Hope's Centre-Table

Inkling, a new app and textbook producer, was mentioned recently in the Wired Campus blog from The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Kaya, Travis. “Classroom iPad Programs Get Mixed Response” Sept. 20, 1010)

What is it? An app for buying, reading, and annotating textbooks which includes searching, highlighting, notetaking, and the ability to share those notes online with others. Textbooks, or individual chapters, are purchased through Inkling. They are downloaded to your iPad but can be deleted and restored direct from Inkling.

Positives: beautifully produced books, easy navigation, nice interactivity with self-help sections, slick annotating, includes page number markers that map to print version so that you can reference as needed.

Negatives: very few textbooks currently available, propietary format for books that is not yet public (i.e. you can’t create your own), they are still textbooks with all the pedagogical implications that implies.

Inklings addresses two issues central to academic use: what will textbooks look like in the mobile learning world and, as annotating seems to be a major requirement in any educational app, what standard practices will arise as the “best way” to enable annotating.

Check it out: http://www.inkling.com/about

At the very least you can get a free (abridged) copy of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style.

Wichada Sukantarat of the UVM Library asked Alison Armstrong, Scott Scaheffer and me to put together a panel discussion for the library staff on eBook and eReaders. I was asked to talk about the technical issues, Alison about library service issues,  and Scott about legal issues. In the course of the discussion we and the participants touched on so many of the issues that we are all grappling with as these rapidly changing devices appear.

As the discussion progressed I kept returning to one thought: ebooks are not electronic books. Why say that? A book is a physical object and cultural object with its own history, its own place in our culture, its own rules and assumptions and uses. The way we think about books and interact with them has developed and been shaped by 500 years of practice. When early ebook creators decided to replicate the print book as an ebook they may have thought it would be a simple transfiguration, or that the challenges would have been merely technical (how do you make it readable, how do you make the battery last, how do you create the structure of the text, what about color, etc.). You can see an example of this in the Kindle. If Amazon defines a book as something that people will buy, own, and read from cover to cover, that is quite a different model than a book as a digital object that can be shared, circulated, annotated, copied, broken apart and reconfigured, used in conjunction with other programs, etc.

Yet it has become clear that ebooks are not the sum total of books plus digital. They are their own object, and will  generate their own expectations, assumptions, and practices. While pundits can make claims about what those are, the reality is that these devices are still in flux. At every step in the process assumptions determine the development of an ebook or ereader, then are challenged and must be addressed (both legally and technically), and then the results folded back in to the next development cycle. This certainly makes for a very practical challenge for libraries and universities: just when, and just how, should ebooks/ereaders be introduced?

Several universities and colleges are jumping in, buying ereaders and ebooks, and experimenting with their use in the library or classroom. Some have a plan, and for some the plan is to distribute devices to students and ‘see what happens.’ (Members of university centers for teaching and learning might suggest here that the latter is not always the approach best guaranteed to bring anticipated results!) It is heartening, however, to see that UVM is willing and able to ask the questions and have the conversation.

According to Daniel Paul O’Donnell, “Humanities, Not Science, Key to New Web Frontier.” Citing the humanities background of several familiar web creators (Larry Sanger/Wikipedia, Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook, Michael Everson/Unicode), O’Donnell asserts that: “The Internet is no longer primarily an engineering problem. Its basic technological building blocks have been in place for 20 years. What is new is how this technology is being used…The significant thing about the new digital economy is not its technology, but its applications…
The humanities and social sciences are important to the new digital economy not simply because they help people think about technology in new ways. They are also directly responsible for some of the fundamental protocols that allow this technology to function.”

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/technology/Humanities+science+frontier/3303742/story.html#ixzz0uKgwmBYZ

Held Monday, February 01, 2010
http://www.nercomp.org/events/event_single.aspx?id=5932

This was, far and away, the best NERCOMP event I have attended. The notes are both extensive and cryptic but I wanted to keep it all.

1) Digital Scholarship in the Humanities: Challenges and Opportunities
Patrick Yott, Director, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University
2) Digital Humanities From a Liberal Arts Perspective
Scott Hamlin, Director of Technology for Research and Instruction, Wheaton College
Patrick Rashleigh, Faculty Technology Liaison for the Humanities, Wheaton College
3) Teaching and Supporting the New Digital Scholarship
Julia Flanders, Director, Women Writers Project and Associate Director for Textbase Development, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University
4) Discussion
Andy Ashton, Senior Research Programmer, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University
5) Developing, Shaping and Managing Digital Humanities Research Projects
Elli Mylonas, Associate Director, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University
6) Visual Tools for Research and Collaboration in Digital Humanities
Brett Barros, User Interface Developer, HyperStudio – Digital Humanities at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kurt Fendt, Executive Director, HyperStudio – Digital Humanities at MIT, Research Director, Comparative Media Studies/Foreign Languages and Literatures, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1) We began the day with Patrick Yott, Director, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University
Patrick, finding digital humanities project creation akin to a 3 prong model or as he calls it, the “cube” (made of x, y, z axes) of libraries, STG, and faculty.
(I wonder what happens when CTL or non-librarians are also stakeholders?)

2) Digital Humanities From a Liberal Arts Perspective
Scott Hamlin, Director of Technology for Research and Instruction and
Patrick Rashleigh, Faculty Technology Liaison for the Humanities, both of Wheaton
College

While Wheaton has no DH center, the Research and Instruction dept of the library liaises with
others, based on project needs. Projects are can be faculty initiated but also liaison intiated. As a college that values undergraduate research, they try to link DH to rresearch and pedagogy. This often means that the final product is less important than the process (yes!). For example: “how can students get a closer reading through digitizing”: technology as a way to depth, not just breadth: delve into a text, maps, etc.

Patrick R:
1) DH classroom projects have strong learning potential but need lots of planning
Examples:
a) Kirk Anderson, French, 1751 encycl.: students chose and translated an article, then contributed the article to the online project
b) Kathryn Tomasek: History Engine (TEI): students write about a source doc, post to the HE; transcribe diaries, travel ephemera, account books  and publish (PDF it or maybe make it some visualization)
c) Domingo …: translate, annotate, TEI, Google earth annotations
d) Mark LeBlanc: “computing for poets” CS course: python-processed TEI material from Kathryn’s class !!

2) Advantages
a) close engagement with text
b) persistence of the digital object (consider management of these for future users)
c) TEI is a way of introducing tech literacy into humanities (that’s the hard sell: frame it in terms of ‘ways of thinking’ instead of tools, what happens when you introduce DH into humanities? a place to discuss that)

3) Issues/solutions
a) have explicit objectives, (what do you want to achieve?) logical integration into course, not just an add on (sample: close reading, transcription-basic encoding-tagging-analysis–it’s a continuum: close reading to general analysis to deep analysis to computed analysis.)
b) carrots: publication, analysis, visualization (Google earth is cool)
c) the lone scholar approach doesn’t work!. Do it in workshops so people can see each others’ work and progress.
d) Quality Issues: if you want to use this for publication or additional use it needs to be decent so choose
your tools wisely  (TEI, XML, Oxygen)
(Tip: could use Google spreadsheets to set up controlled vocabulary, then suck it into schema, apply to TEI doc)
e) grow the talent farm – pay to clean up the older or poorer quality products

Back to Scott:
Advantages of small college environment: willingness to experiment, pedagogic base
Challenges: high support level, hardly ever polished or complete (but that’s OK),
post workshop consultation and support needed, lack of tools and infrastructure to make use
of products

They have an IMLS planning grant “Publishing TEI Documents for Small Liberal Arts Colleges: Planning a Service, Building a Community” (Dickinson, UVA, Holyoke, Wheaton and others)
Still struggling with what to do with products. Proposing a service to a) help facilitate conversion into form others can use (web pages, etc but also mashups, analysis tools), b) long term hosting for TEI objects Timeline: 4 f2f, March adding 5 institutions
1) Groundwork, survey, 2) CFParticipation 3) Evaluating tools and planning for service 4) Plan for implementation

3) Julia Flanders, Women Writers Project, Center for Digital Scholarship
http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/workshops/
http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/guide/
Creative Commons: feel free to use their materials, talk to them about ideas for use

DH makes possible a way of teaching that had not been possible before by recovering and making available unknown or invisible materials. The WWP went through several phases. The initial project led to questions about how you can actually build and enhance value of such collections. Critical reflection on methods of digitization and methods of teaching with same. Next phase, how do you do outreach and education to faculty who are beginning their own.

WWP began in the Eng dept at Brown as a faculty project, then moved to Dean of Faculty, then finally into Scholarly Tech Group (a new kind of center for support of projects plus research for how they are done)–“intersection between scholarly methods and digital methods” STG subsumed by Brown library as a part of mission on how the Institution manages research and scholarly missions.

STG has several functions:
1) explores methods of representation
2) project management
3) grant writing
4) considering impact on scholarly communication, teaching and research

They have a new series of advanced seminars funded by NEH plus workshops at Brown, etc. and will do road shows. Also provide consultation and have published an online guide to scholarly text encoding. The
seminars arose out of set of challenges for faculty:
– where to start, what to learn
– enabling support (targeted information that speaks in a way to inspire)
– connecting tech and skills and knowledge (making the connection between what scholars already do in sc
holarship and the technical skills needed to do it digitally. ex: text encoding is not about the computer)
– how to keep it going

WWP Seminars are basic workshops on concepts of TEI and XML that connect concepts with scholarly concerns and interests. There are also advanced topics on encoding that offer context for using: how do you publish, design, metadata (advice on grant, job desc, odd problems). The workshops have diverse audiences which make it a challenge to connect all individual’s scholarly interests to text encoding examples used in class.

Lessons they have learned for these workshops:
– use participant material, not your canned examples, have them bring what they are working on
– focus on interpretive challenges (what’s interesting and questionable, not what’s easy, Whitman crossed out manuscript)
– lots of hands-on practice
– team attendance (fac and librarian, fac and undergrad, fac and tech)

(Ideal) DH Resources: (and how few there are)
Body of knowledge on DH: how do scholars acquaint themselves to these things
Access to people who can make the tech link
Simple tools and templates
Student workers
Help with planning and writing grant proposals

Resources (specific)
Blackwells Companion (pedagogy one coming soon!)
Listservs
Digital
humanities center staff
Project articles and documentation
WWP
Guide to Scholarly Text Encoding

4) Discussion with Andy Ashton

1) Peer review in the process (scholarship/tenure) (look at NINES for guidelines)
2) How do you document the process
3) rights management
4) TEI/GIS combination: not quite there yet but since they both speak XML…
5) Grants: not for just digi projects, more about finding ways to publish how tos and collaborate, NEH digital humanities startup grants for prototypes and tools, what kind of new scholarly problem is their research leading to (Whistler scrapbooks: how to contextualise art criticism), what kinds of new problems does this create?

5) Elli Mylonas, Brown, Center for Digital Scholarship
http://worf.services.brown.edu/cds/blog/
http://www.stg.brown.edu/
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects

A Project in its 3rd iteration: http://monarch.brown.edu/index.html

The faculty they work with tend to be project centric. The DH Group tends to be more general, broader.
CDS: 2 former STG staff (projects and services, DH people), 3 fte former CDI staff (metadata,
digitization, design), 3 WWP staff. They are librarians, humanists (who understand humanities research)
Work with Lib Digi services, Spec Col, CIS, students (grad/undergrad programmers, designers,
researchers)

CDS: Scholarly Grant Program to encourage faculty to come and experiment and get help

Traditional CDI projects are focused on collections so early efforts and tools have emphasised
recovery: recovering and making visible otherwise inaccessible documents. But DH is often more interested in interaction and contextualization. Next step: contextualize elements of the collection,
but what if you want to do the other way around? “Other ways of approaching the information other than just looking at the pages of the book.” Provide narrative.
How to bring projects back to life: old projects need tech update not just content update, they will try to accept fewer and use existing tools/techs and will try to group projects by approach. try to determine
pacing: which will have longest future? Category: ongoing projects: one they know will be revisited 1/4ly meetings and proactive involvement. For strategic direction see website.

6) Brett Barros and Kurt Fendt
MIT, Visual Tools, HyperStudio: http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/
http://hyperstudio.mit.edu/register

Look for their conference on visualization in the humanities, May 20ish (Johanna Drucker)

How to engage students in the process of learning/research and what is impact of these techs? How can we shape that to create humanities tools within a digital environment? Work with faculty to come up with new approaches to their teaching nad learning. Data visualization, timelines, collections, video, audio,
collaboration (?what can we learn from social networking?). How does that have an effect on scholarly publishing (retaining connection to moving data, not just static paper or image)?

How they work: faculty intiated with clear scholarly need, focus on tlr, open source tools, seed funding (we’ll digitize 150 docs for you?), GOAL: abstract from individual projects to build components for others by using a basic infrastructure (?), Challenge: how can we innovate and go beyond?

One project: using Simile timline – not good enough, now developing Chronos timeline will go public in a couple months (using jQuery instead of Prototype). Chronos easier to adapt, etc. XML+JSON (import from Google spreadsheet, link to flickr or youtube), and can take the module and integrate in other applications.

Project ideas:
1) Combine PLACE, Google maps, and diaries or letters??
2) Build a set of critical research and links
3) Host workshops: “What is Digital Humanities and How Can You Do It”
3) any edu grants for digitization/undergrad research?? the pedagogy of digihum? grants for
new research problems
4) Look for commonalities: bring project faculty together. Does PLACE talk to Poleman? Can Hist talk to who?? How?? Tea? Fellows?
5) Sign up for Chronos announcements: can I use it for Alice? Eugenics?

The publishing world continues to buzz about upcoming reading devices and the business models that will best exploit them.

E Ink, the company that makes the electronic “paper” used in devices like the Kindle, is still a black-and-white-only technology. However, Plastic Logic will be piloting their larger reading device later this year with expected sales to begin in 2010. This thin, lightweight, 8.5×11 inch, touch screen reader is expected to expand the ebook market beyond books to newspapers, documents, music, etc. (demo here) Word is that newspapers are considering this an opportunity to rethink their “free on the web” model and instead offer subscriptions.
And the Kindle? An announcement of a new, large form, Kindle is expected Wednesday (sneak peek here). In fact, several universities are already lining up deals to offer these, with textbooks pre-installed for students. They are Case Western Reserve, Pace, Princeton, Reed, UVA and Arizona State. What happens to all those color pictures and graphs in your normal $100+ textbook? Well, some sacrifices must be made. But from a student point of view, ditching the 40 pounds of textbooks for a one pound Kindle has got to be a good deal.
Update, May 5: According to the Wall Street Journal today: “Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school’s chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said.”
Meanwhile, rumors of an Apple tablet have circulated for years, but have recently begun to intensify. The advantage, of course, is that this would be a full color computer, not just a reading device. The disadvantage is that it would still not have the readability, especially in bright light, of electronic paper. We’ll see.

A couple weeks ago Dan Cohen decided to try a live Twitter experiment in crowdsourcing during his live presentation at a conference. The experiment is described in his blog post summary. was to use Twitter to “replicate digitally the traditional “author’s query,” where a scholar asks readers of a journal for assistance with a research project.”

He posted an image of a historic artifact, then asked people to try and identify it or come up with information about it. Within 9 minutes he had the answer, and within a half hour there were about 100 collective responses providing a “fairly rich description” along with resources and citations.

Of particular note were the conversations and discussions, abbreviated though each post may have been due to Twitter’s limits, that swirled around the topic. Granted, Cohen has quite a few followers and there was a certain amount of excitement in being part of this experiment. Yet the fact remains that in this case Twitter did fulfill a scholarly function.

His summary here: http://www.dancohen.org/2009/04/29/the-spider-and-the-web-results/