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Circa 1000
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UCLA Libraries and the Research Commons
- 1. Research Commons: as “Macroscope” in the Library Zoe Borovsky, Ph.D. Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship UCLA zoe@library.ucla.edu @zoepster
- 2. DR 284, Hunnestad Monument Ystad, Sweden Circa 1000 Photo by Hedning (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL ], via Wikimedia Commons
- 3. Humanities Computing, Digital Humanities
- 4. What is Digital Humanities? Subjecting computing technologies to interpretation and critique by humanistic methods and strategies of questioning Asking traditional and sometimes new humanistic questions using digital resources and methods Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “Reporting from the Digital Humanities 2010 Conference,” RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC 2013
- 5. Macroscopes provide a "vision of the whole," helping us "synthesize" the related elements and detect patterns, trends, and outliers while granting access to myriad details. Rather than make things larger or smaller, macroscopes let us observe what is at once too great, slow, or complex for the human eye and mind to notice and comprehend. “Macroscope” (Börner 2011)
- 6. What is Digital Humanities? Subjecting computing technologies to interpretation and critique by humanistic methods and strategies of questioning Asking traditional and sometimes new humanistic questions using digital resources and methods Kathleen Fitzpatrick, “Reporting from the Digital Humanities 2010 Conference,” RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC 2013
- 8. 1997 UCLA
- 10. 2000
- 11. Hypermedia Berlin Spatial Temporal
- 13. 2010
- 15. Montage of snapshots of the entire program Broadcast NewsScape Clip about “Macarthur Park”
- 16. 2011 DH Program Research Library Renovation
- 19. Distant viewing Close reading
- 21. DR 284, Hunnestad Monument Ystad, Sweden Circa 1000 Photo by Hedning (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL ], via Wikimedia Commons
- 22. Just as our communities of practice, interfaces and applications were evolving to embrace close and distant reading practices, so too our physical spaces. But why the library?
- 23. Library has traditionally functioned as a “macroscope” for humanities researchers
- 24. Libraries • Physical space has been devoted to close reading communities • Digital projects produce and maintain surrogates Palimpsest
- 25. Re-imagining the Research Commons nexus: interplay of close and distant practices showcasing the process
- 26. Using the Research Commons as a classroom/laboratory Encyclopedia of Egyptology
- 28. Summer Institutes Photos by Peter Leonard
- 30. Quan Tang shi (collected court poems of the Tang Dynasty East Asian Macroscope Developed by Peter Broadwell UCLA Library
- 31. Reading against/across the synthetic view(s) Network analysis Spatial analysis ExporttoEarth (Gephi plugin) by David Shepard, UCLA Ryan Cordell Imagery: US Department of State Geographer, Copyright 2012 Google, Image Copyright 2012 TerrraMetrics, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO Uncovering Antebellum Reprinting Networks
- 32. What’s next?
- 33. Thank you! zoe@library.ucla.edu @zoepster
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for the introduction. It has been a real pleasure for me to join you here and I want to thank the organizers of the conference for inviting me to speak with you. I welcomed the opportunity to listen and learn from other presenters and participants (I was tempted to rewrite this talk after every presentation), but I hope now to share a bit about UCLA and how Digital Humanities is practiced there. This slide shows where I work. It’s an area called the Research Commons in UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library. My current title, Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship, is not one that I imagined for myself.
- I have a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in medieval Scandinavian literature--a degree that, as I tell people who ask about my background, qualifies me to do anything! Specifically, my dissertation focused on mythological sagas--sort of the pulp fiction of Old Norse literature. I was fascinated with these large, brutish, fire-breathing female figures, giantesses. Like Grendel’s mother in Beowulf, Old Norse giantesses often appeared after the hero defeated a male giant. He was then confronted by an even fiercer opponent -- the giant’s mother or wife. My dissertation was about notions of maleness and femaleness in Old Norse literature. To find these giantesses among sagas with lots of supernatural creatures, I needed to read hundreds of sagas and I became involved in digitizing and OCRing several volumes of mythological sagas. Through this project (back in 1994), I became involved in text analysis and what was then called “humanities computing” and is now called “Digital Humanities”.
- I often tell this story to explain how Digital Humanities evolved--humanities scholars like myself, began using computers to facilitate their research. You will find a great variety of definitions of Digital Humanities out there. Many scholars find the term problematic, as if it juxtaposes two radically different notions. “Humanities” evokes books and the past (the analog world), while Digital evokes computers, technology, the internet, and the future.
- Kathleen Fitzpatrick defines Digital Humanities this way: “asking traditional and sometimes new humanistic questions using digital resources or methods.” as well as “subjecting computing technologies to interpretation and critique by humanistic methods and strategies of questions.” Needless to say there is much scholarly debate about Digital Humanities and today I’m going to focus my talk on part of that debate and give you some examples of how it plays out at UCLA--in Digital Humanities projects, and, more specifically, in the Library. The theme of my talk is about a term that Katy Borner coined--”macroscope”.
- “Macroscopes provide a ‘vision of the whole’ helping us “synthesize” the related elements and detect patterns, trends, and outliers while granting access to myriad details.” I am going to relate Borner’s concept of the “macroscope” to Fitzpatrick’s definition of Digital Humanities: “asking traditional and sometimes new humanistic questions using digital resources and methods. Traditionally, humanities scholars have engaged in close readings of texts--the myriad of details. And, when humanities computing began, our methods (e.g. text encoding and text analysis) reflected those practices. However, as the scale and scope of digital projects grew, the possibilities of the “sometimes new” emerged: the desire for a way to visualize the whole, and to detect patterns across large collections. Franco Moretti has called this type of reading practice “distant reading”. Graphs, Maps, and Trees, 2005 – in which he radically redefines literary history claiming that traditional genres were defined based upon a very small sample of canonical texts.
- What I want to show today is how Digital Humanities projects at UCLA have worked with “close” and “distant” reading methods, and explain why the UCLA library (and the Research Commons – where I work) has become such a central location for these bringing these communities of practice together. So my presentation is a demonstration of the second part of Fitzpatrick’s definition – it is a humanities reading or critique of the types software applications and computing environments that we’ve designed and developed at UCLA—ones that exemplify Digital Humanities research practices. My talk is a time-map of Digital Humanities projects, programs and spaces at UCLA. I’m not going to show any project in detail, because it’s the overall pattern that I’m hoping to convey.
- But, I have created a bibliography (yes, I am a librarian) with links to the individual projects should you decide you’d like to explore them more closely.
- To begin -- I’ll start in 1997
- with the Digital Roman Forum. This is a 3D reconstruction of the Roman Forum, created by UCLA faculty members in Classics and Architecture. Because viewing the data-intensive model in real-time requires high-powered computer processors and special projection equipment, viewing the model real-time takes place in UCLA’s Visualization Portal. However, UCLA technologists developed a web-based version that allowed users to see an overall 2-dimensional spatial representation of the whole. (CLICK) Users can examine the details by clicking on pop-ups that showed pre-recorded Quick-time movies.
- Fast forward a bit, to around 2000—and this is when I arrived at UCLA. As the web-based interface for the Digital Roman Forum was taking shape
- , a professor in the Germanic department, Todd Presner, began planning a web-based project that would function as a sort of time-map for the city of Berlin. Hypermedia Berlin was launched in 2003. I led the team of designers and developers at UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities where this project was developed. The idea was to place artifacts from Berlin in a spatial and historical context. We digitized historical maps, constructed a time-line and used Zoomify to provide the transition from a “distant” spatial context (CLICK)-- to a closer view of the object associated with that location. Presner’s students were assigned digital projects, creating narratives about places or artifacts in Berlin.
- A third project utilizing this time-map functionality emerged at UCLA--the Encyclopedia of Egyptology. I also led the team of designers and developers for this project, one that stored digital assets (scholarly articles and images) in UCLA’s Digital Library but displayed these objects in a time-map application. Like Hypermedia Berlin, users of the Encyclopedia of Egyptology could use the time-map functionality to gain a view of the whole – (CLICK)or drill down to a specific location on the map. (CLICK) The location would then yield scholarly articles and (CLICK) individual artifacts that could be examined in detail. All three of these projects were conceived of by humanities scholars, and, I believe, exemplify the ways that Digital Humanities projects have used spatial and temporal functionality to provide a synthetic view, and create ways to engage with individual digital artifacts or objects that could be examined more closely. The transition from one mode to another was not always seamless, but the desire to connect the two modes into one platform was evident. Allowing users to navigate by time ((Ancient, Medieval, Modern) and location (Roman, Germanic Egyptian) reflects how humanities scholars typically search and divide along disciplinary lines.
- By 2010
- Hypermedia Berlin expanded to become Hypercities, incorporating hundreds of other cities. The ability to export 3D models into more web-friendly formats evolved, and Hypercities incorporated some web-versions of Roman Forum. Visualizing Statues is a project led by a Classics professor (Gregor Kalas) – that uses the 3D environment to make an argument about how the placement of statues in the Roman Forum would evoke historical memories during ritualized processions. (CLICK) You can zoom in here for a close reading of the inscriptions.
- We found faculty in Communications Studies had been capturing and digitizing news broadcasts since the ‘90s— (CLICK) and using montage-like interface to provide context for individual clips. Their work with the Hypercities team lead to projects mapping social media, such as Twitter feeds during and after the tsunami in Japan.
- From these projects, faculty and technologists worked together to propose a Digital Humanities program--both an undergraduate minor and a graduate certificate. Thirty-five faculty members from across campus (Social Sciences and Information Studies are also participating) are currently affiliated with the Digital Humanities program at UCLA.
- As the curriculum was developing, the Research Library at UCLA was undergoing a $17-million dollar renovation to transform its facilities to support scholarship in the 21st century. (CLICK) During the planning process, faculty involved with Digital Humanities participated in the planning of the renovation. (CLICK)
- However, as you can see from the floor plan of the first floor, there is a distinct split between (CLICK) the traditional or analog space: Reading Room, and (CLICK) the futuristic collaborative spaces on the other half. In 2011 I assumed the position of Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship; my responsibilities included managing the Research Commons as well as being the subject librarian for Digital Humanities and more traditional library duties such as collection development for Anthropology and Archaeology. What fascinated me about this divide was that it mirrors the platforms that Digital Humanities researchers were building—but with a large gap between “close-reading” analog area (it’s actually enclosed by glass walls) and the very open digital areas—dominated by large monitors—an area that has no books in sight.
- When users enter the Research Library, (CLICK) there’s a large, opaque white screen, and then a few monumental display cases for treasures of Special Collections. (CLICK) (CLICK) On your right, you see the Cafe -- named Cafe 451 – (CLICK) after Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The novel was written on coin-operated typewriters in UCLA Library. The cafe is a huge attraction on campus, but the name, 451, also evokes book-burning, the death of the book, and literary culture. The renovation was largely viewed as a success; the new spaces and the cafe meant the library doubled its gate-counts. But what I came to realize was that librarians were deeply divided over digital technology. The renovation and the Research Commons provoked deep-seated fears about the death or disappearance of the book. Gradually I realized that my title: “Librarian for Digital Research and Scholarship” meant that many traditional librarians perceived me as a giantess.
- Now, as much as I LOVE imagining myself wielding powerful tools such as MALLET for topic-modeling, and moving large mountains of data, I realized that the perceived threat was...shall we say...disproportionate. And that ‘the digital” was being construed as an overwhelming threat that would justify a heroic defense of what Jessica Pressman calls “an aesthetic of bookishness.” Pressman uses “bookishness” to describe the defense mounted by the main character of a contemporary novel, when he is faced with overwhelming and destructive digital forces. I want to turn now to ways that we’ve been using the Research Commons to bridge the divide between analog and digital. We’ve done this by using the area to demonstrate the process of digital scholarship. We focus on ways that Digital Humanities projects themselves allow both close and distant reading, thus dispelling the threat that is projected upon the digital.
- What I want to point out is that traditionally, the library has functioned as a macroscope-like laboratory for humanities scholars. One could read the library as a platform – a set of resources — services, data, tools—that allow users to perform research and develop knowledge.
- The library encompasses both the minutia (letters, diaries, and now, emails and tweets) but also manages tools such as online catalogs and databases that provide users with a vision of, and ways of navigating and interacting with the whole.
- But the library, it seems to me, is invested in keeping a distinct divide--all the gateways and procedures that users encounter when they shift from areas designed for close reading (analog) to distant reading (digital). And the notion that the digital is a surrogate, and that the physical counterpart is stored safely somewhere. But, increasingly, as libraries have digitized more content – close readers, too, have been using digital tools. UCLA’s Digital Library program has focused on digitizing collections and providing tools and methods for close reading. (CLICK) Here’s a slide that shows how we’ve employed spectral imagery to do a very close reading of a text. So even within the library, with tools for digital forensics, the alignment of close = analog/print, and distant = digital becomes blurred.
- To dispel the threat to “bookishness” that digital technologies is perceived to present, we decided to host undergraduate classes taught by Digital Humanities faculty in the Research Commons. Students enrolled in courses such as Ancient Egypt and Sudan would meet to work on digital projects, published in a “mirrored” version of the Encyclopedia of Egyptology. This allowed us to showcase the process of digital scholarship and involve librarians in that process with the students.
- We drew upon the types of instructional sessions that subject and format librarians traditionally teach: finding images and requesting copyright for use in digital publication. (CLICK) Digital librarians showed students how the interactive time-map functionality relied upon XML markup of the scholarly articles, (CLICK) and led hands-on instruction sessions on XML markup. Students were visibly engaged with the books that we brought into the Research Commons, and they became adept at navigating the library stacks as well as the intricacies of TEI markup. We invited librarians to the showcase of the final student projects. Librarians were impressed by the quality of the students’ work, their engagement with their subject and with library resources.
- During the summers, we use the Research Commons more as a lab setting for researchers, hosting summer institutes that explore ways of bringing together both close and distant reading practices. These institutes have, I believe, been the most successful uses of this environment, one that was designed to support collaboration. The institutes are taught by Digital Humanities faculty and technologists, and are designed to provide both theoretical and hands-on training for participants. Finally, I’ll show just a few more projects -- ones that, I believe, explore integration or interplay between “close” and “distant” reading practices and communities. Just as we’re using the Research Commons to showcase the process of digital scholarship for librarians, faculty and students, we’re engaging scholars in developing new tools and methodologies.
- The Summer Institutes provide us with an opportunity to explore new methods such as network analysis and topic modeling. Close-reading skills and domain expertise are crucial to assembling a data set that fits the research question, What seems important for humanities researchers is to provide them with a laboratory where they can practice their distant reading skills alongside technologists who can explain the tools and the underlying methods. In my experience, just as humanities scholars have learned to read “against the grain” of sophisticated, theoretical arguments, so too can they bring those interpretive and analytical skills to bear upon distant readings produced by spatial analysis, network analysis, or topic modeling.
- Here’s a project that grew out of collaboration with UCLA Prof. Jack Chen (Asian Languages), who attended the network analysis workshop, where topic modelling was introduced. For this project Jack is working with one of the programmers in the library, Pete Broadwell, on this topic model interface for reading the court poems of the Tang Dynasty. Pete developed this interface allowing users to see an overview of the cluster of topics of this corpus. The interface provides several ways of viewing the topics (and words in topics) in this collection of documents. (CLICK) And you can read the individual poems.
- https://marketplace.gephi.org/plugin/exporttoearth/ This project mined early American literary journals – which he mapped spatially and then, as a network. The network showed which literary magazines reprinted Poe’s texts – showing how the works were disseminated. One of our developers, Dave Shepard, created a Gephi plugin that would allow Ryan to export his network as KML.
- By bringing digital humanities faculty and projects into the library, librarians are becoming acquainted with research tools, methods and platforms that allows and interplay between close and distant reading practices. This has led to librarians re-imagining library spaces and services, (our online and physical environment) and rethinking ways of engaging faculty, technologists, and students in librarian-led digital projects. (LA Aqueduct project is a good example – archival initiative that drew faculty and Digital Humanities students into the planning process.) In conclusion – I believe that as librarians become more involved in creating "distant views" of library data -- the library catalog as a whole – and the metadata we produce, and as we explore digital forensics and other technologies devised for “close reading” of documents/artifacts, we will be able to create environments that accommodate both types of reading/interpretive practices. I take inspiration from my librarian colleagues at the National Library of Norway, where they have plans to digitize their entire collection of books – and are, I’m told, about halfway done. I’ve also been told that they have been using topic modeling methods and are using those results to recatalog the collection. This means demonstrating in these environments how close and distant reading methods inform each other -- and surfacing a whole range of dynamics, including ones that disrupt or contest patterns observed by other methods. The goal I think, for DH is richer (or as Hypercities folk say -- "thicker") representations. Rather than providing a single, authoritative vision of the whole, these “thick” maps, as we call them, allow for multiple perspectives and interpretations that engage humanities researchers with their data. Thank you!