Digital Humanities Questions & Answers

1. 

   rebeccaonion
   Member

   Hello,

   I have to apologize in advance for any infelicities of expression in this post - I'm very new to DH and don't know all of the lingo.

   I'm working on my dissertation in an American Studies department, and I'm writing a chapter about non-fiction science books produced for kids in the US during the 1920s and 1930s. In the process of researching, I've come across many book lists (issued by librarians and children's book reviewers) and have started to compile a big Zotero folder full of examples of relevant titles. It's starting to become clear that part of the work that this chapter will have to do is to show large-scale shifts in this field over time. I'm beginning to think that I might try to build a bibliography...or a database?...that could inform the chapter's argument, and could be available to readers, as well.

   What I'd really like to do is to have a way to enter all of these book titles into some kind of program that would then allow me to show the way that this field of publication evolved over time. Ideally I'd love to be able to enter each book into this program, assigning it metadata, including subject matter, publishing house, author, date of pub, types of illustrations, appearance on these "best-of" lists, and possibly some fields that I haven't anticipated as of yet. Then I'd like to be able to produce visualizations (graphs? timelines?) of the way that each of these fields change over time.

   I'd also love for the final product (database? bibliography?) to be presentable via a website, and publicly searchable/visible.

   Any advice you could give would be most welcome.

   Thanks,

   Rebecca

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   Posted 7 years ago Permalink
2. 

   rjlewis
   Member

   Of course, what you're doing is quite similar to what Franco Moretti did for English literature in Graphs, Maps and Trees (2005). His book is worth a read.

   My answer to your question of whether this is a bibliography or a database would be: this is a database. It's a bibliographic database, but a database nonetheless. If it were my project I would design an SQL database to store all the information and use R (the statistics package) to analyse and visualise it. It might then design and implement a Web interface using Python. However, as is always the case with computational tools, I would use these because I;m familiar with them.

   Perhaps, then, it may be a good idea to recruit a collaborator on a project such as this, especially someone with experience of designing database schema for bibliographic (or perhaps other humanities) projects. Getting the schema right will be crucial to making this project work.

   Posted 7 years ago Permalink
3. 

   william.j.turkel@gmail.com
   Member

   If you would like to share your data in a form that allows other scholars to do things with it easily, but don't want to host a SQL-database-backed website (as RJ Lewis suggests), you could put it into a spreadsheet and share it using Google Docs or upload it to Infochimps.com

   Posted 7 years ago Permalink
4. 

   Patrick Murray-John
   

   My impression is that when you say you want something that will "inform the chapter's argument", that's putting an emphasis on not just making the data available (which should definitely happen too), but also presenting it in a particular, probably complex, way to make it speak a particular point or set of points.

   If that's accurate, then it sounds like you are talking about using some kind of content management system to sort and filter and visualize what you have in Zotero.

   One way at it, if you or someone you know is a programmer, is to keep using Zotero, and make use of the API to read the data in Zotero and present it in a new way. Munging the responses from Zotero into something that SIMILE Exhibit/Timeline likes might be interesting.

   One the other hand,much agreed that Google Docs makes a great way to share basic data, and it can be pushed pretty easily into SIMILE stuff, with some care setting up the spreadsheet at the outset.

   Having data in Zotero, and then looking for ways to rework and reframe the data is turning out to be a new interest of mine, since I'm working on a project that is, with some twists, doing the same thing. In our case, we're making Drupal and Zotero talk. I expect that some code will be released for it before too long, but am not sure about the exact timeline. If a Drupal site sounds like it might do the trick, let me know and we can talk more about what'd be involved with that angle.

   HTH,
   Patrick

   Posted 7 years ago Permalink
5. 

   rebeccaonion
   Member

   Thanks everyone for your responses. I also got input from @miriamkp on Twitter about a platform called Recollection (http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/partners/recollection/index.html) that I'm going to investigate further. As of yet I have no programming skills, and I've found out since I posted this question that my home institution won't provide help on that front (the digital projects people, while extant, don't have the resources). Since I'll be working on this chapter over the summer, I'm going to keep on stuffing that Zotero folder, email the Recollection people to see what more they can tell me, and contact Patrick separately to find out more about his project.
   I may also investigate this site more to see if anybody's posted a question about hiring a programmer to help with a project like this. My problem is that I would want somebody who would be willing to work with me to help me understand what's going on; also, of course, money is an issue (#gradschool).
   Regardless, thanks again for the suggestions - I really appreciate the help.
   Rebecca

   Posted 7 years ago Permalink

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