| Lecturer: |
Edward Vanhoutte
Universiteit Antwerpen
Universiteitsplein 1 / b-2610 Wilrijk
A 1.13
edward.vanhoutte@kantl.be |
| Time: |
Monday 9-12u.30. - 2nd semester 2005-2006 |
| Room: |
Computer room A9.02 (Library building A) |
| Contents: |
How can we make manuscripts legible and processable by computers? What does the computer mean for the humanities and how can we make true electronic editions? These and many other questions are the focus of the course Humanities Computing: Electronic Text that is unique in the humanities in Belgium.
The use of electronic texts in all areas of current society and all disciplines of both the Humanities and the hard sciences is increasing enormously. Together with this trend, the problems attached to the use and interchange of electronic texts become more prominent: software- and platform-incompatibility, loss of data in converting files, problems of archiving, creation, use, etc. This course addresses these problems and focuses on the problematic position of electronic texts in the humanities. The student can also expect an introduction in the history and evolution of electronic publication media such as the Internet. In lectures, seminars, and workshops, we draw the attention to the creation and publication of electronic texts, and gain hands-on experience in using internationally accepted standards for text-encoding and markup - SGML, XML, (X)HTML, XSL, CSS, TEI... This course introduces tools and techniques which will be used by the students to produce an electronic publication.
This year, we will concentrate on the DALF specification for the encoding of correspondence material and the students will prepare an electronic edition of the correspondence in two unique collections of the Hornbake Library
at the University of Maryland (US):
- The Papers of John T. Whalen (1898-1980) consist of fifty-five letters written by Whalen to his mother in Mt. Hebron, Maryland, between 1917 and 1918, when Whalen was in the U. S. Army during World War I. The letters inquire about family matters and describe his life as a member of the Coast Artillery Corps and as a patient in the hospital.
- The Papers of Theodore Bissell contain six letters written by Milton Ellsworth Poole, a University of Maryland student who left school to fight in France during World War I.
This course is not a web-design and web-publishing course. |
| Pre-required knowledge: |
No special computer knowledge is required. However, the students are supposed to have some elementary computer skills (know how to work with multiple windows, work with the mouse, create folders and files, download files from the internet), but an introductory session may be organised for students who are not up to elementary standards.
This course is taught in English. Foreign students are most welcome. |
| Format: |
Seminars and workshops with preparation. |
| Examination: |
Permanent evaluation and group assignment (possibly with a viva report). Only students who take part in all parts of the assesment will be eligible for credits and marks on this course. |
| Required reading: |
- Susan Hockey (2000). Electronic Texts in the Humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Edward Vanhoutte (2004). "An Introduction to the TEI and the TEI Consortium." in: Mats Dahlström, Espen S. Ore, & Edward Vanhoutte (eds.), Electronic Scholarly Editing – Some Northern European Approaches. A Special Issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing, 19/1 (2004): 9-16.
- Edward Vanhoutte & Ron Van den Branden (2003). DALF Guidelines for the Description and Encoding of Modern Correspondence Material. Version 1.0 . [html] [pdf]
- Further required reading will be available in a reader and on this course website.
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| Suggested reading: |
- Tim Berners-Lee (1999). Weaving the Web - The original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. London: Orion Business Press / San Francisco: Harper. (Translated as: Tim Berners-Lee (2000). De wereld van het World Wide Web. Het oorspronkelijke ontwerp en de uiteindelijke bestemming van het World Wide Web, beschreven door zijn uitvinder. Amsterdam: Nieuwezijds.)
- Paul E. Ceruzzi (2003). A History of Modern Computing. Second edition. Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press.
- James Gillies and Robert Cailliau (2000). How the Web was Born. The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth (eds.), A Companion to Digital Humanities. Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell Publishing.
- Theodor Holm Nelson, (1993). Literary Machines 93.1. Sausalito: Mindful Press.
- Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort (eds.) (2003). The New Media Reader. Cambridge, MA / London: The MIT Press.
- The journals Literary & Linguistic Computing, Computers and the Humanities, Markup Languages: Theory and Practice and Human IT.
- The maillists HUMANIST & TEI-L.
- Further suggested readings will be available in a reader and on this course website.
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| Credits: |
This course counts for 4 ECTS credits, which equals a 120 hour workload. This is organized as follows:
- Lectures: 30h.
- Weekly preparation: 25h.
- Group assignment: 65h.
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| Format |
Formal lecture |
| Preparation |
- Know how to download files from the internet
- Know how to create folders and save files in folders
- Know how to surf the internet, look and find information
- Know how to email
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| Required reading |
- Marilyn Deegan (2000). Introduction. in Frances Condron, Michael Fraser & Stuart Sutherland (eds.), Guide to Digital Resources for the Humanities 2000. Oxford: CTI.
- Susan Hockey (2004). 'The History of Humanities Computing.' in Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth (eds.), A Companion to Digital Humanities. Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. 3-19.
- Andrea Laue (2004). 'How the Computer Works.' in Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens and John Unsworth (eds.), A Companion to Digital Humanities. Malden, MA/Oxford/Carlton: Blackwell Publishing. 145-160.
- Willard McCarty (2002). Humanities Computing (Preliminary draft entry for The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, New York: Dekker, 2003.)
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| Further reading |
- Espen Aarseth (s.d.). 'The Field of Humanistic Informatics and its Relation to the Humanities.' Human IT, 4/1997
- Paul E. Ceruzzi, A history of Modern Computing. Second edition. Cambridge, MA/London: the MIT Press.
- CETH A Brief Introduction to Humanities Computing and Electronic Text
- Michael Fraser (1996). A Hypertextual History of Humanities Computing.
- Willard McCarty & Matthew Kirschenbaum (2003) Institutional models for humanities computing.
- Willard McCarty (25 November 2005). 'Tree, Turf, Centre, Archipelago-or Wild Acre? Metaphors and Stories for Humanities Computing.' Literary and Linguistic Computing, doi:10.1093/llc/fqi066
- Joseph Raben, "Humanities Computing 25 Years Later" Computers and the Humanities 25 (December, 1991): 341-350.
- Michael Sperberg-McQueen (2002). "Geisteswissenschaften und Informatik. Zur aktuellen Situation und zu künftigen Aufgaben." In Thomas Burch, Johannes Fournier, Kurt Gärtner and Andrea Rapp (eds.), Standards und Methoden der Volltextdigitalisierung. Mainz/Stuttgart: Akedemie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur/Franz Steiner Verlag. 27-37.
- Edward Vanhoutte (2000). "A Linkemic Approach to Textual Variation. Theory and Practice of the Electronic-Critical Edition of Stijn Streuvels' De teleurgang van den Waterhoek." Human IT 1/2000: 103-138. (section 1: Theory)
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| Assignment |
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| Format |
Seminar |
| Required reading |
- Vannevar Bush (1945). "As We May Think." The Atlantic Monthly July 1945, 176/1: 101-108.
- Susan Hockey (2000). Electronic Texts in the Humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- chapter 1: "Why Electronic Texts?": 1-10
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chapter 3: "Text Encoding": 24-48.
- Alan Morrison, Michael Popham & Karen Wikander (2000). Creating and Documenting Electronic Texts: A Guide to Good Practice. Oxford: OTA.
- Theodor H. Nelson (1965). 'A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate.' In Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Montfort, Nick (eds.).
The New Media Reader. Cambridge, MA/London: The MIT Press, p. 134-145. Original publication in Lewis Winner (ed.), Association for Computing Machinery: Proceedings of the 20th National Conference: 84-100.
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| Further reading |
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| Multimedia |
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| Assignment |
- Choose a document and analyse it (read chapter 2 of Morrison, Popham & Wikander (2000)).
- Copy your favourite poem to a plain text file (ASCII) *.txt and bring it with you on a disk on February 20th.
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| Format |
Seminar |
| Required Reading |
- TEILite. "TEI U5: Encoding for Interchange: an introduction to the TEI." [html] [xml] [pdf]
- Edward Vanhoutte & Ron Van den Branden, DALF guidelines for the description and encoding of modern correspondence material. Version 1.0. [html] [pdf]
- Edward Vanhoutte & Ron Van den Branden. 'Presentational and Representational Issues in Correspondence Reconstruction and Sorting.' in: Mats Dahlström, Espen S. Ore, & Edward Vanhoutte (eds.), Electronic Scholarly Editing-Some Northern European Approaches. A Special Issue of Literary and Linguistic Computing, 19/1 (2004): 45-54.
- Edward Vanhoutte & Ron Van den Branden, 'Describing, Transcribing, Encoding, and Editing Modern Correspondence Material: a Textbase Approach.' Fred Unwalla & Peter Shillingsburg (eds.) Computing the edition. Toronto: Toronto University Press. [pdf]
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| Downloads |
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| Installation |
NoteTab Light is a very complete plain text editor which allows you to create SGML, XML, (X)HTML, CSS etc. documents.
Download the software on your computer and unzip the file with an Unzip program (e.g. WinZip). Double click the Setup.exe file and follow the install shield guidance. Once installed, run the program and select View > Options > File Filters. Select "New", and add the next details
- Description: "xml"
- Wildcards: "*.xml"
- Click the OK button. Now you can save XML instances with the extension ".xml".
Repeat this operation for each file format you want to add to the software, e.g. CSS, XSL.
Select View > Options > HTML Files. Select "Create XHTML Tags" and select "Create Uppercase Tags" till you see a square in the box.
Download teixlite.clb, DALF10.clb, and DALF10META.clb and save (with .clb extension!) in NoteTab Light/Libraries. The Tabs "teixlite", "DALF10", and "DALF10META" will now appear in the tab-bar at the bottom of the programme window. Click to activate the library which will appear in the left margin.
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| Downloads |
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| Course materials |
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| Assignment |
- Choose a poem, a piece of prose etc. of ca. 1 page long and encode it using teixlite. Mail me (edward.vanhoutte@kantl.be) the XML file before Saturday March 25th, 12 a.m.
- Confer with the group and start transcribing the letters of John T. Whalen and Milton Poole.
- Agree on a date for a session on DALF.
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Week 7 (27 March) XSL theory and practice: basics, XPath, functions: Ron Van den Branden
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| Format |
Seminar |
| Required Reading |
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| Downloads |
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| Installation |
- Java Virtual Machine: Install the Java VM by running the self-extracting setup package. Make sure to install in the folder "c:\java" (preferrably not under "program files"!).
- Saxon:
- java version:
- extract the .zip file to the folder "c:\saxon".
- run saxon from anywhere on the command line with the command "java -jar c:\saxon\saxon.jar [options] source-document stylesheet [params].
- binary version:
- extract the .zip file to the folder "c:\saxon".
- run saxon from anywhere on the command line with the command "c:\saxon\saxon [options] source-document stylesheet [params]" (or by setting the environment variable SAXON_HOME to "c:\saxon" and including it in your system's PATH).
- XPath Explorer:
- copy the file "xpe.jar" to the folder "c:\xpe".
- run XPE from anywhere on the command line with the command "java -jar c:\xpe\xpe.jar"
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| Further Reading |
- Jeni Tennison (2002). Beginning XSLT. Birmingham: Wrox Press.
- Michael Kay (2002). XSLT Programmer's Reference, 2nd Edition. Birmingham: Wrox Press.
- Elliotte Rusty Harold (2001). XML Bible, 2nd Edition. New York: Hungry Minds, Inc.
- Doug Tidwell (2001). XSLT. Mastering XSL Transformations. O'Reilly.
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| Assignment |
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