ENGL 481: Digital Humanities

This website is designed to give viewers an inside look at the humanities at Stanford University. With the new technologies through digital humanities, people are able to create virtual archives and interact with source material in a way that has never been done. The use of these interactive archives, like the "Authorial London", scholars are able to use new forms of technology in a more efficient way to research certain material.

Like the archive websites that we viewed in class, this website is designed to archive material from the Renaissance. There are course related material, such as blogs and lesson plans, there are databases with texts and images from this early time period, and there is a "studio" designed to help writers in their research. There are also external links for any other sites that are wished to view. An archive website is useful for research and Stanford University designed this one for research purposes and informational value.

In this article Brian Croxall introduces the three digital workshops that will be on display at the 2013 MLA. Coxwell gives the importance of each workshop and he explains how they can be helpful while using MLA formating in the classroom. The first workshop entitled Digital Pedagogy Unconference is popularized in academia and is targeted for people who have never used technology in the classroom. The second workshop welcomes scholars who wish to pursue or join digital scholarly projects but do not have the institutional infrastruce to support them. The last workshop entitled ThatCamp is an open, inexspensive meeting where humanists and technoligies of skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposede on the spot.

Cohen cites PressForward as a model for the "catching the good" 'style' publication. He believes that scholarly journals should "catch" works that they think should see a wider audience, as opposed to reject and criticize those that are deemed "bad." He emphasizes that there is no submission process. He argues that this form encourages publication and creativity.

This article discusses Internet Archive's newest archive that allows researchers "both in and out of the classroom" to look at news over a timeline. Much like the Wayback Machine, this archive has a collection of over 350,000 news broadcasts that allows the exploration of their resources and the viewing of TV news broadcasts just by searching.

CNI's focus is to transfer scholarship into the digital age. It states that it is made of 200 institutions from universities, publishing, and libraries that must pay membership dues. CNI is supported soley through the membership dues. IT encourages collaboration throughout its own community as well as outside of it.

PLOS is a nonprofit publisher that publishes only 7 journals in topics related to science or medicine. Every article that is published is open access and is freely able to be viewed online. The publishers of this website believe that their journals allows for ease of research and is determined to accelerate the advancement of knowledge in these fields.

In this article Vicky Gan, a strategic planning office member of The New York Public Library (NYPL), explains the digitized goals of the NYPL. One of the projects called "What's on the Menu" releases digitzed menus of restaurants, even of menus that are not used anymore by the service industry. At one point only a few could actually look at the hard copy collections of these menus, but now over 8,700 are digitally released in only four months. Sharing any information, even restaurant menus, help people across the nation. "What's on the Menu" has already been used by famous chefs such as Mario Batali and even stretches to fourth grade class projects studying food and exercise.

In this article Danielle Gould interviews Justin Massa, the CEO and cofounder of Food Genius, an application which displays and analyzes dishes for users. Each dish in a restaurant is posted with a picture detailed with information such as ingredients used and cooking methods in order to make a more accurate suggestion for users. The goal of Food Genius is to pre-load data as much as possible and to change the way food recommendations are made.

In this blog article, scholar Elizabeth Hopwood asks followers how Digital Humanities can be used for food studies. People are paying more attention to what is eaten and it's health benefits/negativeness--incorporating digital humanities to such a field would be greatly useful. Other bloggers and Hopwood agree on the need to digitze projects for food studies and mention the New York Public Library online menu database.

Fujitsu's food project brings people to volunteer on almost 40 acres of farms around the Boston area, increasing a sustainable system for living and growing food. Part of the Fujitsu food project is to digitize paperwork such as surveys taken from neighborhoods and information about each individual farm site. Part of the problem with digitizing their paperwork is finding a multi-functioning device, especially for Mac users. Fujitsu technology managers and workers are still working to find a more reliable scanning solution for this project and the Fujitsu company as a whole. Rob Sozanski, the Technology Manager for the Food Project also explains how scanning documents allow people to come together to look at their database and save costs.

This study highlights the need for raising teacher's awareness of ER-based reading comprehension questions. This study was conducted to determine how frequently critical thinking is used in EFL reading comprehension contexts at the tertiary level in an Iranian University. To collect the data, the researchers observed all reading comprehension courses in one of the universities in Isfan Province. They recorded 30 percent of the total number of sessions using two mini-size MP4 wireless recorders during the spring semester. The findings suggested that the teachers focus on each CRQ type strongly influences student attention when reading different passages.

This article explains New York Public Library's project called "What's on the Menu?" This database is created for users across the nation, so easily accessible that no application needs to be downloaded and can be used with a simple click of a button titled "transcribe" on their website.Over 865,660 dishes and 13,440 menus have been transcribed for free access. Already within a year more than three million page views have been recorded. Its use is more than handy for culinary students, but those studying graphic design, history, and health issues.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the documents available on this website are ones released by the United States Government. The documents in this database are organized into an interactive archive where users can search through the contents of this site. Containing thousands of files, Project Star Gate aims to digitize documents and contains many resources for any user. The site offers individuals to purchase the 7 volumes of CD's to view this material and use for research or other purposes.

This article focuses on the internet users means for obtaining media via an online archive. The Internet Archive gave peer-to-peer file sharing a major boost by making an array of media immediately available as onBitTorrent for downloading content. By using this means of getting media and other data, users are offered a faster delivery regardless of internet connection.

This article explains the dispute between Google and publishers here in the United States. As we have seen in class, Google Books offers internet users the ability to search through their database of scanned books. Publishers are fighting that Google is violating copyright laws by scanning these books and letting people have free open access. Although the project itself is causing an uproar, publishers as well as authors are being given the opportunity to decide what books are included in this project.

This digital archive is an archive that allows for content to be open for global access. The content consists of digitized texts, in many languages, and other multimedia material. The material on this site is used in respect to copyrights and the content owners and contributers agreements.

Beginning in 1971, Project Gutenberg is the first online catalog of electronic books. Claiming to be the largest collection online, Project Gutenberg aims to digitize all books and allow them to be organized and searched through their site. The website can be viewed in multiple languages and allows people to volunteer and donate for the continuation of this project. The site only uses books whose copyright has expired, which makes them free in the United States, and they are allowed to be downloaded and redistributed.

Phil Davis, the writer of this impact entry, questions the sustainability of, what he calls, AO Mega Journals. AO Megas are journals that have no real content area to focus on, are generally open access, and prove an alternative to traditional publication. He believes that the impact factors and decline in citations of the site may cause concern for people looking to publish their work. He also addresses the issue of smaller, more meticulous, and content focused journals. This article was written in 2010, and although PLoS One didn't experience the slow deflation of the "citation bubble," (it is still considered the larges scholarly journal), he makes good points on the adavantages and disadvantages of using the "large blob."

Like the open access websites reviewed in class, Sage is an open access journal that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, and access format. These articles span the full spectrum of the social and behavorial sciences and the humanities. The articles are very informative and they can be utilized in classrooms so that students can better understand the purpose of digital humanities and why it can be affective in their everyday learning environment.