This document discusses thematic research collections (TRCs) and their role in creating new forms of scholarly writing. It provides examples of early TRCs like the Rossetti Archive and Blake Archive. While these collections consolidated content thematically, they were still organized like traditional libraries and did not fully achieve "contextual mass" by connecting different parts to support scholarly analysis. The document argues TRCs need to go beyond just searching and displaying items to truly support scholarly primitives like annotating, comparing, and illustrating. Overall, it analyzes how TRCs are beginning to replace books and libraries as the "laboratory of the humanities" but still have room for more networked organization that brings together different evidence types.

1. Thematic Research Collections
Prof. Alvarado
MDST 3703
8 October 2013

2. Business
• Quizzes being graded—hopefully back by
Studio

3. Review
• Ayer’s essay, “The Differences Slavery Made,”
was an attempt to create a new kind of
scholarly writing
• I think it does not meet that goal, but it moves
us along the path
• Today, we explore other attempts to create a
new kind of scholarly writing

4. To understand these other attempts,
we need to understand the
“problem” they are addressing

5. Review
• Traditionally, historians represent history by
means of narratives with footnotes and figures
• But such “fixed” narratives are not adequate to
capture the complexity of history
• Also, with networked digital media, we can go
beyond footnotes and figures and incorporate
whole resources
• But replacing the traditional text is very hard to
do

6. Why is it so hard to create new
forms of historical (and scholarly)
writing?

7. One reason is that we are not
simply replacing a way of writing –
we are replacing an entire social
system of organizing information

8. For
example, is
this a kind
of text?

9. What about this?

10. [Library of Babel]

11. This – the MEMEX – is an attempt to overcome the complexity
of information

12. Is this a portable library
or a book?
[Talmud]

13. Libraries and books are not
distinct—they form a single
informational system based on
print technology

14. This is a map of one such system
• Trivium
– Grammar
– Rhetoric
– Logic
• Quadrivium
– Arithmetic
– Geometry
– Music
– Astronomy
Does this not form the plan of a library?

15. [Berners-Lee’s diagram]
This is another system, introduced by digital media

16. So, hypertext blurs the distinction
between documents and libraries
It opens up a docuverse, a vast
intertext within which a text is a
node
The library is one big document
Every document is a little library

17. This is what McGann means by
“Radiant Textuality”
We move from books and libraries to
hypertexts and networks

19. This fact that books are nodes in a
network makes them flexible, open,
unfinished
These properties open up new
“critical opportunities”

20. Criticism = Scholarship

21. Scholarly Primitives
• A list of irreducible “functions” associated
with the activities of scholarship
– Discovering Annotating Comparing Referring
Sampling Illustrating Representing
– Basic “moves” in the game of scholarship
– Compare to the Memex Man
• Discusses interfaces designed at IATH to meet
these needs
• Where do they belong in our scheme?
– Selection  Classification  Synthesis

22. Synthesis
Classification
Selection
Secondary Sources
Primary Sources
Collections
Activities
The Stack of Scholarship
Discovering
Annotating
Comparing
Referring
Sampling
Illustrating
Representing

23. http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/doing-digital-scholarship-presentation-at-
digital-humanities-2008/

24. So, even though the
informational system has
changed, we have similar goals
We still want to do scholarship—
research, discovery,
interpretation

25. The goal then is to replace the
system of books and libraries—
“the laboratory of the humanities”
—with something else
What “genre” of hypertext has
emerged since the early 1990s, with
works like the Valley of the Shadow?

26. Thematic Research Collections

27. What is a thematic research
collection?
How exactly is it different from a
traditional library?

28. TRCs overcome the problem that
libraries scatter content
They consolidate content

29. Features of the TRC
• electronic
• heterogeneous datatypes
• extensive but thematically coherent
• structured but open-ended
• research oriented
• authored or multi-authored
• interdisciplinary
• collections of digital primary resources

30. Convergences and Effects
• They coincide with the move away from
theory and toward historicism (McGann)
• They produce a renewed focus on the
materiality of text
• They achieve “contextual mass”
• They force collaboration and inter-
disciplinarity
• They become laboratories for research

31. Contextual Mass
Instead of building large collections, “digital
research libraries should be systematically
collecting sources and developing tools that
work together to provide a supportive context
for the research process.”

32. Contextual mass
=
Connectivity among parts to
support scholarly primitives

33. Let’s look at some examples and see
how they stack up
Do they achieve contextual mass?
Do they support the scholarly
primitives?

34. The Rosetti Archive

35. The Rossetti Archive
• One of two original IATH projects
• Focused on the works the Pre-Raphaelite poet
and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–
1882)
– Art history and literary criticism
• Innovations
– Improved search (cross-site)
– Bread crumbs

36. Getting to Bocca Baciata
• Find the painting, Bocca
Baciata
• Search “image records”
• What do you do when
you get there?
Bocca Baciata 1859

37. Questions
• How is the collection organized?
• How connected are things?
• How does the site support scholarly activity?

38. Answers
• How is the site organized?
– The site is organized as a traditional database
– Search, List, Display
– Not much different than a library
• How connected are things?
– Not really – texts and images remain separate
– Easy to find things if you know what you are
looking for
• Does it support scholarly activity?

40. The Blake Archive
• Example of networked fellows at IATH
– Morris Eaves, University of Rochester
– Robert Essick, University of California, Riverside
– Joseph Viscomi, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill
• Known for
– Image fidelity
– Image search (iconographic classification)

41. Getting to Tyger
• Find illustrations of “Tyger”
• What do you do or find when you get there?
• How is the site structured?

42. Questions
• How is the collection organized?
• How connected are things?
• How does the site support scholarly activity?

43. Answers
• How is the site organized?
– Again, as organized as a traditional database
– Search, List, Display
– Separation of content types
• How connected are things?
– Texts and images remain separate
– List of figures is potentially useful
• Does it support scholarly activity?
– Provides very useful tool for comparing images

44. Other Sites
• World of Dante
• Tibetan Himalayan Library
• A House Divided
• History of African Americans in Medicine

45. Some General Observations
• Most TRCs are organized on the metaphor of
the library
– Organized by medium
– Search works if you know what you are looking for
– Getting to an item finishes the process
• Some introduce other devices
– Ontologies, maps, etc.
• Still a lot of room for development!

46. Structure of TDSM
• Geography
• Politics
– Election of 1860
– Political activtivists
• Economics
– Commerce
– Crops
– Labor
– Property
• Social structure
• Race
• Culture
– Religion
– Education (“school”)
– Urbanization (“Town Development”)
• Information and communications
Historiography
Points of
Analysis
Evidence
Summary of
Argument
VOS
Categories