This document outlines the course content for Digital Humanities 101 from 2013-2014. The course covers topics such as introduction to digital humanities, wordpress, digitization techniques, datafication, semantic modeling, pattern recognition, historical geographic information systems, crowdsourcing, and cultural heritage interfaces. It also discusses how GIS can benefit humanities research by allowing visualization and analysis of spatial data to find patterns and add contextual data. Some challenges to using GIS for history include historian skepticism, uncertainty in historical data, and changes in administrative boundaries over time. Several example projects are described that use GIS for fields like military history, digital map editions, and reconstructing past landscapes.

1. Digital Humanities 101 - 2013/2014 - Course 8
Digital Humanities Laboratory
M´lanie Fournier - Fr´d´ric Kaplan
e
e e
frederic.kaplan@epfl.ch - melanie.fournier@epfl.ch

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Correction of the bias in my grading
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Semester 1 : Content of each course
• (1) 19.09 Introduction to the course / Live Tweeting and Collective note
taking
• (2) 25.09 Introduction to Digital Humanities / Wordpress / First assignment
• (3) 2.10 Introduction to the Venice Time Machine project / Zotero
• 9.10 No course
• (4) 16.10 Digitization techniques / Deadline first assignment
• (5) 23.10 Datafication / Presentation of projects
• (6) 30.10 Semantic modelling / RDF / Deadline peer-reviewing of first
assignment
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Semester 1 : Content of each course
• (7) 6.11 Pattern recognition / OCR / Semantic disambiguation
• (8) 13.11 Historical Geographic Information Systems, Procedural modeling /
City Engine / Deadline Project selection
• (9) 20.11 Crowdsourcing / Wikipedia / OpenStreetMap
• (10) 27.11 Cultural heritage interfaces and visualisation / Museographic
experiences
• 4.12 Group work on the projects
• 11.12 Oral exam / Presentation of projects / Deadline Project blog
• 18.12 Oral exam / Presentation of projects
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Geographic Information System (GIS) within the Digital
Humanities
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What is a GIS ?
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What is a GIS ?
”A GIS is a kind of database management system that links each item of data to a
coordinate-based representation of its location, such as point, line, polygone, or pixel” (Ian N.
Gregory 2008).
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The Historical Geographic Information System (H-GIS)
For approximately 17 years, the GIS and more specifically the ”Historical GIS” appeared,
carrying new potentialities for studying the past (Knowles 2002, 2005, 2008 ; Gregory and Ell
2008 ; Goodchild 2008).
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The Historical Geographic Information System (H-GIS)
For approximately 17 years, the GIS and more specifically the ”Historical GIS” appeared,
carrying new potentialities for studying the past (Knowles 2002, 2005, 2008 ; Gregory and Ell
2008 ; Goodchild 2008).
• Geospatial technologies
• Analytical techniques
• Display and analyze information located somewhere on Earth
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Why scholars are insterested in GIS potentialities ?
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Why scholars are insterested in GIS potentialities ?
• Visualization of information in a geographical/geopolitical context
• Examination of those information at different scales
• Finding, describing and explaining spatial patterns (Gregory 2008)
• Addition of collateral data
• Possibility of sharing the data (Goodchild 2008)
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What are the main challenges of using GIS within History ?
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What are the main challenges of using GIS within History ?
• Historians skepticism towards computer science (Gregory, Kemp and
Mostern 2001 ; Bodenhamer 2008)
• Historians relationship with geography and cartography
• Management and representation of uncertainty, incompleteness,
errorprone data
• Management of paradata (metadata within the GIS field)
• Access to the sources, documentation of the sources (Grossner 2010)
• Rectification of old maps
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Evolution of the projects
The 2004 conference ”History and Geography : Assessing the Role of Geographic Information
in Historical Scholarship” presented and criticized the first generation of projects (http:
// hul. harvard. edu/ publications/ hul_ notes_ 1319/ activities. html ).
The objective is, as the conference did, to give you a good idea of the variety of GIS
techniques for history.
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Scanned manuscripts, transcription and GIS visualization.
Salem Witch Trials Archive - 2002
(http: // salem. lib. virginia. edu/ maps. html )
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The problem of administrative boundary changes.
• Nowadays borders/boundaries are seen as standard units.
• The main issues are : they shift through time, the representation of space
is different through time, sometimes it is even impossible to determine
the exact boundaries.
• Different possibilities exist to represent the administrative space
(polygons, polylines, or even points in certain cases).
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The problem of administrative boundary changes.
Great Britain Historical GIS - 2001
(http: // www. visionofbritain. org. uk/ ,http:
// www. gbhgis. org/ )
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The problem of administrative boundary changes.
China Historical GIS - 2001-2010
(http: // www. fas. harvard. edu/ ~ chgis/ )
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The problem of administrative boundary changes.
Collaborative GIS on Italian borders - 2012
(http: // geo-larhra. ish-lyon. cnrs. fr/ ?q=
atlas-historique/ regroupement-de-territoires )
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Digital editions of maps, Digital atlases
The Peutinger Map - 2004
(http: // peutinger. atlantides. org/ map-a/ ,
http ://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html)
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Digital editions of maps, Digital atlases
The Peutinger Map - 2004
(http: // peutinger. atlantides. org/ map-a/ ,
http ://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html)
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Digital editions of maps, Digital atlases
DARMC - Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization
(http: // darmc. harvard. edu/ icb/ icb. do )
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Military History
The Valley of the Shadow - 1993-2007
(http: // valley. lib. virginia. edu/ )
The Battle of Gettysburg - 2013
(http: // storymaps. esri. com/ stories/ 2013/ gettysburg/ )
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Military History
The Valley of the Shadow - 1993-2007
(http: // valley. lib. virginia. edu/ )
The Battle of Gettysburg - 2013
(http: // storymaps. esri. com/ stories/ 2013/ gettysburg/ )
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Military History
The Valley of the Shadow - 1993-2007
(http: // valley. lib. virginia. edu/ )
The Battle of Gettysburg - 2013
(http: // storymaps. esri. com/ stories/ 2013/ gettysburg/ )
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Route planner
ORBIS : The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World 2012 (http: // orbis. stanford. edu )
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Modeling Venice Shipping Lanes - Demo with ArcGIS for
Desktop 10.1
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Some softwares for your projects :
• Quantum GIS http://www.qgis.org/fr/site/
• GRASS GIS http://grass.osgeo.org/
• ArcGIS http://enacsoft.epfl.ch/lasig/
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Reconstructing past landscapes and urban morphology.
Nolli’s map - 2005 (http: // nolli. uoregon. edu/ preface. html )
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Reconstructing past landscapes and urban morphology.
Visualizing Venice - (http: // visualizingvenice. org/ about/ l )
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Reconstructing past landscapes and urban morphology.
Visualizing Venice - (http: // visualizingvenice. org/ about/ l )
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CityEngine Demo
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Conclusion
• Translating historical sources into a GIS database can be a complex and long process
(Knowles 2008, Gregory 2008).
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Conclusion
• Translating historical sources into a GIS database can be a complex and long process
(Knowles 2008, Gregory 2008).
• GIS provide/create new knowledge about geographies of the past.
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Conclusion
• Translating historical sources into a GIS database can be a complex and long process
(Knowles 2008, Gregory 2008).
• GIS provide/create new knowledge about geographies of the past.
• GIS offers an alternate view of the history (dynamic representation of time and place) and
it’s a good reflexive tool (Jessop 2004, Bodenhamer 2008).
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References
Gregory, Ian N., and Paul S. Ell. 2007. Historical GIS : Technologies, Methodologies, and
Scholarship. Cambridge University Press.
Grossner, Karl. 2010. Representing Historical Knowledge in Geographic Information Systems.
University of California, Santa Barbara.
Jessop, Martyn.2004. The visualization of Spatial Data in The Humanities. Literary and
Linguistic Computing 19 (3). pp. 335-350.
Knowles, Anne Kelly. 2002. Past Time, Past Place : Gis for History. ESRI, Inc.
Knowles, Anne Kelly, and Amy Hillier. 2008. Placing History : How Maps, Spatial Data, and
GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI, Inc.
http://www.maphistory.info/index.html
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