ya on the flipside.

http://www.myslopes.com/images/en/ski-holidays-hunter-mountain-a774.jpg

Sample Projects

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Here are some sample projects from DHM293 last year:

  1. Walking Dead Map: http://walkingdeadgis.weebly.com/
  2. Poverty Across America: http://dhmfinalproject.blogspot.com/
  3. Historic Huguenot Street: http://historichuguenotstreet.tumblr.com/
  4. Mapping SUNY New Paltz: https://sunynpmap.wordpress.com/
  5. Nirvana: Obscurity to Domination: http://nirvanatour.tumblr.com/
  6. Supernatural Locations: https://supernaturallocations.wordpress.com/
  7. Death Eater Studies: https://deatheaterstudies.wordpress.com/

On Gathering Data

~ Annie Swafford ~ 1 Comment

Your group may only have a few pieces of data, or it may have hundreds. Either way, you need to be careful when collecting your data. Here are some instructions:

Archives/editions

  1. If you have any images/logos from before 1923, you can use them (but check with me to make sure).
  2. If they are from after 1923, you must either get permission from the publishers/authors/companies or NOT USE THEM.
  3. You must include all page images, including the cover, front, and back matter, and full, proofread transcriptions of every page.
  4. You must cite the original projects following MLA citation rules.
  5. Sample citation for a Works Cited page:

Made-up, Author. This is the Title. City: Publisher, date. Print.

Topic Modeling

  1. The files must be plain text ( .txt), not HTML (.html) or Word (.doc or .docx). Open the files in either in Notepad (on a PC) or in TextEdit (on a Mac). If you see extra characters in addition to the text, you’re probably looking at an HTML file. Go back to the website with your data, copy and paste the text into Notepad or Textedit, then save as a .txt file.
  2. The file name of each file should clearly identify the text (use data and short title).
  3. You must cite the data.

 GIS

  1. If you are digitizing an historical map, make sure to cite the original (and to georectify it)
  2. If you are plotting points on a map, each entry should have a citation explaining where the information came from
  3. If you are plotting lots of data from census records on a map and your data came from 1 source, make sure to cite that source below the map.

All Projects

  1. Your data should come from books published by reputable presses (e.g. university presses), peer reviewed or otherwise praised digital humanities projects, or other reputable websites (e.g. http://www.census.gov/), NOT Wikipedia.
  2. To avoid charges of plagiarism, make sure to write down the author, title, and publication information of each work before taking notes on it. When taking notes, write down the page number for each point.

Qualities of a Good DH Project

~ Annie Swafford

Five qualities of a good DH project are:

1. The project must be legible and clear.

2. It should be aesthetically pleasing.

3. It must be engaging and/or interactive.

4. It has credited sources (citations) for unoriginal data.

5. It is well-organized.

A good DH project will feature all of these aspects.  It must be clear, visually stimulating, engaging, and well-organized in order to hold the attention of the reader and simultaneously teach them something.  The more information you can get from a project, the more interesting and useful it will be in answering questions of the modern world.  With today’s technology, we are able to ask and answer questions that previously could not be answered.  Digital tools help organize information in a new and fun way to help visual learners and those seeking a different method of teaching to read, write, and view life differently.  Most of the websites we have used this semester were able to take a huge amount of information and form it into something compact and easier to understand and interpret.  With word clouds we can get the general sense of main themes in stories and speeches.  With Google Ngrams we can start to decipher the relevance and importance of words in a vast amount of past literature.  With Booktraces we can permanently document the marginalia of old books that will eventually fall apart and be destroyed.  With GIS we can plot points of historical significance much faster and more efficiently than ever.  There are endless possibilities to the amount of information we can absorb in a short time by using digital tools.  Therefore, it is important that students and others studying digital humanities create projects that others can use to view the world differently.